Dogfooding the Sandbox

Rich Mogull:

Does Apple sandbox their own apps? -- Not those sold in the Mac App Store. And, to be honest, it would really help their case with developers if Apple would follow their own rules. It would also help Apple better understand developer concerns and improve entitlements if their own teams had to work within the same restrictions. Perhaps they are moving this direction internally, but the current versions of Apple’s major applications in the Mac App Store (like Aperture, Final Cut Pro, iLife, and iWork) are not sandboxed.

Manton Reece:

This reminds me of Twitter. When Twitter forced third-party clients to move to OAuth, but didn’t change their own app to use it, many developers said it was a double standard. Twitter’s response: the official Twitter app was part of the service, not really a separate app, so it didn’t need to use OAuth.

Indeed, after the June 1 deadline, Apple issued non-bug-fix updates such as iPhoto 9.3 and Aperture 3.3, yet they remain unsandboxed. Meanwhile, I’ve heard from at least one developer that Apple deemed a third-party 0.0.1 bug-fix update to not be a bug-fix, and so rejected it for not being sandboxed.

Aperture iPhoto Mac Sandboxing

How Amazon Has Made Book Searches Less Useful

Kirk McElhearn:

Amazon is very efficient at selling multiple versions of public domain books, but they sell so many now that readers can be flustered when searching for them. Since the search results don’t take into account the actual worth of the books – editions from reputable publisher, for example – the dreck floats to the top of the list. It’s time for Amazon to improve searching, so users can filter out all of that, and find the books worth buying. And they need to stop favoring their own CreateSpace books, which is an anti-competitive practice.

FileBuddy 10.0b1

I thought the venerable FileBuddy utility was long dead. It had been three years or so since the last update, and developer Laurence Harris had all but disappeared from public forums. However, it looks like it’s coming back; a beta of version 10 is now available for download and purchase (via Christopher Stone).

Update (2012-06-27): Matt Henderson reports on his disturbing upgrade experience.