Thursday, July 23, 2015

The Lagging Mac App Store

Mac developers have never had access to TestFlight, either internally or externally. It’s “coming soon”, and until that day comes, there’s no way to test apps that use the iCloud servers. Which sucks for both the developer and the customer.
[…]
[Analytics] is nowhere to be found on the Mac App Store. Again, it’s “coming soon”.
Just yesterday, Apple did something great for developers. They now block reviews on beta OS releases. Unless that operating system is for the Mac.

Update (2015-07-24): Daniel Jalkut:

But there is no Twitter account for the Mac App Store, and the @AppStore account has nearly never mentioned Mac software. (Go ahead, do an advanced Twitter search for “from:AppStore mac“). Around four years ago at WWDC, I asked a group of App Store affiliated engineers what they made of this. They all looked at me blankly, paused, looked at each other blankly, paused, and then shrugged as if to say “Huh, I wonder why we don’t promote the Mac App Store?” I don’t know either! But they were all in a much better position than I to find out or push for a change. Evidently, that hasn’t happened.

[…]

I guess it’s lucky the Mac was around for so many years before the dawn of iOS, it’s had time to accumulate many developer-empowering features. Although Apple’s priorities with respect to development resources and marketing seem to be focused on iOS today, we enjoy many privileges on the Mac that I doubt iOS developers will ever see.

[…]

I think this speaks to the likely truth that Apple is, more than anything, under-staffed and not well situated to deploy solutions to both platforms in tandem.

Update (2015-07-28): Wil Shipley: