Tunabelly Software

6 things Apple should change on the Mac App Store

Over the years we've developed lots of Mac apps and we've put almost all of them (except TG Pro which Apple won't allow because of the way it accesses the hardware) on the Mac App Store (MAS) with varied success. Over the years compared to the iOS App Store, it's started to look stale and is missing quite a few features. Here's what we believe Apple could do to make it a world class app store again:

App Bundles


This is probably one of the most annoying issues we have the store. There's no way to offer a bundle of apps together for a discount. The iOS store has it, so why can't the Mac one? For example, we have a bundle with TG Pro & Disk Diet for a savings of $7 and we can't offer it on the MAS.

App Video Previews


On the iOS store, apps can have a video preview along with the screenshots. Having the ability to have these for macOS apps would really help potential customers gauge whether the app is worth it.

Rotate Featured Apps


Perhaps this one is a bit more subjective, however is seems like it's the same apps/developers that get featured on the main page and under the categories. It would be nice for Apple to rotate through more apps, especially from smaller indie companies to give a bit more exposure. It may even be a good idea to have an Indie Developer section with quality apps featured.

Remove Bad Apps


This would probably go a long way to improve the quality of the store. There are way too many disk cleaner and anti-virus apps on the MAS. And yes we have Disk Diet (a disk cleaning app) although it was actually one of the very first ones and brought some new features that are now prevalent in other cleaning apps.

There are also many apps that really shouldn't have been allowed on the store. For either having an unprofessional interface, to looking like they were coded in an hour. For a store that has a ridiculous number of rules to get published, it's surprising some of the apps that are available.

Here are two examples that were quickly found on the MAS (actual app screenshots with the names blanked out):

Screen Shot 2017-09-09 at 7.19.17 PMScreen Shot 2017-09-09 at 7.23.50 PM



Category for New App Updates


At the beginning of the MAS, both new apps and updates were featured in the list of "All Apps" under each category. Unfortunately, some developers were pushing unnecessary updates in order to get into that list, so Apple decided to only show new apps. This is forcing developers to release new apps just to get exposure.

In our opinion, there should be two lists under each category: New Apps and New Updates.

Clean up the UI


It seems that the MAS has fallen behind and it's starting to show it's age. It honestly looks like a simple webpage when looking at the categories. It could be so much nicer, as evidenced by the updates to the iOS store.

This is what it looks like now (as of Sept 9, 2017):

Screen Shot 2017-09-09 at 4.59.44 PM
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