Common Ground

Panic, on Apple’s Gatekeeper in OS X Mountain Lion:

In recent years, Apple has shown a trend of following the most hardline possible stance that will benefit users and Apple, often at the expense of developer freedom, and gradually backing in certain affordances (push notifications, for example) as user-impacting problems became evident. So it seemed feasible that we’d wake up one day and Apple would decree that all Mac apps must be sold through the App Store.

But instead, Apple went to considerable effort and expense to find a middle ground.

Gatekeeper seems like an interesting compromise. It’s much more liberal than I expected. What’s more surprising, though, is that Apple invited Panic out to have a preview of the feature. And given that Phil Schiller himself gave a private demo of Mountain Lion to John Gruber, I’m quite curious to know more about the direction Apple is going.