When Apple opened the Mac App Store (MAS) back in 2011, it seemed like a great thing for end users and app developers alike: For regular users, it was a one-stop shop for all their Mac software needs, built into the OS and tied to their existing Apple accounts. For developers, the MAS provided a venue where buyers could discover apps they might never have run across before and then buy them with just a couple of clicks.
But the reality hasn’t always matched expectations. In fact, many developers decided not to put their apps in the store, and many who did later took them out. The latest example of the latter: Bohemian Coding, which (as Federico Viticci reported) just removed its image-editing app Sketch from the MAS.
Sketch is hardly the first and almost certainly won’t be the last app to leave the store. Last year, one of the flagship apps for the Mac — BBEdit — pulled out. The list of apps that aren’t in the store is a long one, and it includes many such as : Bartender, BBEdit, Dropbox, f.lux, Google Chrome, Hazel, Keyboard Maestro, Little Snitch, Microsoft Office, and TextExpander, among many others.
The choice of whether to be in the store or not often comes down to what a developer wants a specific app to do. And that choice often hinges on one word: “sandboxing.”
In 2012, Apple introduced a new requirement for apps that would be sold from the Mac App Store: They had to be “sandboxed,” meaning they were given limited access to system files and resources. They were, metaphorically, each kept in their own separate “boxes.” Those restrictions were designed to reduce the risks of malware gaining access to your Mac’s most sensitive bits. But they effectively tied the hands of software developers.
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