{"id":5891,"date":"2012-09-06T21:50:16","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T02:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=5891"},"modified":"2012-11-03T12:38:11","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T17:38:11","slug":"code-by-kevin-leaves-the-mac-app-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/06\/code-by-kevin-leaves-the-mac-app-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Code by Kevin Leaves the Mac App Store"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.codebykevin.com\/blosxom.cgi\/2012\/09\/06#leaving-app-store\">Kevin Walzer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/www.codebykevin.com\/blosxom.cgi\/2012\/09\/06#leaving-app-store\"><p>These apps have since been rejected three times by the App Store reviewers, and at least part of the problem was the permissions I was requesting for these apps in the sandbox environment. Specifically, the sandboxing environment won&rsquo;t let me call a system command-line tool to launch Safari (to view my product&rsquo;s web page) or Mail (so the user can contact me with questions).<\/p>\n<p>This may be a small thing, but to me it&rsquo;s the proverbial straw that breaks the camel&rsquo;s back. I&rsquo;ve used this functionality in my apps for years, I regard it as basic&mdash;the ability to contact me via an item in the help menu is simple customer service&mdash;and I am unwilling to remove it. Restricting such basic system access is simply ridiculous.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>My guess is that he could get this particular functionality working in the sandbox by rewriting his apps to use a <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/library\/mac\/documentation\/Cocoa\/Reference\/ApplicationKit\/Classes\/NSWorkspace_Class\/Reference\/Reference.html\">different API<\/a>. However, one of the problems with the sandbox is that adopting it is an open-ended process. You can get one thing working and find that something else doesn&rsquo;t work&mdash;either due to the sandbox&rsquo;s design or a bug&mdash;or that it behaves differently on a different version of Mac OS X. Little of this behavior is documented.<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/www.codebykevin.com\/blosxom.cgi\/2012\/09\/06#leaving-app-store\"><p>This is also going to mean a change in my development processes. For the past couple of years I have had a cramped and limited view of what my apps could do; I wanted to make sure they did not run [afoul] of App Store guidelines. No more. I will go back to developing the way I prefer: taking full advantage of the Mac&rsquo;s powerful resources.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Update (2012-11-03): <a href=\"http:\/\/www.codebykevin.com\/blosxom.cgi\/2012\/11\/02#second-thoughts\">Kevin Walzer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/www.codebykevin.com\/blosxom.cgi\/2012\/11\/02#second-thoughts\"><p>None of my deep frustrations with the Mac App Store have changed&mdash;its slow review time, the technical limitations that sandboxing imposes, and more. But a rational assessment of where my sales comes from says that I can&rsquo;t ignore the Mac App Store&mdash;it truly does enable sales that I couldn&rsquo;t achieve elsewhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin Walzer: These apps have since been rejected three times by the App Store reviewers, and at least part of the problem was the permissions I was requesting for these apps in the sandbox environment. Specifically, the sandboxing environment won&rsquo;t let me call a system command-line tool to launch Safari (to view my product&rsquo;s web [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30,32,39,53],"class_list":["post-5891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macappstore","tag-sandboxing"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5891"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6505,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5891\/revisions\/6505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}