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Apple to Eliminate Retail Box Software Inventory

Originally Posted by jmgregory1
With the cost of zip drives being what they are, I'm surprised the market hasn't shifted to this already, although this too is just a temporary solution that will be eliminated at some point.
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OllyW said:
Zip drives??? :confused:

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you mean those are still available? I have not seen one in years, and they died out of mainstream quickly due to the high failure rate; and they were not widely adapted. Kinda like the old Jazz Drive tape backups.

Mine lasted 7 months and then it died. Luckily I had a friend with one and a CD burner.
 
Durendal said:
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Oh Jobs, you crafty bastard. You can't force app store only policies on OS X, so you go for the next best thing: Push the app store and get rid of boxes. Give it a couple of years and too many people won't realize that there is anything but the app store. You don't have to lock the platform down. Enough users are ignorant that you won't have to.

Meanwhile, developers who don't want to abide by Apple's ludicrous standards for inclusion in the app store get screwed.
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Can you please list these' ludicrous' standards? I'm just curious.

Also, this is discussing APPLE software boxes, which they are free to do whatever the hell they want with. What, are they gonna discontinue boxes software from other companies? Sensationalism is unbelievable. I personally applaud this move. You can pretty much buy almost any piece of software online now, and DVD media is becoming less relevant for this kind of thing. Its inevitable- the only question is when.
 
Welcome to the future

Good points; lack of broadband, user knowledge/skill, proof of purchase, whatever. But I think this is the future. Hopefully someone will address all these issues.
 
blecch said:
Not every app uses a crappy installer. Some do it the Apple-recommended way - drag and drop.

....

Maybe drag and drop was too complicated and people just prefer installers? Or maybe it's the Windows users switching to Mac?

Maybe Apple needs to create an InstallShield Wizard to make Windows users feel more at home. ;-/

...
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[Bold added for emphasis]

Take that one step further. Apple could use something that looks like InstallShield. All it really does is copy the application to the Application Folder... but then it would keep running for several minutes to make it look it was actually doing things. It would display 3 different progress indicators, one after the other, and ask a few questions that, while making it sound like it was installing the application, really didn't do anything at all. One of the questions needs to be "Are you sure?" - of course. And 2 times out of 11 it would exit suddenly, before the "Success" message, making you think that the installation might be incomplete. Then you could run the installer again to be sure.

In the ReadMe file you could have two sections. One for "Installing the Windows Way" which would direct you to the "Installer". And the second section would be for the Apple way, which would direct you to drag the application to the applications folder. :D
 
Luddites Unite!

I can't believe all the moaning... oh wait yes I can it's macrumors.

This move makes a lot of sense for the following reasons:

1) I personally LOATH software DVD's and boxes. I have a small apartment and a giant box containing all the research software I have collected over the years. I always look to download software as a disc image first, if I can't I tend to make my own disk image anyway. Right now I prefer to keep all my installers on one hard drive. As long as apple doesn't go belly up, I am okay with them managing my licenses. Remember no one is forbidding sideloading software. You can still install UNIX binaries just as before. Its really not that big an issue.

2) Real moaning is about our inability to bend the end user licensing. You can no longer say "Hey man, wanna try out aperture?" easily. This is bad, but necessary. As you can see if developers are guaranteed income the price drops (exhibit A) The App Store). All the software piracy over the history of computing has had an affect of driving up the price to ridiculous levels - Hello Adobe Creative Suite. I have spend close to grand of my grant just to easily tweak a figure (illustrator) before I publish and make the odd conference poster (indesign)??? That is ridiculous. Hence why Adobe CS is pirated so much. The App Store will actually shift the equilibrium a bit here.

3) For those unfortunate souls without broadband/dialup/anything well time marches on. Worse case scenario they can still bring in their computer (assuming a laptop) to the apple store and use the WiFi there to download software.

For those with a tower and no fast internet... you have officially be depreciated. :-(
 
Are the people expecting others to bring their mac into a store to install an app for real? It'd be silly enough for a laptop, but taking an iMac or Mac Pro in just to install an app would be craziness.

Presumably Apple will still produce physical media, just not use up store space for it... which is fair enough, because it's not like you can really do much but look at the packaging in store anyway. Replacing the software boxes with macs running the software so people can try it out would make a lot of sense. Then have the boxes out back, or order it in-store to be delivered by post (or digitally online by all means for those who want to and can).

But forcing everyone to download Apple's apps would be grossly premature IMHO.
 
roadbloc said:
Daft idea. Not everyone has internet. Not everyone has internet good enough to download large amounts of software.
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Thats right, and not everyone has access to an apple store. Tough.

The smallest minority are just going to have to cope. The majority of apples customers have broadband. It's a more convenient way of purchasing software. This will drive demand and stop pandering to the telecom networks. Without this push, we'll never move forward.

If u don't have broadband, get it. If your telecom provider doesn't provide it, demand that they do. Thats how services get upgraded.

Supply and demand...
 
This will certainly create problems for people in rural areas (i.e. no broadband) and in places where monthly bandwidth is capped or billed by usage.
 
How do we know Apple is eliminating boxed software from retail stores? The quote, even the bolded part, doesn't actually say that. It's just saying they'll show you the Mac App Store.
 
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aprofetto8 said:
Ambrose Chapel said:
sevimli said:
Not a good idea, not everyone has broadband. :confused:
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true, though i would expect apple to still offer boxed software via the online store...
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But how would they order it?

Bazinga.
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Phone up. But software updates are out of the question.
 
Jimmy James said:
This will certainly create problems for people in rural areas (i.e. no broadband) and in places where monthly bandwidth is capped or billed by usage.
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How so? Are there a lot of Apple Stores in those areas? If not, then this doesn't change anything for those people.
 
stridemat said:


Excellent news :rolleyes:
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not bad :rolleyes:
Bildschirmfoto 2011-02-07 um 20.17.13.png
 
nelmat said:
Thats right, and not everyone has access to an apple store. Tough.

The smallest minority are just going to have to cope. The majority of apples customers have broadband. It's a more convenient way of purchasing software. This will drive demand and stop pandering to the telecom networks. Without this push, we'll never move forward.

If u don't have broadband, get it. If your telecom provider doesn't provide it, demand that they do. Thats how services get upgraded.

Supply and demand...
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Im at the the maximum distance from my local telephone exchange where they even give you the option of broadband. It's not that they won't provide it to me (they do, if you can call it that). Copper wires just cannot handle the distance.
 
Westside guy said:
I don't see the advantage to requiring a login versus entering a serial number - it's basically the same thing.
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Are you saying to remember every serial number of every software you ever purchased by heart? Good for you. I can remember by AppleID, but not all the long serial numbers for every software - luckily they are in my gmail and I can search for them - but it is just easier to authenticate once and than reinstall all my software.
 
RMo said:
How do we know Apple is eliminating boxed software from retail stores? The quote, even the bolded part, doesn't actually say that. It's just saying they'll show you the Mac App Store.
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Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if they do want to eliminate boxed software, but you're right, from the quote it just looks like an assumption based on them showing users how to use a feature of OS X... nothing more.
 
roadbloc said:
Daft idea. Not everyone has internet. Not everyone has internet good enough to download large amounts of software.
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But how many people are in that position? I don't know about America, although I did see that there is an awful lot of people there without a steady broadband connection.

And more importantly, how many of those people actively uses computers and buys Mac software?
 
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