The iTunes App Store revolutionized how smart phone users buy apps. The Mac App Store carries on that tradition but has a few problems yet unaddressed by Apple or Mac app developers. Versions. It’s an annoying problem without an easy solution.
What’s The Latest Version Of That App?
What I like about apps from the Mac App Store is that updates are easy. What I don’t like is that updates to apps are late. For Mac apps that have a version available from the developer and from the Mac App Store is that they get out of sync.
Often, it’s the Mac App Store that’s a lower, older version. Why? Because Apple has to approve the app before it can be released on MAS.
Take Amazon’s Kindle as my example. Download Kindle from Amazon or MacUpdate, and you get version 1.7 (as of today). Get Kindle from the Mac App Store and it’s version 1.5.2, and it’s been that way for weeks.
The story is similar with other Mac apps. The developer updates the app for customers who bought direct, but it’s many weeks later before the update appears in the Mac App Store.
Just as bad is Mac app developers who use the Mac App Store only and don’t provide a trial app, or a try-before-you-buy option. I’ll throw away 99-cents or maybe $1.99 for a Mac App Store app, just to see if it lives up the hype provided by the developer’s friends and relatives in their reviews. But $4.99? $9.99? Nope. Won’t happen. I need a trial version, folks.
The Mac App Store needs to speed up the approval process for updated app versions, and needs to build in a mandatory lite or trial version for any app beyond $1.99.
There is one other version related issue with the Mac App Store: you can’t get an older version.
Although it’s not all that common it’s sometimes preferable to run a non-current version of an application. For several months I ran an old version of Adium because a new version broke something. I continue to run an old version of Safari. I’m very unhappy with some of the changes Apple made in Safari 5.1 so I am transitioning to Firefox for daily use.