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Posts tagged with "developers"

Sketch Is Leaving the Mac App Store→

Sketch, the popular image creation and design tool for OS X and winner of an Apple Design Award in 2012, is leaving the Mac App Store. Developer Bohemian Coding has announced the move in a blog post today:

Today, we’re announcing an important change in how you receive updates to Sketch. After much thought, and with a heavy heart, we’re moving Sketch away from the Mac App Store. If you’re a Mac App Store customer, all you need to do is download Sketch from our website, launch it and enter your email address to receive your license.

As for the reasons behind this decision, Bohemian Coding mentioned a few usual suspects:

There are a number of reasons for Sketch leaving the Mac App Store—many of which in isolation wouldn’t cause us huge concern. However as with all gripes, when compounded they make it hard to justify staying: App Review continues to take at least a week, there are technical limitations imposed by the Mac App Store guidelines (sandboxing and so on) that limit some of the features we want to bring to Sketch, and upgrade pricing remains unavailable.

Sketch is, quite possibly, one of the most popular image editing apps for professionals who use Macs nowadays, and it’s yet another high-profile departure from the Mac App Store. Bohemian Coding doesn’t rule out returning to the Mac App Store if things change, but, for now, they are going to be selling the app directly on their website.

At this stage, we are far beyond the point of acknowledging there is a problem on the Mac App Store. We are not talking a bunch of isolated cases anymore – leaving the Mac App Store has become an accepted trend among developers, which is compounded by the sad state of abandon in which Apple has left it and other issues developers illustrated in the past.

The simple reality is that, gradually, developers of the best apps for OS X are finding it increasingly hard to justify doing business on the Mac App Store. I hope Apple also sees this as a problem and starts doing something about it.

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Facebook SDK for tvOS→

Chris Pan, writing on the Facebook developer site:

The new Apple TV brings the App Store to the big screen, and today we’re introducing the Facebook SDK for tvOS beta to help you build immersive social experiences on that platform.

The key feature of the Facebook SDK for tvOS apps is an easy way to log into apps without having to type emails and passwords with the Siri Remote:

A fast and easy way for people to log into your app and for you to provide rich, personalized experiences. To log into an app with their Facebook account, people can simply enter a confirmation code displayed on the TV into their smartphone or computer, rather than entering their username and password with the remote.

For developers who don’t mind adding Facebook code to their apps, this seems like a decent stopgap solution until Apple builds something similar for iPhone users (as I assume it would be nice to log into apps with iCloud Keychain and Touch ID).

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The Worst App→

An odd App Store story by Allen Pike:

One of the various things I do at Steamclock is provide support for our apps. Our music apps don’t require much support, and much of the email we get is positive, so tending to support is generally pleasant.

Or at least it was pleasant, until recently. On September 30 I received a very concerning support email.

I don’t know what the solution to these App Store problems is, but it doesn’t seem right to me that developers have to spend time dealing with them over the course of several weeks.

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How Readdle Launched Their First Mac App→

Readdle’s Denys Zhadanov has put together a good article detailing how Readdle launched PDF Expert for Mac (which Graham likes) and got to #1 in the Mac App Store. I particularly liked this bit on how they positioned the app in the research stage:

Many people told me that it doesn’t make sense to build a product that already has some decent alternatives. But honestly, I like competition. Healthy competition indicates that there is a good addressable market out there. Having a superior product that does things better and is differentiated enough can lead to a successful and sustainable business.

Thanks to our research and preparation, we were able to position PDF Expert for Mac really well. It steps in where Apple Preview is too basic and Adobe Acrobat is too cumbersome. With PDF Expert, people can actually do their PDF work much faster and easier, including reading, annotating, form filling, and signing documents.

As I argued on Connected last week, too many developers think that making a good app is all it takes to achieve “success”. Preparation, research, and understanding the position of an app beforehand are just as essential. Denys has some other practical tips and fascinating stats, so make sure to check out his post.

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Tokens Adds Support for Apple TV Apps→

From the Tokens blog:

Today, we’re proud to launch Tokens 1.5. This update brings support for Apple TV apps and marks an interesting point in the development of the app.

iTunes Connect (iTC) has changed a lot in the years since we first launched Tokens. The first version interacted with iTC entirely by scraping HTML. This technique was inherently slow and fragile. A chain of page requests were required for every query and minor text changes on iTC could break our scraping code. Over the last two years, iTC has improved dramatically in this respect; it is now almost entirely a modern front end web application backed by a JSON API.

If you’re a Mac or iOS developer, Tokens is a must-have. With the latest iTunes Connect changes, the app can even work for users limited to Marketing roles. Tokens is only $29 – a steal considering the time it’ll save you for generating and saving promo codes.

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Apple Won’t Accept New Apps and App Updates December 22-29→

With an update on their Developer website, Apple confirmed the annual iTunes Connect shutdown for the holidays that will prevent developers from releasing new apps and updates:

The busiest season on the App Store is almost here. Make sure your apps are up-to-date and ready for the winter holidays. New apps and app updates will not be accepted December 22-29, so any releases should be submitted, approved, and scheduled in advance. Other iTunes Connect functionality will remain available.

Because of your incredible apps, the App Store crossed 100 billion cumulative downloads. Revenue from the App Store increased 25% year over year, and the number of transacting customers grew 18%, setting a new all-time record. We want to thank you for all your hard work and dedication to our platforms.

As usual, developers who are making a new app or preparing an update should plan accordingly.

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App Store Gets a Smarter Search Engine→

As reported by TechCrunch, Apple appears to have tweaked the search algorithm of the App Store over the past few weeks, leading to more consistent results:

According to multiple sources, including developers who tracked their own rankings, as well as app store analytics firms, the change that began November 3 included several adjustments. Apps are now ranking in search results on a mix of contextual keywords for the app, including partial keyword matches, along with competitor brand names and other matches.

I’m curious to see how this latest change will affect independent developers over the next couple of months. For better or worse, search – not the Store’s curated Explore section – is still the easiest way to find any kind of app. A major change to the search algorithm can potentially affect the livelihood of thousands of indie developers.

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No One Minding the Mac App Store→

Michael Tsai, writing on the latest issue that hit the Mac App Store, preventing users to launch apps they previously downloaded:

I woke up to an inbox full of e-mails from customers reporting that my apps wouldn’t launch. This included new customers who had just purchased from the Mac App Store as well as people who had purchased long ago, hadn’t made any changes, and expected that things would just keep working.

And:

The Mac App Store is supposed to make things easier, but it’s also a single point of failure. Not only is it neglected, but sometimes even the existing functionality stops working. Mac OS X 10.9 introduced a code signing bug that prevented me from submitting updates for several months. In June 2015, there was a month-long iTunes Connect bug that prevented my uploaded build from entering the review queue. And I currently have a bug fix update that Apple has been reviewing for 33 days (with 8 days of waiting before that). When I inquired about the status, Apple told me that everything was normal and that I should just keep waiting. In short, the system is broken on multiple levels, and there is no evidence to suggest that things will get better.

This problem hit me as well – I had to check something on Tweetbot for Mac last night, but it wouldn’t launch. Same with other apps. There is a workaround, but it’s not working for everyone. And, despite the widespread nature of the problem, Apple has said nothing about it.

The Mac App Store lives in a sad state of abandon when compared to its iOS counterpart. For years now, Mac developers haven’t gotten access to the same tools made available to iOS developers. And that’s not to mention the myriad of issues and uncertainty they had to go through when Apple started rolling out sandboxing.

But preventing people from using apps they bought without a proper explanation, affecting third-party developers in the process? Just inexcusable.

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“Why the iPad Pro Needs Xcode”→

Steve Streza, writing on the state of some iPad apps and developers stretching their iPhone UIs for the big screen:

App developers don’t feel this pain as much, because they’re not living on iPad. For 8+ hours a day, they’re stuck using Xcode on a Mac. They aren’t living and breathing the idioms and design patterns of great iPad apps. Instead they’re stuck on Macs, usually sitting on desks with mice or trackpads, using a very underpowered and unwieldy iPad simulator, to build apps you touch with your hands on the couch.

Xcode running directly on the iPad Pro could fix many of those problems. You now have a tablet powerful enough to run an IDE, with a very nice keyboard cover, and a screen big enough to encompass all the functionality of Xcode, capable of testing almost every feature of every iOS device ever made. You can code with your keyboard and test with multitouch. You could work on a desk and take your whole development environment with you on the couch, bed, or plane.

I couldn’t agree more with all the points mentioned by Steve, especially about the potential benefits in education. As I wrote yesterday, the iPad Pro’s hardware demands to be used by new kinds of apps. This includes Apple.

Fortunately, I want to believe there’s some hope here. Over the past few months, I’ve personally heard about an iPad Pro version of Xcode in early stages, being demoed internally at Apple. I don’t know if this will ever actually happen, but it sure would make for a nice surprise at WWDC next year.

My fingers are crossed.

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