Where should I get apps? MAS? Steam? Website?

[davidg4781]

I'm finally getting a modern Mac... 2020 13" M1 MBP.

Where should I go first to get apps? I know the MAS has some but should I look at the company's site first? For games, should I go to Steam first? Does it really matter?

Sorry, I'm just excited about this. And I'm sitting at home waiting for UPS to get it delivered.

 

[casperes1996]

Don't get games on the MAS. They're often more expensive than elsewhere and can be feature limited in terms of multiplayer. Easier to invite friends to games through Steam and whatnot.

Steam is a good place for that. Aside from that, I would recommend using a package manager like home-brew, MacPorts or Fink - The Mac App Store is a fine place to go too for what's available there (other than games) but lots of stuff won't be. But it'll be a convenient place for paid apps with easy re download to other Macs in the future. I recommend basically never just downloading an app off a website - using a package manager for those scenarios will be much better as it gives you more convenient updating, dependency management and uninstall options.

 

[HDFan]

I have a different take on things. How you get apps depends upon your level of computer expertise, how much you value your time in debugging application problems.

1. Mac App store is totally convenient, automatically updates your apps as necessary, apps have been scanned for malware/viruses. You may pay more than from other sources but is transparent and offers the greatest ease of use.

2. Purchasing directly from a developers website. You may save some money, get features that aren't in an App store version of the product. You usually can get support directly from the developer if you have problems. You do have to be careful about where you get downloads as there is the possibility of malware if it isn't a well known site.

3. The cheapest or free app isn't always the best. It costs money to develop and maintain applications. Many apps are moving to subscription models in order to fund their future development. A free app may work, but you need to verify that you can get help in case of problems and it doesn't have malware.

I have 3 support cases right now that are in the hands of app development where there are significant problems with the product.

Dunno anything about games.

Looked at MacPorts.

"The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac operating system."

Don't know anything about it but unless I absolutely needed I would avoid it. I have a number of similar applications which I am forced to use and they are an absolute pain. If there are problems you have to post to some website and hope for a response. And each such application has different support websites you have to remember and find. In some cases the developers are, well, developers and are dismissive of those who are less knowledgeable.

 

[davidg4781]

I knew I was going to have some issues with older 32 bit apps but none of the games I used to play are available to me anymore. Kind of sucks, but I guess that's what happens when you've been basically living 5 years ago in Mac Land.

 

[svenmany]

I've use MacPorts and Fink, but not for mainstream, user-facing software. Much of that is probably not provided by those projects. I think of those projects more for libraries and applications that are targeted at technical folk.

For well-known applications I'm biased away from MAS; I download those applications directly from the developers' websites. I like to save the developers money and get the added functionality the non-MAS versions often have. I acknowledge that uninstall is not that easy, but I've had very good luck with AppCleaner for the typical case that the application doesn't provide an uninstall feature.

For less-known applications MAS does give me a feeling of security, so I am biased towards MAS.

I have almost no experience with games.

 

[casperes1996]

I've use MacPorts and Fink, but not for mainstream, user-facing software. Much of that is probably not provided by those projects. I think of those projects more for libraries and applications that are targeted at technical folk.

Typically true, but home-brew will basically have all the big name programs too. As an example I have Discord, Steam, GOG, Epic Game Store, Element, Google Chrome, Firefox, Battle Net, Adobe CC, Slack, Zoom, RStudio - all installed through home-brew. It's very convenient to have the package manager handle it all 🙂

 

[svenmany]

Typically true, but home-brew will basically have all the big name programs too. As an example I have Discord, Steam, GOG, Epic Game Store, Element, Google Chrome, Firefox, Battle Net, Adobe CC, Slack, Zoom, RStudio - all installed through home-brew. It's very convenient to have the package manager handle it all 🙂

That's pretty cool. Do you have to trust the packagers or are the packages signed by the creators of the programs?

 

[casperes1996]

That's pretty cool. Do you have to trust the packagers or are the packages signed by the creators of the programs?

There are hashed checksum for download integrity managed by the packagers but outside of that it is just relying on Apple's developer signature programme for trusted developers. The "casks" as they are called are effectively just download links to the closed source normal apps distributed by the original developer and an automatic mechanism to run .pkgs/move things in place. None of that needs to run as sudo and on first launch of a cask (casks being the closed source GUI programs) you will get the regular pop-up from macOS about running a program from a developer with x certificate or whatever just like normal, so the regular chain of trust is in place but nothing additional.

 

[svenmany]

There are hashed checksum for download integrity managed by the packagers but outside of that it is just relying on Apple's developer signature programme for trusted developers. The "casks" as they are called are effectively just download links to the closed source normal apps distributed by the original developer and an automatic mechanism to run .pkgs/move things in place. None of that needs to run as sudo and on first launch of a cask (casks being the closed source GUI programs) you will get the regular pop-up from macOS about running a program from a developer with x certificate or whatever just like normal, so the regular chain of trust is in place but nothing additional.

double cool. I wonder how uninstalling in Home Brew manages to clean up the cruft that is created by the installed application. But, I suppose that is the responsibility of the packager, to research that thoroughly and code it in an uninstall script.

I started to install Home Brew years ago but stopped when it told me it would update ownership of a system directory (/usr/local/bin?). It seemed a very short-sighted approach for a multi-user OS. But, I think I read that on Apple silicon machines that's no longer the case. If so, and if I get a new machine some day, I'll try it out.

And, I have it from a reputable source that "cellar door" is even better than "pancakes".

 

[casperes1996]

double cool. I wonder how uninstalling in Home Brew manages to clean up the cruft that is created by the installed application. But, I suppose that is the responsibility of the packager, to research that thoroughly and code it in an uninstall script.

I started to install Home Brew years ago but stopped when it told me it would update ownership of a system directory (/usr/local/bin?). It seemed a very short-sighted approach for a multi-user OS. But, I think I read that on Apple silicon machines that's no longer the case. If so, and if I get a new machine some day, I'll try it out.

And, I have it from a reputable source that "cellar door" is even better than "pancakes".

Yeah that's up to the packager's script. In my experience they are pretty good about it.

Yeah on Apple Silicon it will use a different directory. I think it's /usr/opt they use. If you run Rosetta to install Rosetta packages they will still go in /usr/local/bin so it will ask to do that if you run it through Rosetta. macOS doesn't really use /usr/local/bin for anything normally - it's just a system directory because it's a standard POSIX thing. There have been a lot of discussion about this permission change as a potential security problem (again only relevant on x86 or if run via Rosetta as you point out), but it's not really a problem I would worry about. But it's understandable if it puts some people off 🙂

Is that because the pancakes are in the cellar?