I am not a geek. I’m a Mac fan and have been since 1984. For years, I and others were relegated to the netherworld of applications. Programmers ignored us and we made due with whatever we could get our grubby little hands on. All that would change in the new millenium. With the OS X renaissance and eventual post 5% market-share world, it seemed like a golden age. New developers began to appear and great new apps followed.
This was a time of plenty and I was at the height of pseudo-geekdom. I would spend a good portion of my day discovering what new wares were available in the market and how I could use my lovely iMac DV to its fullest.
Its now 2009, I am using a MacBook Pro and I find myself left behind. The last useful application that I downloaded was Writeroom and that was well over two years ago. How?! What happened? Reality, maturity, employment and other interests began to creep more and more into my ‘App Discovery’ time to the point where I am lucky to visit a site like Macgasm or TUAW once every two months. Some may say that this is sufficient but its an absolute life time in the time of these sites and to trawl back through weeks of posts to find one or two nuggets of code is not efficient use of my time.
Have I really been left behind? Absolutely. Apple has failed me. Why is it I know what newest widget will fit into my Google Apps or what idiotic application a Facebook friend is using? Why is Twitter generating a lexicon of Twit-prefaced terms born out of useful apps?
It may be that Apple has not totally let me down. Maybe they’re focused on something else. Something like the iPhone. I can happily sit there and browse through the hordes of apps (crummy or otherwise) on my phone and not be left behind. I am being bombarded with ways to increase the utility of my phone but not my MacBook Pro. If I want to get more bang from the latter, I have to go trawl for this stuff myself. Considering the cost difference between my iPhone and my Macbook Pro, I find this laughable.
Am I the only one that has been relegated to using a $2k laptop as a fancy Netbook? Is it possible that I would get more day to day value from my iPhone if it had a full size keyboard attachment? I think not. What’s to stop me from actually purchasing a Netbook instead of a new Macbook the next time I need to make a change?
I don’t have the solutions, I’ll let someone who makes a living from that sort of stuff actually come up with one. What I do know is that I want to easily find ways to get more utility from my top of the line laptop.
[Photo via : YukonBrat]
May 20th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Apple is having so much success with their App Store for the iPhone, it would be ridiculous if they don't have a similar plan for OS X apps. That being said the environment is quite different: they have a closed environment with the iPhone, so they can charge a premium for someone to publish their app on the App Store. They don't have this leverage on the OS X app world, but I could see the benefit for developper to have their app diffused ala iPhone App Store. Unless Apple is ready to offer this service for free for developper, just to promote their platform, I don't see all developper jumping on this train.
Anyway my point is all the tools are there for Apple to do so, but like you said I think their focus is not there at the moment.
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May 20th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
totally agree
May 20th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
An “open” universal App store for the desktop would change everything. Once place to get updates, and one place to download from would make the whole updating process such a breeze. Man, if only it was a reality!
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May 20th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Would they then charge the stiff fees they charge now to become an iPhone developer? Or, enforce the same ludicrous standards re: “decency”, etc? I don't know if the App Store is really my favorite model.
Maybe Nabil just needs a good feed-reader to stay in touch with this stuff? I don't keep up either, admittedly, but it doesn't seem to bug me. I spend most of my time working with the same three tools (browser, email, text editor) so I suppose I'm not that into checking out new apps. I have to say, though, this sentence: “What’s to stop me from actually purchasing a Netbook instead of a new Macbook the next time I need to make a change?” . Really resonated for me. I was *this* close to getting a Netbook to go with my iPhone 3G, but in the end was only prevented from doing so by the awful thought of having to use Windows (I wound up getting a new MacBook, which I LOVE). So, what am I saying? Well, I suppose for me OSX is enough. I can get my work done (mostly!) and I don't have the issues that Windows users have (constant viruses, spyware, ugly-ass OS). Maybe that's why Apple isn't working harder to give us access to new software: We're all just so happy to have a machine that works that we don't demand much more.
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May 20th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Thanks for the comment! I agree with you there is inherent benefit to the developer in having the product streamed to user in such a way that it saves them time on delivery and marketing. This is where most great ideas fail unfortunately. Doesn't Apple already have a large app listing and description database on their website? Couldn't they use my search data (from safari or firefox) to suggest apps just like Google would on their search page?
You're probably right that the initial Apple response would be to charge. But if I was in there camp, I would start looking at this as a retention issue and just offer it for free. Of course everyone is jumping on the Mac bandwagon these days so maybe there is no retention issue…
May 20th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
I love the “we're so happy we've got something decent that we don't ask for more argument”. I wonder if it's causing us to stagnate a little though. Stifling innovation is a bad thing. Is it the users like us, or the developers that give us the tools, that are causing the stagnation? I'm more inclined to believe it's the users. We all track down crappy, half developed “beta” software, and we've become content using broken crap. I say we demand more from developers on a whole.
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May 20th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Given the financial success a lot of these developers are seeing in the AppStore, despite giving away 30% off the top, I think you'd see a lot more people consider the possibility these days. If anything the developers would be more concerned about the approval process and the terms of use.
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