So, you’ve got your Mac App done and your ready to distribute?
Your countless long hours and endless nights of hard work in planning, developing and testing your new Mac App is finally done. With a great sigh of relief you are about to decide on a distribution method for your brand new app. But being in a mad rush to get to market with your new killer app you have not yet completed a crucial step on the path to distribution… getting your app digitally signed with a Developer ID issued by Apple.
Here’s why you mac app need your Mac app signed. Without first having gone through the extra pain an agony of getting your Developer ID from Apple, you are excluded from selling your app through the Apple Store AND thanks to Apple’s Gatekeeper your customer will likely get an annoying if not unnerving message “Application not installed because it is not signed” when they installing from your MacDiskImage (DMG) file.
According to Apple,
The safest place for your customers to download apps is Apple’s Mac App Store. But hey, not all of us are willing to be confined by a single distribution channel and need a way to distribute applications to customers that assures them of a safe and malicious free download. So what’s the solution? Get your app digitally signed and thereby guarantee your customer of a safe download and avoiding altogether the dreaded “Application not installed because it is not signed” message.
And how is that done?
As a Mac Developer, you should get your unique Developer ID from Apple and use it to digitally sign your apps. The Developer ID allows Gatekeeper to block apps created by unscrupulous developers and to verify that apps haven’t been tampered with. If an app that was developed by an unknown developer – one with no Developer ID – is downloaded by your customer, Gatekeeper can block the app from being installed thereby assuring your customer of a safe download. Of course the customer can override Gatekeeper by changing the settings on the General tab of the Security & Privacy panel in System Settings, but that is a whole other article for another time.
Mac App Store Coming Early Next Year
The rumors have been allayed. The Mac App store, originally revealed by Steve Jobs during the Back to the Mac event earlier this year, has been confirmed for release on January 6th. The store will work almost exactly like its iOS counterpart. It will offer paid and free applications by professional and independent developers, and the deal is the same too, 30% of the sales profits go straight to apple.
It was originally rumored that the platform would debut on December 13th, but that date has come and gone with no word, and analysts pushed back the date to next year.
That means you won’t be finding shortened version of games
There will be a number of differences between the Pro Display XDR original version and the new iteration. First of all, the promo code, demo, trial version system will not exist on the new store. That means you won’t be finding shortened version of games, or watered-down utilities to try before you buy. Why this is the case is somewhat of a mystery to me. Big important company that they are, they’ve surely done enough cost benefit analysis to completely hush any of my doubts about their decision. Fortunately for me, I don’t have any of that information in front of me, so I can simply say that this decision could come back to bite them, because when you completely change the landscape of the marketplace, i.e., removing trials and demos, there’s no reason that consumers can’t change their purchasing inclinations at given price points. Granted, it could end up being a good thing, so here’s to it working out for them.
Get an Amazon account first.
You’ll need to register for an account with Amazon before you can start downloading. For most people, you’ll sign-in just like you do when you buy something from the Amazon store.
Once you’re signed in, you’ll need to navigate to the Kindle Store. Here you’ll see everything related to the Amazon Kindle.
