manytricks:
If you ask either of us for our opinion on the best place to buy Mac software, here’s our opinionated answer: We strongly recommend buying direct over using the Mac App Store.
At a personal level, we both always try to buy direct, using the App Store only when there’s no direct alternative.
Why do we think you should buy direct? Because we feel the advantages of buying from the Mac App Store are greatly outweighed by the disadvantages of buying from the Mac App Store.
Here’s a comparison of the two methods of buying, with what we view as some of the pros and cons of each.
The Mac App Store works for those who want more of a hands off approach but I’ve always preferred to buy direct from the developer. This piece does a good job of laying out the pros and cons of each method.
With very few exceptions, I buy direct too.
I read this earlier. I’m not going to go into as much detail here as I probably should, but it misses a major Pro of the Mac App Store. It’s sort of half alluded to under direct Cons, but not really: Buy direct, and you’re letting an app from a potentially unknown developer behind most of the layers of protection in macOS.
I think that’s 1980s thinking. Developers have been expecting users to trust them so long they don’t realize what an absurd request that actually is. (And yes, I’m a developer myself.)
Can you trust Many Tricks? Sure. (Well, more accurately… probably. I don’t know if they occasionally hire an idiot intern.) Can you trust Bare Bones? Sure. Can you trust every developer out there that has a code signing key from Apple? No, not at all. What about developers that don’t have a code signing key? Really, no worse than those who do have one. Except that if Apple catches those with a key doing something untoward, they can revoke.
This is a problem. You can’t trust apps. The security model is just plain screwy. An unsandboxed app is being trusted with all my data. Who cares about user accounts if an app can do anything within the context I run it, and that context is always way too big?
Sandboxing didn’t catch on because it wasn’t flexible enough, and it wasn’t made flexible enough because it wasn’t popular enough. I don’t know if Apple proved you can’t add sandboxing to macOS, but they proved it isn’t practical and they’re not going to provide a path for us to get everything we need done with sandboxed apps.
I think ultimately this is why macOS has to disappear. There’s just too much at stake in the area apps can touch.
I always buy via App Store when I can. Updates, ease of reinstalling, safety, many reasons.
Do I trust that Bare Bones (for example) will always try to do the right thing? Yep. Will they make a mistake one day? Possibly.
I think it’s super disappointing that Apple hasn’t done absolutely everything to evolve the App Store to ensure that every developer wants to be in there. It’s been so long now – sort the shit out.
But I think some developers put their own last 10% of profit over customer convenience sometimes too.
For me it’s not about trust. It’s about this – when I move machines, I can reinstall all of the apps from the App Store from one place, easily. Lose a disk, need to format it, whatever… same thing. For a direct purchase, I need to search email, did up the license email, reodwnload etc. I do this for some apps – Transmit from Panic, a few others. But if I had to do it for 20 apps from 20 developers it becomes a pain.
Is this a MAJOR thing? Nah, I don’t reinstall that often. But it is nice.
I guess I should elaborate. Most programs I use are for graphic art, design and prepress. Quark, InDesign, illustrator, Photoshop and then others like Fetch, MS Word, excel and so on. Not really App Store applications.
Exactly this, and I do reinstall just often enough where it matters. Going to the Purchased tab and clicking “Install” all the way down through is eye-opening and makes it really difficult for me to go back.
I tend to buy direct whenever possible due to the limitations of the App Store when changing countries. I lived in Australia for about 3 years and returned back to Canada in 2012, so I had to switch app stores.
I now play this game for all items that I purchased from Apple (music, videos, apps, etc) of “did I purchase them previously or not?”. The apps don’t appear (iOS or Mac) in my purchased list so I have to remember, etc. I have to buy the app again and hope that I get the dialog that says “You purchase this application previously, would you like to download it?”.
Buying directly and keeping my license info in 1Password is a far more effective way to manage my apps.