ExpanDrive and the Mac App Store

Jeff Mancuso October 21st, 2010

Yesterday Apple announced that the App Store was coming to the Mac. Exciting news for app developers, but much more exciting for the 3.89 million new Mac owners every quarter trying to discover, install and keep software up to date. Not unsurprisingly, there is a laundry list of restrictions and requirements for apps trying to make it into the App Store. That list, while not yet formally published, has been leaked. It looks as if section 2.18 will keep apps that rely on kernel extensions, like ExpanDrive, which relies on MacFUSE, out of the App Store or require developers to create watered down App Store Only forks of their product.

Section 2.18:

Apps that install kexts will be rejected

We hope this means “Apps that install kernel extensions globally into /System will be rejected” (which we currently do) and not “Apps that load non-Apple kernel extensions will be rejected” If this is an issue about packaging, then namespacing a kernel extension to an app and keeping it inside the bundle is a reasonable request and and something we’ll likely do anyways. It would be a real disappointment if Apple starts to lock down the Mac as it continues to progress towards iOS/OS X unity. Perhaps this is much ado about nothing and it’ll merely require us not to install anything globally, but it’s hard to imagine that will be the case.

  • Anonymous

    Unfortunately, the Mac App Store appears to be a slippery slope toward exactly the locked-down iOS/OS X unification that every non-casual user fears.

    Defenders of the iOS model brush off the idea of eventually needing to jailbreak the Mac, but the writing is already on the wall.

  • Pelle

    Remember that Steve very clearly pointed out that the Mac App Store wouldn’t be the only way of installing apps in OS X.

    As any owner of a store Apple have the right to have demands on what they carry. That doesn’t mean that OS X as a platform is getting more closed.

    We also don’t even know if the economics of the Mac App Store will be able to compete with the current models of distribution – only if the Mac App Store becomes the one and only store for mac apps will it make OS X any more closed.

  • http://caudygeg.tumblr.com CraigM

    We’ll not know until the store is up and running if the iOS store is anything to go by.

    It does maybe leave the possibility for apps like Expandrive to follow an earlier precedent that we’ve seen where apps relied on GNU/BSD licensed components, but could not (or did not want to) bundle them into the download. I’m thinking specifically of apps like RogueAmoeba’s Airfoil, that checks for and downloads SoundFlower after it has been installed and Handbrake (?) that from memory used to fetch a variant of FFmpeg for its use.

    Now Apple may reject the app because of such an approach, but it strikes me as the best of both worlds, as the discovery and centralised distribution task for the main app is done thru Apples store and using their infrastructure, but a very constrained and targetted set of utilities/modules could be be retrieved from trusted sources within the app by the developer.

    I’ve not had time to fully review the developer guidelines yet, but seems feasible to me … might offer a place for Sparkle yet …

  • Taras

    Ouch, I’m planning to get my first Macbook early next year, so reading of iOS/OSX unity is quite off-putting.

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