TextExpander 4 shipped this week, and with the update it breaks from the Mac App Store and instead requires customers to buy directly. TextExpander is the first popular app I’ve seen to do it.
Moom is another one that actively encourages users to move away from the store. Recently on launch Moom displayed a news window that included this:
"Apple has activated sandboxing on the Mac App Store; under the sandboxing rules, we can no longer add new features to the App Store version of Moom (we can only fix bugs). However, we have a method by which you can migrate (at no cost) to our direct sales version of Moom, which has no such limitations. For details on how sandboxing affects our apps, and how to migrate to the direct sales version, please read this article on our blog."
Even Panic – frustrated with the long approval times for Coda 2.0.1 – is experimenting with how best to let Mac App Store customers migrate to the direct version. See this tweet and screenshot from Cabel Sasser.
This has been a theme on the last couple episodes of Core Intuition. Daniel Jalkut and I talked about how we feel about sandboxing after WWDC, and more on my decision to migrate Clipstart out of the store. Things are getting better in Mountain Lion, and I’ll revisit my decision next year, but for now I think I made the right call to focus on work outside the Mac App Store.
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