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I remember last year when I got my first Mac in over a decade being excited to see the app store. Every now and then I saw Mac exclusive apps being posted on he

I remember last year when I got my first Mac in over a decade being excited to see the app store. Every now and then I saw Mac exclusive apps being posted on here that looked incredible, just so well designed with a lot of focus. I also heard about the rigorous review process so assumed that it'd all be like that. When I got it and tried looking for a music player (I'm not a big fan of Apples own music player + it doesn't support FLAC) I was stunned by just how much junk there was on there. The bloody Google Play store looked better, and this was repeated for pretty much every common purpose app I looked for. Of course there were good ones (I never managed to find a good music player, or audiobook player, though), but thats a pretty low bar. Coming from Fedora and seeing the quality apps being put out on Flatpak and the like (Amberol and Cozy for example), as well as quite a few other things about MacOS in general, I felt like Gnome was more like (what I expected from) MacOS than MacOS itself. Over time, as I got used to the differences in the OS, a lot of that faded, but my feelings about the two app markets remains the same.

kccqzy 3y ago
> I saw Mac exclusive apps being posted on here A Mac app that has been posted on HN and appearing on its front page almost certainly passes a higher quality bar than an app found by searching the Mac App Store.
heavyset_go 3y ago
A lot of developers who bought into the "OS X is just a pretty and stable UNIX" mantra from the mid/late 2000's Mac era have jumped off the Mac train. I wrote some popular macOS apps for powerusers, but the nonsense that Apple has pulled over the last 5+ years led to me pulling out, it just isn't worth the headache or literal monetary cost to maintain free software for the platform. There was a lot of software from that era that reminded me of the type of poweruser enthusiasts would write for Linux. It's one of the reasons I originally left Linux for OS X 15+ years ago. These days the pendulum has shifted, Apple is hostile towards powerusers and anyone that wants to modify or run their systems as they see fit. Today, Linux is the "pretty and stable UNIX" that OS X was in the Snow Leopard days. Linux app repositories are filled to the brim with quality software that doesn't show me ads, try to sell me subscriptions or are hindered by my computer's manufacturer for reasons.
- bodge5000 3y ago
  > Linux app repositories are filled to the brim with quality software that doesn't show me ads, try to sell me subscriptions or are hindered by my computer's manufacturer for reasons I expected that kind of thing going in, but was expecting that with privacy being the focus, UI and ease of use would suffer. For me, that ended up being a worthwhile tradeoff, but after getting here I discovered that wasn't the case at all; the apps actually look and feel better than what you'd find elsewhere. Its incredible
  - heavyset_go 3y ago
    Yup, a lot of people are stuck with 2005-era ideas of how Linux is. A lot of time has been spent on polishing UI and UX to the point Windows and macOS feel clunky in comparison. You also get a lot of high quality apps from people who take pride in their craft versus apps published by companies who want to spend the least amount of money to get the most amount of $0.99 subscriptions as they can out of an app.
wingworks 3y ago
I feel the same way. I'm not a fan of the "Books" audiobook player Apple offers, but there really wasn't anything better on the app store. (or anywhere online that I could find). More surprising was the lack of good podcast apps, again I ended up sticking with Apple's default app, which isn't great. It seems most of the good devs/designers only develop for iPhones these days, as there are a few great podcast app's to choose from.

kccqzy 3y ago

> I saw Mac exclusive apps being posted on here A Mac app that has been posted on HN and appearing on its front page almost certainly passes a higher quality bar than an app found by searching the Mac App Store.

heavyset_go 3y ago

A lot of developers who bought into the "OS X is just a pretty and stable UNIX" mantra from the mid/late 2000's Mac era have jumped off the Mac train. I wrote some popular macOS apps for powerusers, but the nonsense that Apple has pulled over the last 5+ years led to me pulling out, it just isn't worth the headache or literal monetary cost to maintain free software for the platform. There was a lot of software from that era that reminded me of the type of poweruser enthusiasts would write for Linux. It's one of the reasons I originally left Linux for OS X 15+ years ago. These days the pendulum has shifted, Apple is hostile towards powerusers and anyone that wants to modify or run their systems as they see fit. Today, Linux is the "pretty and stable UNIX" that OS X was in the Snow Leopard days. Linux app repositories are filled to the brim with quality software that doesn't show me ads, try to sell me subscriptions or are hindered by my computer's manufacturer for reasons.

bodge5000 3y ago
> Linux app repositories are filled to the brim with quality software that doesn't show me ads, try to sell me subscriptions or are hindered by my computer's manufacturer for reasons I expected that kind of thing going in, but was expecting that with privacy being the focus, UI and ease of use would suffer. For me, that ended up being a worthwhile tradeoff, but after getting here I discovered that wasn't the case at all; the apps actually look and feel better than what you'd find elsewhere. Its incredible
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  Yup, a lot of people are stuck with 2005-era ideas of how Linux is. A lot of time has been spent on polishing UI and UX to the point Windows and macOS feel clunky in comparison. You also get a lot of high quality apps from people who take pride in their craft versus apps published by companies who want to spend the least amount of money to get the most amount of $0.99 subscriptions as they can out of an app.

wingworks 3y ago

I feel the same way. I'm not a fan of the "Books" audiobook player Apple offers, but there really wasn't anything better on the app store. (or anywhere online that I could find). More surprising was the lack of good podcast apps, again I ended up sticking with Apple's default app, which isn't great. It seems most of the good devs/designers only develop for iPhones these days, as there are a few great podcast app's to choose from.