7 ms·

Scrivener Temporarily Withdrawn from Sale on the Mac App Store

50 points by MaysonL 14y ago

gfosco 14y ago
How many users are still using 10.6? Couldn't the description be updated with a note specifying the temporary issue with 10.6? Seems like that would be a lot simpler than taking it down...
- kibibu 14y ago
  3 out of 4 of the macs in my offices were on 10.6.8 until last week (now it's only 2). Edit: I figured this is a pretty useless stat. Here's some better ones from the Unity Web Player installations, Q1, 2013 http://stats.unity3d.com/web/os-mac.html http://stats.unity3d.com/web/os-mac.html 10.6 is just under 30% of the install base for these guys
- bigiain 14y ago
  Anybody with a single core intel machine (there's two of them in my house right now, an old Mac mini, and an old PowerBook that still works fine)
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    The Mac mini 1.5Ghz, a 7 year old model, is the only modern Mac with a single core Intel CPU. The PowerBook line had PowerPC microprocessors, and the MacBook Pro series never had single core CPUs. Apple did however release MacBook Pros with Core Duo CPUs -- OS X 10.7 requires at least Core 2 Duo. by 2007, all models had Core 2 Duo CPUs.
- Osiris 14y ago
  Both of my co-workers and my managers are still on 10.6 because of perceived concerns about 10.7, and the fact that our IT department wants to do a full reimage to upgrade to 10.7 or 10.8 rather than just running the upgrade. I actually have more problems with 10.8 than I did with 10.7, so I understand some people's reluctance to upgrade.
plg 14y ago
How's that freedom working out for ya?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- vor_ 14y ago
  What does this even mean?
  - plg 14y ago
    apparently it means downvote me
wlll 14y ago
I go with direct download over Mac App Store every time when it's available. This story illustrates the reason pretty well.
- kibibu 14y ago
  Interesting. Many people (including me) will choose the Steam version of a game if its available, to get all the niceties of auto-updating, easy reinstalls, a central list of games & achievements, and so on. Shows the difference implementation can make.
  - ComputerGuru 14y ago
    OS X has awesome updates, though. Almost every single OS X app uses Sparkle [0] to check for updates on startup. I feel bad giving the credit to OS X, but Windows has no such prevalent counterpart. 0: http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/ http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/
    - kalleboo 14y ago
      It's funny too since I actually find Sparkle updates far less intrusive than App Store updates (I'm tired of logging in and out of iTunes over and over and over again).
      - eridius 14y ago
        Why do you log into and out of iTunes? That makes no sense to me.
        derefr 14y ago
        Having old apps on a different iTunes account than everything else can force this.
    - cremnob 14y ago
      Why would you feel bad about it?
mbenjaminsmith 14y ago
"2.4.1 was rejected on Monday night for a reason that didn’t make sense (the reviewer said it wasn’t sandboxed when it was)." I've had some incredibly fun (sarcasm) experiences with the review team for the MAS over the last few months. Reading that sentence got a belly laugh out of me. The first major WTF that I had with the review team was their insistence that an app I had submitted was calling a private method. A method with the same name was present in an included library but rather than explain that to them I found it quicker just to remove the library (a workaround was simple enough). The hair pulling started when they again rejected the app for exactly the same reason. As the app relied on a heavy 3rd party framework it took a lot of investigation to understand what (wasn't) happening. Finally I took out a $50 tech ticket and after a week the engineer explained that the review team's tool for checking API usage was broken and it had nothing to do with my app. The next time the review team rejected an app (seemingly within minutes of it going into review) because it was "producing garbage output". This time I just did a cursory review of the app before using another $50 tech support ticket. The app was sometimes writing files with the format somefile.ext.sb-randomstring. I suggested to the reviewer that the app was messing up an atomic write and given the sb- part of the filename had something to do with sandboxing. A week later the engineer explained what it was to me -- which was exactly what I had suggested. My advice to anyone dealing with this is to spend zero time talking to the review team. Don't resubmit (unless it's something really obvious) and don't try to reason with them. Filing a $50 tech support ticket will basically guarantee that someone capable of passing the Turing test (have a conversation via iTunes Connect and you'll understand what I mean) will look into the problem. The tech support team will usually ask the review team to expedite your review once the problem has been solved -- something you'll rarely get if you ask yourself.
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  the reviewer said it wasn’t sandboxed when it was I'm afraid I'm utterly ignorant about Mac programming, but how is that even possible? I thought sandboxing was built into the execution environment, not the app.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    The app requests sandboxing. That request then causes it to be run in a sandboxed environment. Apps can refrain from requesting it and run non-sandboxed, but such apps are not accepted in Apple's store.
rangibaby 14y ago
I nearly pulled my hair out when a sandboxing bug in 10.7.5 broke one of Apple's own apps. http://imgur.com/F5roY1h http://imgur.com/F5roY1h https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1599 https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1599
fpgeek 14y ago
To me, the most interesting part of the story is the parenthetical comment at the end: (Incidentally, because of some of the changes we are being required to make, we cannot guarantee that Scrivener on the Mac App Store will have as good support for .docx, .doc and .odt formats in 2.4.1 and future releases. This does not affect the version on our site.) I wonder what's behind this, how it actually affects Scrivener and whether it will hit other apps in the future.
rayiner 14y ago
On a related note, Scrivener is the best app I've ever used on any platform. My wife and I use it for legal writing, and I've never found anything that can handle our workflow as well as Scrivener.
- dj-wonk 14y ago
  Scrivener is awesome, yes!
- youngtaff 14y ago
  I really don't get on with Scrivener and I don't completely understand why. I've gone back to Voodoo pad for writing even though it doesn't quite fit all my needs.
jrochkind1 14y ago
So, for iOS, the app store and apple's possibly arbitrary gatekeeping is the only way to get an app to your users. For OSX desktop... what are the benefits software publishers get, just marketting/visibility, basically?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- limmeau 14y ago
  Not having to run a shop.
nickm12 14y ago
This is why I'm (slowly) weaning myself off of Apple platforms after being an Apple user and enthusiast since 1984. A computing platform where the vendor is the ultimate arbiter of what software the user can and cannot run is fundamentally broken. iOS has always been this way and, though I used it for a while, eventually the stories of apps being rejected for all sorts of reason were too significant to ignore. When Apple tried to dictate the set of acceptable _programming language_ for apps I gave up my iOS devices. Though I can still run software on my macs without permission, I'm now looking for a suitable replacement for Mac OS as well. It's difficult to imagine a day coming where the Mac would be "app store only" like iOS, but it's not impossible.
- interpol_p 14y ago
  It's not quite how you make it sound. Apple is the ultimate arbiter of software that is sold through their store. They do not control what you build and run on your device through Xcode. You just can't distribute the end result. It's still a computing platform, and you can still write and run code. You can make your iOS device compute things. There is value in being able to sell and distribute the end result — but that's not what computing is, that's marketing. Edit: Why not make your same complaint about Sony's PlayStation 3? Do you not use that because it is a closed environment, one where you can not run your own software?
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    The PS3 isn't a general purpose computer like a Microsoft or Apple PC.
    - interpol_p 14y ago
      But an iOS phone is a general purpose computer? (The discussion was relating to iOS devices, in addition to Macs.) A PS3 is just another computer in your home. It just happens to be locked down and branded.
  - nickm12 14y ago
    "They do not control what you build and run on your device through Xcode" Late response: There is some software I want to run that I do not have the source to. There is some software I want to run which is not being written because the person interested in writing it is not convinced that they will be able to distribute it to anyone in a convenient or profitable fashion. I don't own a PlayStation, but of course have many other computers that are "appliances" (mp3 player, digital camera, etc.). I don't expect or even want all of those to be general purpose computers. For a long time I thought of my phone as an appliance, but with modern smartphones it's pretty clear that being a general purpose computer >> being an appliance and so I want to use platforms that are open in that way.
cageface 14y ago
Apple's slowly strangling the life out of their golden goose with their capricious and heavy-handed control of their platforms. Their app stores are full of crap already and Apple is just increasingly in the way of developers' and users' best interests. I really like Apple's technologies but I absolutely despise their idiotic policies.
- gmac 14y ago
  Hmm. I find it annoying too, but I can't help feeling that for my parents (and most other non-techie users) this level of control, with a single source of approved apps, is just great.
  - cageface 14y ago
    A single source of vetted apps is fine but Google has already demonstrated that allowing expert users to use alternative app sources doesn't hurt. And I don't see how anybody can argue that required a full review cycle for every minor bug fixes benefits users. I see more and more mobile shops iterating on Android first because there are just fewer hassles. Also, Apple's refusal to allow developers to do lower-level things like create alternative keyboards means Android users get to use modern input technologies like SwiftKey while iOS users are still pecking away at a 2007 keyboard.
    - gmac 14y ago
      I see more and more mobile shops iterating on Android first because there are just fewer hassles. Hmm, more like different hassles, I'd have thought: having to support thousands of screen size/hardware/OS combinations must be a huge pain, and less of the UI is given to you for free. Though I speak as someone who's done very little Android dev, and rather more iOS. It's true that the Mac model (App Store PLUS third-party apps) is preferable for me. But then again, I do like the idea that my parents' machines won't run any unsigned code. I'm thinking of Windows virus support nightmares past.
      - cageface 14y ago
caycep 14y ago
reading through this, it all sounds familiar. then it hits me. this is like trying to get a grant reviewed by the NIH!
interpol_p 14y ago
Be really careful when requesting an expedited review. We learned this the hard way. Your app update goes into a different review queue, and people who are not be familiar with previous versions of your app will review it. They will pick on things that previous reviewers had already come to terms with (either through discussion with you, or lengthy review). Edit: more info, this happened with our app "Codea". Because it was a coding app for iPad, the initial review was extremely lengthy (over a month). When we had to urgently update due to a trademark issue, our "expedited" review also took over a month — as if it was being reviewed for the first time (despite having past updates reviewed quickly). It didn't seem to matter that the existing version was available all the while on the App Store, either. Apple's review process is incredibly weird.

50 points by MaysonL 14y ago

How many users are still using 10.6? Couldn't the description be updated with a note specifying the temporary issue with 10.6? Seems like that would be a lot simpler than taking it down...

kibibu 14y ago
3 out of 4 of the macs in my offices were on 10.6.8 until last week (now it's only 2). Edit: I figured this is a pretty useless stat. Here's some better ones from the Unity Web Player installations, Q1, 2013 http://stats.unity3d.com/web/os-mac.html http://stats.unity3d.com/web/os-mac.html 10.6 is just under 30% of the install base for these guys
bigiain 14y ago
Anybody with a single core intel machine (there's two of them in my house right now, an old Mac mini, and an old PowerBook that still works fine)
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  The Mac mini 1.5Ghz, a 7 year old model, is the only modern Mac with a single core Intel CPU. The PowerBook line had PowerPC microprocessors, and the MacBook Pro series never had single core CPUs. Apple did however release MacBook Pros with Core Duo CPUs -- OS X 10.7 requires at least Core 2 Duo. by 2007, all models had Core 2 Duo CPUs.
Osiris 14y ago
Both of my co-workers and my managers are still on 10.6 because of perceived concerns about 10.7, and the fact that our IT department wants to do a full reimage to upgrade to 10.7 or 10.8 rather than just running the upgrade. I actually have more problems with 10.8 than I did with 10.7, so I understand some people's reluctance to upgrade.

plg 14y ago

How's that freedom working out for ya?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
vor_ 14y ago
What does this even mean?
- plg 14y ago
  apparently it means downvote me

wlll 14y ago

I go with direct download over Mac App Store every time when it's available. This story illustrates the reason pretty well.

kibibu 14y ago
Interesting. Many people (including me) will choose the Steam version of a game if its available, to get all the niceties of auto-updating, easy reinstalls, a central list of games & achievements, and so on. Shows the difference implementation can make.
- ComputerGuru 14y ago
  OS X has awesome updates, though. Almost every single OS X app uses Sparkle [0] to check for updates on startup. I feel bad giving the credit to OS X, but Windows has no such prevalent counterpart. 0: http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/ http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/
  - kalleboo 14y ago
    It's funny too since I actually find Sparkle updates far less intrusive than App Store updates (I'm tired of logging in and out of iTunes over and over and over again).
    - eridius 14y ago
      Why do you log into and out of iTunes? That makes no sense to me.
      - derefr 14y ago
        Having old apps on a different iTunes account than everything else can force this.
  - cremnob 14y ago
    Why would you feel bad about it?

mbenjaminsmith 14y ago

"2.4.1 was rejected on Monday night for a reason that didn’t make sense (the reviewer said it wasn’t sandboxed when it was)." I've had some incredibly fun (sarcasm) experiences with the review team for the MAS over the last few months. Reading that sentence got a belly laugh out of me. The first major WTF that I had with the review team was their insistence that an app I had submitted was calling a private method. A method with the same name was present in an included library but rather than explain that to them I found it quicker just to remove the library (a workaround was simple enough). The hair pulling started when they again rejected the app for exactly the same reason. As the app relied on a heavy 3rd party framework it took a lot of investigation to understand what (wasn't) happening. Finally I took out a $50 tech ticket and after a week the engineer explained that the review team's tool for checking API usage was broken and it had nothing to do with my app. The next time the review team rejected an app (seemingly within minutes of it going into review) because it was "producing garbage output". This time I just did a cursory review of the app before using another $50 tech support ticket. The app was sometimes writing files with the format somefile.ext.sb-randomstring. I suggested to the reviewer that the app was messing up an atomic write and given the sb- part of the filename had something to do with sandboxing. A week later the engineer explained what it was to me -- which was exactly what I had suggested. My advice to anyone dealing with this is to spend zero time talking to the review team. Don't resubmit (unless it's something really obvious) and don't try to reason with them. Filing a $50 tech support ticket will basically guarantee that someone capable of passing the Turing test (have a conversation via iTunes Connect and you'll understand what I mean) will look into the problem. The tech support team will usually ask the review team to expedite your review once the problem has been solved -- something you'll rarely get if you ask yourself.

andrewflnr 14y ago
the reviewer said it wasn’t sandboxed when it was I'm afraid I'm utterly ignorant about Mac programming, but how is that even possible? I thought sandboxing was built into the execution environment, not the app.
- mikeash 14y ago
  The app requests sandboxing. That request then causes it to be run in a sandboxed environment. Apps can refrain from requesting it and run non-sandboxed, but such apps are not accepted in Apple's store.

rangibaby 14y ago

I nearly pulled my hair out when a sandboxing bug in 10.7.5 broke one of Apple's own apps. http://imgur.com/F5roY1h http://imgur.com/F5roY1h https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1599 https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1599

fpgeek 14y ago

To me, the most interesting part of the story is the parenthetical comment at the end: (Incidentally, because of some of the changes we are being required to make, we cannot guarantee that Scrivener on the Mac App Store will have as good support for .docx, .doc and .odt formats in 2.4.1 and future releases. This does not affect the version on our site.) I wonder what's behind this, how it actually affects Scrivener and whether it will hit other apps in the future.

rayiner 14y ago

On a related note, Scrivener is the best app I've ever used on any platform. My wife and I use it for legal writing, and I've never found anything that can handle our workflow as well as Scrivener.

dj-wonk 14y ago
Scrivener is awesome, yes!
youngtaff 14y ago
I really don't get on with Scrivener and I don't completely understand why. I've gone back to Voodoo pad for writing even though it doesn't quite fit all my needs.

jrochkind1 14y ago

So, for iOS, the app store and apple's possibly arbitrary gatekeeping is the only way to get an app to your users. For OSX desktop... what are the benefits software publishers get, just marketting/visibility, basically?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
limmeau 14y ago
Not having to run a shop.

nickm12 14y ago

This is why I'm (slowly) weaning myself off of Apple platforms after being an Apple user and enthusiast since 1984. A computing platform where the vendor is the ultimate arbiter of what software the user can and cannot run is fundamentally broken. iOS has always been this way and, though I used it for a while, eventually the stories of apps being rejected for all sorts of reason were too significant to ignore. When Apple tried to dictate the set of acceptable _programming language_ for apps I gave up my iOS devices. Though I can still run software on my macs without permission, I'm now looking for a suitable replacement for Mac OS as well. It's difficult to imagine a day coming where the Mac would be "app store only" like iOS, but it's not impossible.

interpol_p 14y ago
It's not quite how you make it sound. Apple is the ultimate arbiter of software that is sold through their store. They do not control what you build and run on your device through Xcode. You just can't distribute the end result. It's still a computing platform, and you can still write and run code. You can make your iOS device compute things. There is value in being able to sell and distribute the end result — but that's not what computing is, that's marketing. Edit: Why not make your same complaint about Sony's PlayStation 3? Do you not use that because it is a closed environment, one where you can not run your own software?
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  The PS3 isn't a general purpose computer like a Microsoft or Apple PC.
  - interpol_p 14y ago
    But an iOS phone is a general purpose computer? (The discussion was relating to iOS devices, in addition to Macs.) A PS3 is just another computer in your home. It just happens to be locked down and branded.
- nickm12 14y ago
  "They do not control what you build and run on your device through Xcode" Late response: There is some software I want to run that I do not have the source to. There is some software I want to run which is not being written because the person interested in writing it is not convinced that they will be able to distribute it to anyone in a convenient or profitable fashion. I don't own a PlayStation, but of course have many other computers that are "appliances" (mp3 player, digital camera, etc.). I don't expect or even want all of those to be general purpose computers. For a long time I thought of my phone as an appliance, but with modern smartphones it's pretty clear that being a general purpose computer >> being an appliance and so I want to use platforms that are open in that way.

cageface 14y ago

Apple's slowly strangling the life out of their golden goose with their capricious and heavy-handed control of their platforms. Their app stores are full of crap already and Apple is just increasingly in the way of developers' and users' best interests. I really like Apple's technologies but I absolutely despise their idiotic policies.

gmac 14y ago
Hmm. I find it annoying too, but I can't help feeling that for my parents (and most other non-techie users) this level of control, with a single source of approved apps, is just great.
- cageface 14y ago
  A single source of vetted apps is fine but Google has already demonstrated that allowing expert users to use alternative app sources doesn't hurt. And I don't see how anybody can argue that required a full review cycle for every minor bug fixes benefits users. I see more and more mobile shops iterating on Android first because there are just fewer hassles. Also, Apple's refusal to allow developers to do lower-level things like create alternative keyboards means Android users get to use modern input technologies like SwiftKey while iOS users are still pecking away at a 2007 keyboard.
  - gmac 14y ago
    I see more and more mobile shops iterating on Android first because there are just fewer hassles. Hmm, more like different hassles, I'd have thought: having to support thousands of screen size/hardware/OS combinations must be a huge pain, and less of the UI is given to you for free. Though I speak as someone who's done very little Android dev, and rather more iOS. It's true that the Mac model (App Store PLUS third-party apps) is preferable for me. But then again, I do like the idea that my parents' machines won't run any unsigned code. I'm thinking of Windows virus support nightmares past.
    - cageface 14y ago

caycep 14y ago

reading through this, it all sounds familiar. then it hits me. this is like trying to get a grant reviewed by the NIH!

interpol_p 14y ago

Be really careful when requesting an expedited review. We learned this the hard way. Your app update goes into a different review queue, and people who are not be familiar with previous versions of your app will review it. They will pick on things that previous reviewers had already come to terms with (either through discussion with you, or lengthy review). Edit: more info, this happened with our app "Codea". Because it was a coding app for iPad, the initial review was extremely lengthy (over a month). When we had to urgently update due to a trademark issue, our "expedited" review also took over a month — as if it was being reviewed for the first time (despite having past updates reviewed quickly). It didn't seem to matter that the existing version was available all the while on the App Store, either. Apple's review process is incredibly weird.