In general, when I feel I have something to say on a certain subject, I tend to write articles with the goal of being as thorough as I can, at least within the scope I’ve established for the article. This is a habit I’ve formed over time primarily because

1. Too often I stumble on posts or articles that seem to just share an idea, impression or opinion without elaborating much on it. They’re frustrating reads, because it feels as if the author never wants to commit to the next step — why they think it’s a good idea, where this impression comes from, why their audience should take their opinion on the matter into consideration. A casual example could be a post that goes like, “Apple should implement this feature” and the ultimate reason is because such feature would be handy for how the author uses their Apple products. Tunnel vision galore. When people read my articles, I really want to avoid giving them the impression that, technically speaking, I’m talking out of my ass.
2. I want to be as clear as possible with regard to the subject I’m elaborating on. If sometimes my tone feels pedantic, it’s because I want people to understand exactly what I mean. I still don’t always succeed, but in some cases it turns out that it’s because some people are just incapable of reading long-form pieces, or are so prejudiced about a topic that they’ll never accept my viewpoint no matter how clearly I explain it.

There are times, however, where I feel that I have enough observations on a subject to write an article but that, past a certain threshold, I can’t be as thorough as I’d like because I’ve hit the ceiling of my knowledge and venturing further would clearly show that I’m out of my depth.

This is what happened with my previous article, A brief reflection on Mac software stagnation, where I could provide a few impressions as a power user and observer, try to explain where those impressions came from, and then stop there, because to venture further without being a developer, without having the technical know-how and perspective of a developer, just felt like a bad idea. Still, I hoped to receive some feedback from developers, so that I could understand whether my impressions were on the right track or not.

The feedback

I noticed some very good reactions and received valuable feedback, which I wanted to share here so that it doesn’t get lost in Twitter’s ephemerality.

1.

Sam Rowlands, a long-time Mac developer, reacted with this short thread on Twitter:

It’s my belief, the App Store has caused irrevocable harm to the Mac software industry. There is ‘sideloading’, but the Mac Media is just a shell of its former self after Apple gutted it, with a bait & switch campaign of affiliate links.

Many indie developers can’t afford the kind of advertising that Apple’s “preferred” developers can. So we’re forced to adopt a Minimize Risk attitude, which reduces indie devs’ incentives to allocate years into building a complex, complete, great Mac application.

Not to mention that [when you] support more than one year macOS version [I think Sam means supporting backwards for more than just the previous year’s Mac OS version], your code ends up littered with minor performance degradation as you need to use this API on this version, that API on that version, and flip the result for version, sometimes these need to done for point releases of the macOS, not just major versions.

All in all, developing for the macOS is not as great as it was 10 years ago, it’s become expensive to maintain a macOS application, which eats into the time an indie can be creative, and eats away at them emotionally.

I believe I’ve watched more indie give up in the last few year, than I’ve met new excited macOS developers, who’re ready to tear up the rule book and bring the Mac back into the spotlight.

I believe Apple needs a CEO upgrade.

Sam also pointed me to three relevant articles he has written on his blog over time:

• No one downloads, no one sees — Sam told me: “[Here is] where I discuss how I feel the App Store has changed in a way to the detriment of indie developers”.
• Improving Mac app exposure — “My second article was trying to put a positive spin on it, and list some things that indies could do to help promote their apps”.
• The Mac App Store in 2022 — “The third article is about the changes I feel Apple could make, which would make the App Store a better environment for indie developers and customers”.

In the first of these articles, among other things, Sam says, While a great many things changed over the next decade, negatively affecting Apple’s indie developer industry, the massive reduction in exposure is a major problem.

This has got me thinking about how I used to discover Mac software before the Mac App Store was launched in January 2011. Essentially, there were four main channels that led to discovery:

• Word of mouth, both online and offline. It could be a friend’s recommendation, an email from one of my readers, a message in a mailing list, a mention on Twitter, etc.
• Computer magazines. It could be an in-depth review, a mention within a particular, larger feature (e.g. The best utilities for compressing files), or simply a freeware/shareware included in the magazine’s CD-ROM.
• Online reviews: in Mac-oriented tech websites (like the digital counterparts of the same computer magazines I used to buy — Macworld, Mac User, MacFormat, etc.) or personal blogs. By the way, there used to be many more blogs and sites specifically dedicated to app reviews, curation, and discovery. I’ll always lament the loss of places like AppStorm and AppShopper. (I’ve linked to archived pages so that you get an idea of what I’m talking about.)
• Web search: a bit of a last resort, but still useful to discover new applications. If I stumbled onto something interesting and I wanted to know more before risking a download or purchase, I could always perform another search for reviews of such app.

Now here’s what I’m thinking. Given that app discovery is currently still terrible in the Mac App Store (the sheer crappiness of App Store search after more than a decade since its launch never ceases to baffle me); given that App Store exposure is still problematic for a lot of indie developers, for the reasons Sam outlined in his article; and finally, given that at least three of the four ways to discover new apps I’ve listed above are still perfectly valid to discover apps today, I’m really wondering if, for a developer, publishing their app on the Mac App Store is worth all the trouble.

Think about it: as a user, how many useful apps have you discovered only via the Mac App Store? I’m not talking about apps prominently featured on the App Store’s home page, of course, but apps you found by searching or actively browsing the App Store. In my case, I think it was just one. I needed an aspect ratio calculator and I was pressed for time, so I did a quick search in the App Store, found one after a while, it was generally mediocre but did the job I needed it to do at the time. One app in eleven years of the Mac App Store’s existence is just ludicrous. And honestly, it would still be ludicrous if it were five apps, or even ten.

Go read Sam’s articles now — he makes good points I very much agree with.

2.

Another reaction worth pointing out is Maciej’s, who told me on Twitter:

The sad part is that Catalyst and native iOS apps running on macOS aren’t even the largest offenders. That title goes easily to all those who push “apps” written in Electron and similar. Compared to those, Catalyst is marvellous.

There’s also the matter of crappy documentation. I’m not a developer but this has been a recurring theme for years. Introduction of APFS is a great example. Major change with piss-poor support articles. How can you write advanced software with crap like this?

There’s the lack of effort on Apple’s part too. Why would third parties be interested in developing exceptional software when even the OS maker doesn’t seem to be that interested? Music [the app] is a great example here. There are exceptions (iWork) but that’s what they are, exceptions.

[…] The Mac App Store has been a failure and Apple has largely failed on improving it in any meaningful way. Despite the influx of new Mac users the software discovery process seems to be worse than ever. The crap (normal) people get from the App Store is incredible.

There’s also Big Sur: a visual redesign that nobody asked for. And one I think nobody was super-positive about. If I were a small dev who actually cared about this I would have been seriously annoyed.

Here’s how this process looks like for laypeople, who are completely new to the platform:

• get a Mac;
• open Mac App Store;
• type the name of their favorite iPhone app into the search box;
• get some terrible knock-off version.

When even die-hard Mac companies refuse to put their products in the App Store (or do so and remove them after some time or put a castrated version in MAS) you know something’s seriously broken. And it’s often not even about the money.

I think that (all faults aside) Setapp has done more good in terms of curating and giving easy access to quality Mac software than Apple over the past few years. If I had a new user in front of me I’d rather they sourced their apps from there rather than MAS, less overall crap.

Again, I pretty much agree with everything Maciej points out here. The Music app (at least for how I typically organise and listen to music on my Macs) is so bad for me that Apple has managed to make me feel nostalgic about iTunes. In fact, I still use iTunes to manage my local music library, and I do so on Macs with older versions of Mac OS. For instance, on my PowerPC Macs running Leopard, iTunes 10.6.3 is a rock-solid app. iTunes 9.2.1 on my PowerPC Macs running Tiger is another very good, very stable version.

It’s funny how we always complained that iTunes had become a bloated, mastodontic piece of software, that it simply had too much stuff to manage for its own good, that it needed to be split into several smaller apps to better tackle certain tasks, and we ended up with a series of single-task apps that are just mediocre when taken separately, and still of lesser quality than iTunes when taken collectively.

I also agree with Maciej about Setapp, at least when it comes to app curation. I tend to avoid subscription services, but I’m sure that Setapp’s model and pricing is a really good deal for users and participating developers. I’m not a subscriber simply because, figuratively speaking, it’s a buffet that offers much, much more than I can eat.

3.

I confess I was nervous about how developers could respond to my article. I always triple-check every time I mention technical aspects of software development, because I’m not a developer and I’m afraid of basing an impression or an opinion on something that turns out to be technically wrong or misunderstood on my part.

I was particularly honoured by Tyler Hall, who not only did appreciate my initial article, but took the time to write a response: Half-assed Mac Apps. It’s a really great piece, and I felt that Tyler added the necessary knowledge and insights to pick up my sort-of unfinished reasoning and bring it to completion.

4.

Just as I was finishing this piece, I noticed another reaction on Twitter, by user teknisktsett:

For the English-speaking market, the Mac app market covers most users’ needs in terms of commercial apps like MS Office, Adobe or Affinity apps and other productivity apps, as well as Utilities. What’s missing is catering to the international market.

When was the last time you made a Mac app to serve the needs of users in India, Thailand, Greece or Italy? Just to name a few examples. Not being in US or UK, I’m pretty tired of yet another clone of a US-catered leisure app measuring how many cups or gallons of water I should drink, or how many miles I ran yesterday. Who knows? I measure in metric kilometers, so to make me a user, I need the metric system support.

I care about carefully-designed native apps, but it’s not the only thing to consider: localization (not AI-translated), cultural diff, metric and imperial — and properly native in Cocoa (using Objective‑C or Swift) or SwiftUI.

Localisation is an important point, and I feel especially bad for not having brought it up myself, given that I’m a translator and localisation specialist. In the section Why choosing a professional translator is important on my Services page, I even say, “A translator helps clients expand their audience: multilanguage versions of texts, websites and localised applications can thus reach a broader, international audience, which is always an advantage”. So I absolutely agree on what teknisktsett is saying here. In a sense, staying English-only limits your user base abroad to only those people who know enough English to use your apps. This generally means a demographic that’s largely made of younger people and/or people with higher education.

However, what I’ve noticed in my 10-year experience in localising applications, is that in at least 80% of the cases, only medium-to-big software studios can afford the investment of having their application(s) professionally localised. Most of the times that I’ve reached out to indie developers proposing a collaboration where I could localise their app in Italian or Spanish (which is the second most-spoken language in the US), the reaction I got was always the same — I’d love to, but can’t afford your services. And this is not because my fees are particularly demanding. I think it’s more related to that ’Minimising Risk’ approach Sam Rowlands mentioned when he responded to me on Twitter.

Because while I’m sure that many developers would be thrilled to offer their apps in more languages than English — the potential of extending their user base is undeniably there — investing money on that is still a risk for them because there still exists the issue of poor discoverability and exposure.

Update — About the localisation aspect, Jeff Johnson responded on Twitter:

1. I can’t provide customer support in anything except English, which makes me wary of localization.
2. I can’t just localize once and be done. I’m constantly updating my software, web site, and documentation. So it feels like I’d need a permanent translator on staff.

Fair enough, and it further corroborates my experience, that in most cases only medium-to-big software companies can afford the investment of professional localisation.

I think that’s it for now. I want to thank all those who have given me valuable feedback on the topic so far, and I’ll definitely be adding other personal thoughts and external contributions in the future. This is a subject that’s particularly close to my heart, because at this stage I think that Mac users — especially power users — do need more than just professional, ultra-fast Macs. Great hardware without great software isn’t enough to make a platform thrive or continue to thrive.