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> I don't feel comfortable charging people for something they might not even be able to run. Honestly, if you're charging users, then there's absolutely no qu

> I don't feel comfortable charging people for something they might not even be able to run. Honestly, if you're charging users, then there's absolutely no question about it, you get the membership. Your entire "expecting the user to do so" point completely goes out the window the second you said it's a paid app. If you have the revenue, then it's simply a cost of doing business in the Apple world. Plus, once again, you're being way overdramatic. "might not even be able to run" is taking it a bit too far. Your app will be able to run. If you don't trust your users enough to click twice, then maybe you need to learn to trust them more. It's not like it's a hard thing to do, and it only needs to happen once. Remember, this is Apple's OS, Apple's ecosystem, and Apple's SDKs. You play by their rules or not at all. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it will probably always be (but never say never, look at Microsoft, they're doing things nobody would have ever expected). Yes, it sucks. Yes, it isn't fair. But as with all major companies, it never is. They will always have the upper hand because they're the ones providing the user base and all the tools necessary to get the apps out there and onto their machines. As long as you are developing for their platform, you have to play by their rules. Honestly, be happy they haven't moved the default to the much more restrictive "Mac App Store" yet. And to be fair, I see where Apple (and Microsoft, IIRC they have SmartScreen which does the same sort of thing but to a lesser extent) are coming from. I'm sure that it lowers the chance of accidentally executing viruses by quite a bit and also slowly is teaching users to think before they execute (especially if you have to right click and click Open).

chc 11y ago
> Honestly, if you're charging users, then there's absolutely no question about it, you get the membership. Your entire "expecting the user to do so" point completely goes out the window the second you said it's a paid app. If you have the revenue, then it's simply a cost of doing business in the Apple world. Yes, because Apple demands rent. They create a problem and then charge you to fix it. This is called rent-seeking. I think that is a bad behavior. > Plus, once again, you're being way overdramatic. "might not even be able to run" is taking it a bit too far. Your app will be able to run. If you don't trust your users enough to click twice, then maybe you need to learn to trust them more. It's not like it's a hard thing to do, and it only needs to happen once. I used to do tech support for a medium-sized office. I would frequently get called to people's desks because their computer wasn't working, only to find that their email client had put up a dialog with the message "The email address 'somebody@thatcompany.cok' is not a valid address", I'd have to verbally tell them they mistyped the address — sometimes, even after this, they'd just stare at me like a deer in the headlights and I'd have to type in ".com" for them before they felt like they could use their computer again. And then they'd do it again the next day. I remember patio11 once shared an anecdote about a school teacher who called his support number because she thought Bingo Card Creator had broken Google. It turned out that she'd gotten a new home computer and Bing was the default search provider, and she couldn't figure out how to operate Bing because it wasn't Google. I have to wonder if you have had to do a lot of support work, because I think you're trusting users way too much. There are many, many people who are really not stupid, but get flustered when doing unfamiliar tasks on a computer. > Remember, this is Apple's OS, Apple's ecosystem, and Apple's SDKs. You play by their rules or not at all. That's the way it's always been No, it isn't. It wasn't even this way just five years ago. I was one of the early adopters of OS X, and one of the things I loved about it was how open it was, so even some kid like me (at the time) could easily make software. Apple has gotten worse and worse about this over the past decade.
- mynameisvlad 11y ago
  > No, it isn't. It wasn't even this way just five years ago. I was one of the early adopters of OS X, and one of the things I loved about it was how open it was, so even some 17-year-old kid like me could easily make software. Apple has gotten worse and worse about this over the past decade. I never said that was the way it's always been. I said that "playing by their rules or not at all" was the way it's always been. Which is true, Apple is very big on controlling every aspect of the user experience. It was a matter of time before their massive obsessiveness leaked from iOS to OSX, but it's always been Apple's rules or nothing. Their rules for OSX have historically been very lax, but that wasn't my point at all. > Yes, because Apple demands rent. They create a problem and then charge you to fix it. This is called rent-seeking. I think that is a bad behavior. Well, they're providing a service for $99 that extends beyond the signing to be able to run in OSX. They include the ability to list in the various app stores, to have beta programs, access to early APIs, access to developer forums, and more. All that costs them money. They have to get that from somewhere. > I have to wonder if you have had to do a lot of support work, because I think you're trusting users way too much. I trust my users just fine. Just because there's one or two crazy stories (I mean, everyone has a few stories of horribly stupid users) does not mean the majority of users are that bad. If you're targeting all 100% of possible users, then sure, those instructions would be useless. However, I'd be confident enough to say that 90-95% (honestly probably leaning towards 95, but still) of users will be able to follow those incredibly simple instructions. So at that point, you have to ask yourself if the $99 (plus all the other perks like early access to APIs) is worth having those 5-10% of users who can't follow them. Because that's what it really comes down to.
- comex 11y ago
  It is not just rent; it is a security feature. Whether this feature is being used wisely is another question... A few months ago I sent Apple security an email about a fake Flash installer with a valid Developer ID certificate. It turned out that someone else had written an article about the same malware five days ago, and reported it to Apple, yet the certificate was not revoked yet - so it doesn't seem that Apple has a 'rapid response' system in place currently (or then, anyway), perhaps because incidents are still relatively uncommon. But they did promptly thank me for my report, and I bet they ended up doing something about it (I ought to check) - and thanks to Developer ID, they at least had some kind of payment trail as well as a name, likely making it harder for the same person to get additional certificates. Of course, this trail could be achieved with a lower price. But you do get a number of benefits with the subscription, and since the Mac and iOS developer programs merged into one today, at the same $99 as each previously was individually, if you develop for both the price just halved. It's a start, at any rate.

chc 11y ago

> Honestly, if you're charging users, then there's absolutely no question about it, you get the membership. Your entire "expecting the user to do so" point completely goes out the window the second you said it's a paid app. If you have the revenue, then it's simply a cost of doing business in the Apple world. Yes, because Apple demands rent. They create a problem and then charge you to fix it. This is called rent-seeking. I think that is a bad behavior. > Plus, once again, you're being way overdramatic. "might not even be able to run" is taking it a bit too far. Your app will be able to run. If you don't trust your users enough to click twice, then maybe you need to learn to trust them more. It's not like it's a hard thing to do, and it only needs to happen once. I used to do tech support for a medium-sized office. I would frequently get called to people's desks because their computer wasn't working, only to find that their email client had put up a dialog with the message "The email address 'somebody@thatcompany.cok' is not a valid address", I'd have to verbally tell them they mistyped the address — sometimes, even after this, they'd just stare at me like a deer in the headlights and I'd have to type in ".com" for them before they felt like they could use their computer again. And then they'd do it again the next day. I remember patio11 once shared an anecdote about a school teacher who called his support number because she thought Bingo Card Creator had broken Google. It turned out that she'd gotten a new home computer and Bing was the default search provider, and she couldn't figure out how to operate Bing because it wasn't Google. I have to wonder if you have had to do a lot of support work, because I think you're trusting users way too much. There are many, many people who are really not stupid, but get flustered when doing unfamiliar tasks on a computer. > Remember, this is Apple's OS, Apple's ecosystem, and Apple's SDKs. You play by their rules or not at all. That's the way it's always been No, it isn't. It wasn't even this way just five years ago. I was one of the early adopters of OS X, and one of the things I loved about it was how open it was, so even some kid like me (at the time) could easily make software. Apple has gotten worse and worse about this over the past decade.

mynameisvlad 11y ago
> No, it isn't. It wasn't even this way just five years ago. I was one of the early adopters of OS X, and one of the things I loved about it was how open it was, so even some 17-year-old kid like me could easily make software. Apple has gotten worse and worse about this over the past decade. I never said that was the way it's always been. I said that "playing by their rules or not at all" was the way it's always been. Which is true, Apple is very big on controlling every aspect of the user experience. It was a matter of time before their massive obsessiveness leaked from iOS to OSX, but it's always been Apple's rules or nothing. Their rules for OSX have historically been very lax, but that wasn't my point at all. > Yes, because Apple demands rent. They create a problem and then charge you to fix it. This is called rent-seeking. I think that is a bad behavior. Well, they're providing a service for $99 that extends beyond the signing to be able to run in OSX. They include the ability to list in the various app stores, to have beta programs, access to early APIs, access to developer forums, and more. All that costs them money. They have to get that from somewhere. > I have to wonder if you have had to do a lot of support work, because I think you're trusting users way too much. I trust my users just fine. Just because there's one or two crazy stories (I mean, everyone has a few stories of horribly stupid users) does not mean the majority of users are that bad. If you're targeting all 100% of possible users, then sure, those instructions would be useless. However, I'd be confident enough to say that 90-95% (honestly probably leaning towards 95, but still) of users will be able to follow those incredibly simple instructions. So at that point, you have to ask yourself if the $99 (plus all the other perks like early access to APIs) is worth having those 5-10% of users who can't follow them. Because that's what it really comes down to.
comex 11y ago
It is not just rent; it is a security feature. Whether this feature is being used wisely is another question... A few months ago I sent Apple security an email about a fake Flash installer with a valid Developer ID certificate. It turned out that someone else had written an article about the same malware five days ago, and reported it to Apple, yet the certificate was not revoked yet - so it doesn't seem that Apple has a 'rapid response' system in place currently (or then, anyway), perhaps because incidents are still relatively uncommon. But they did promptly thank me for my report, and I bet they ended up doing something about it (I ought to check) - and thanks to Developer ID, they at least had some kind of payment trail as well as a name, likely making it harder for the same person to get additional certificates. Of course, this trail could be achieved with a lower price. But you do get a number of benefits with the subscription, and since the Mac and iOS developer programs merged into one today, at the same $99 as each previously was individually, if you develop for both the price just halved. It's a start, at any rate.