Apple:
App bundles make it easy for customers to buy up to 10 of your apps in a single purchase. And now, you can create app bundles for Mac apps or free apps that offer an auto-renewable subscription to access all apps in the bundle.
This is 4+ years after iOS apps could be bundled. It would be interesting if companion iOS and Mac apps could be bundled together, but as far as I can tell all the apps in the bundle have to be for the same platform.
Previously: App Store Bundles as an Upgrade Path.
Update (2018-10-24): Jeff Johnson:
Mac app bundles appear to be live now but only available in Mojave App Store.
How do you even advertise that when pre-Mojave customers click on the link and get “Cannot Connect to the App Store”??
Update (2018-11-01): Jeff Johnson:
I submitted my Mac app bundle on October 16, the day Apple announced bundles. It went into review the next day. However, the bundle sat in review until the evening of October 23, when it was rejected for metadata. App Store review didn’t like the name of the bundle “Please Pass The Madness Pack”, which was based on the idea “PassTheMadness, please” suggested by a friend. I thought this was clever and amusing, but apparently App Store review has no sense of humor or whimsy. So I changed names to the boring “StopTheMadness Underpass Bundle” and re-submitted within a couple hours. The next day, bundles went live in the Mac App Store, but mine was still waiting for review, so I requested an expedited review. Three days later I received an email denying my request for an expedited review. The day after that, though, on the evening of October 28, my bundle went into review again, and it was approved within 10 minutes. Despite being approved, the bundle did not appear in the Mac App Store the next day. Or the next day.
Business Mac Mac App Store macOS 10.14 Mojave
Canvas:
Fraser has picked up a Google Pixel 2XL as his next smartphone. The reasons are explained inside but the episode turns into a reflection on just how similar and different the two main smartphone platforms are in 2018. There is some discussion of Google using their apps as an Android ‘beachhead’ on iOS and the implications of Apple’s pricing strategy.
Fraser Speirs:
So far, the most surprising thing about being on Android is how familiar it feels. Almost every app that exists on both platforms is not just feature-compatible but virtually pixel-identical to its iOS counterpart.
Fraser Speirs:
Firstly, the whole thing is way more notification-driven than iOS. The notification screen is much more like an ‘activity inbox’ than it is on iOS. Sometimes, this is great, other times annoying.
It’s great to see things like completion of background activities in there. On the other hand, I’ve had notifications for things that are literally happening on the screen right in front of me. Needs quite a lot of tuning.
Previously: Advantages of Android, Android Oreo Review: An iOS User’s Review, Why Apple Should Copy the Android P Notification Shade.
Android Google Docs Google Pixel iOS iOS 12 iPhone Notification Center Screen Time
Howard Oakley:
One of the standard questions I get asked is whether macOS 10.x supports printer Y, or sometimes scanner Z. Users like to know such basic facts, which can save them messing about trying to get an unsupported printer working. For several years, Apple has maintained a Support Note which details all those models for which you can expect macOS to obtain drivers through software update.
Apparently, the effort of letting us know this valuable practical information is now too much.
Update (2018-10-22): Miles Wolbe:
I scoured support.apple.com for the final printer driver versions, preferring to archive them locally rather than rely on Software Update.
Documentation Mac macOS 10.14 Mojave Printing
Victor Vrantchan:
So this is a configuration update which includes information about the Mojave installer, with both the product version and the Mac App Store ItemID. Neat. Normally you don’t see the full OS installer when running softwareupdate. It’s in the App store and you have to download it like you would download an app. This must be a shim Apple is using to enable a MDM only feature.
A curious side effect of having the notification bundle come from the Software Update catalog, is that it’s responsible for this notification, which shows up on user machines regardless of whether you have devices enrolled in MDM[…]
Via mikeymikey:
It’s not our fault Apple has tied their upsell nag to MDM based OS upgrades.
The feature needs to be split or they need to modify their upsell nag to include NotBefore date for the nag itself so the ConfigData can at least go out day 1.
Mac macOS 10.14 Mojave Mobile Device Management (MDM) Notification Center
