PDFpen and iCloud
PDFpen 5.7 now supports iCloud and has a companion iPad app. Since Apple doesn’t allow non–Mac App Store apps to access iCloud, people who bought PDFpen direct from Smile need to purchase the 99-cent PDFpen Cloud Access app. It looks like they’ve made the best of a bad situation.
Last March, I wrote “Would anyone be surprised if future versions of Mac OS X made additional features and APIs available only to App Store apps?” and was immediately called out for “blatant FUD.” Less than a year later, not only has this has come to pass, but people seem to be treating it as expected.
It’s no longer possible to write a single app that takes advantage of the full range of Mac OS X features. Some APIs only work inside the Mac App Store. Others only work outside it. Presumably, this gap will widen as more new features are App Store–exclusive, while sandboxing places greater restrictions on what App Store apps are allowed to do.
