Michael Tsai:

I woke up to an inbox full of e-mails from customers reporting that my apps wouldn’t launch. This included new customers who had just purchased from the Mac App Store as well as people who had purchased long ago, hadn’t made any changes, and expected that things would just keep working.

The Mac App Store is supposed to make things easier, but it’s also a single point of failure. Not only is it neglected, but sometimes even the existing functionality stops working.

In short, the system is broken on multiple levels, and there is no evidence to suggest that things will get better.

Tsai is the developer of SpamSieve, among other apps, and he reflects the frustration many developers feel towards Apple and the way the App Store works – or, as in the case a few days ago, catastrophically doesn’t work. This is a huge embarrassment to Apple (and one they haven’t explained or apologized for) as well as being a giant pain point for developers. After all, when your app stops working, who do you contact? The developer or Apple?