Posts Tagged "distribution"

Mac App Store thoughts

Posted on Nov 7, 2010 in Mac, Opinions

The long-rumoured Mac App Store has finally been announced and developers have started to post their reactions and opinions. So far, everyone seems cautiously optimistic and despite some concerns and understandable misgivings about handing over 30% of application revenue to Apple, there have only been a few developers who have categorically rejected the Mac App Store.

So how will the Mac App Store really impact developers? The answer depends on what type of developer you’re talking to and what kind of products they sell. These three groups come to mind:

The lone Mac Developer

These guys are going to love the App Store. Until now, they’ve had to take care of their own marketing, sales, licensing, online store, support, etc, all in addition to writing their apps. Being on the App Store won’t magically make these additional jobs go away, but it remove some of pressure to do all of these simultaneously.

Read More

JetLinked: Installing applications on the Mac still broken

Posted on Jul 25, 2009 in JetLinks, Mac, Opinions

Lukas Mathis has posted some thoughts on the issues Mac newcomers have with .dmg files. I also talked about this issue a while back in a post on the most common issues switchers have, but it’s worth noting it again. I agree with his followup post that adding another file format isn’t really the way to go either –   DMG files are a great feature to have – once you’ve understood them. But from a usability and customer support perspective, a simple zip file seems to be the better choice.

I’d still be interested to see what kinds of customer support issues you run into with zip files though:

  • Do people using alternative browsers, that don’t automatically open “safe” files like Safari does, struggle with them?
  • Do users who prefer to manually download updates have several versions of the same app sitting in their Downloads folder?
  • Are there any issues if users have a 3rd party archive tool installed (I’m looking at you StuffIt)?

But despite those questions, I think there is a valid reason to reconsider whether .dmg files should still be considered “best practise” for app distribution.

Read More