4 ms·

ME! Christ, I hate the app store. They don't need to do much to improve on it. Also, part of the reason that you can't imagine it is because Steam is currently

by duaneb 14y ago

ME! Christ, I hate the app store. They don't need to do much to improve on it. Also, part of the reason that you can't imagine it is because Steam is currently a games network. Who knows how people might perceive steam in a year? Also, they may make money simply by offering the excellent software that isn't sandboxed: Alfred, Sourcetree, etc. Plus, I will never release on the app store unless I don't plan on making any money on it. It's simply developer-unfriendly: no trials, no paid upgrades - it's as if Apple is trying to kill off using the Mac to make a living of selling software and force developers into subscription/freemium models.

shinratdr 14y ago
That's a pretty fair decree of the App Store. Doesn't mean even slightly that Steam is a better alternative. It's a horrible launcher and a terrible Mac OS X app. It's a great service and games store and I use it all the time, but as an OS X app it's awful. It requires you to have "enable access for assistive devices" on just to render its interface. Valve knows absolutely nothing about the platform except what it needs to to make basic ports. Mark my words, they will not become a viable distribution system in OS X without completely and radically overhauling Steam from the ground up. Just "adding apps" isn't going to do anything.
- c0n5pir4cy 14y ago
  You only have to "Enable access for assistive devices" for the in-game interface, because it requires directly controlling the hardware. In Windows this is done by dll injection, of which even a similar process isn't possible in any *NIX operating systems.
  - shinratdr 14y ago
    Fair enough, that wasn't a great example. However the Steam UI becoming randomly invisible when docked and then undocked, in-app browser constantly breaking, and using their own notifications UI that gets stuck on screen and doesn't offer Growl support are better examples.
  - comex 14y ago
    > In Windows this is done by dll injection, of which even a similar process isn't possible in any *NIX operating systems. Actually, it's possible to do almost exactly the same thing on other platforms. http://guiheneuf.org/mach%20inject%20for%20intel.html http://guiheneuf.org/mach%20inject%20for%20intel.html
  - thristian 14y ago
    Linux's LD_PRELOAD system lets you replace some executable's dynamically-loaded symbols with your own implementations, and the OS X "dyld" manpage mentions "DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES" which seems to be similar. Is that close enough to "DLL injection"?
- duaneb 14y ago
  >Doesn't mean even slightly that Steam is a better alternative. It's a horrible launcher and a terrible Mac OS X app. It's a great service and games store and I use it all the time, but as an OS X app it's awful. I agree. I'm hoping competition will spur one or both of them to actually make a kickass service.

by duaneb 14y ago

shinratdr 14y ago

That's a pretty fair decree of the App Store. Doesn't mean even slightly that Steam is a better alternative. It's a horrible launcher and a terrible Mac OS X app. It's a great service and games store and I use it all the time, but as an OS X app it's awful. It requires you to have "enable access for assistive devices" on just to render its interface. Valve knows absolutely nothing about the platform except what it needs to to make basic ports. Mark my words, they will not become a viable distribution system in OS X without completely and radically overhauling Steam from the ground up. Just "adding apps" isn't going to do anything.

c0n5pir4cy 14y ago
You only have to "Enable access for assistive devices" for the in-game interface, because it requires directly controlling the hardware. In Windows this is done by dll injection, of which even a similar process isn't possible in any *NIX operating systems.
- shinratdr 14y ago
  Fair enough, that wasn't a great example. However the Steam UI becoming randomly invisible when docked and then undocked, in-app browser constantly breaking, and using their own notifications UI that gets stuck on screen and doesn't offer Growl support are better examples.
- comex 14y ago
  > In Windows this is done by dll injection, of which even a similar process isn't possible in any *NIX operating systems. Actually, it's possible to do almost exactly the same thing on other platforms. http://guiheneuf.org/mach%20inject%20for%20intel.html http://guiheneuf.org/mach%20inject%20for%20intel.html
- thristian 14y ago
  Linux's LD_PRELOAD system lets you replace some executable's dynamically-loaded symbols with your own implementations, and the OS X "dyld" manpage mentions "DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES" which seems to be similar. Is that close enough to "DLL injection"?
duaneb 14y ago
>Doesn't mean even slightly that Steam is a better alternative. It's a horrible launcher and a terrible Mac OS X app. It's a great service and games store and I use it all the time, but as an OS X app it's awful. I agree. I'm hoping competition will spur one or both of them to actually make a kickass service.