this whole article goes over my head, because it assumes the reader is already familiar with the sandboxing issue. I'm not a desktop OS X developer; I'm not familiar with the topic. I searched around and the only articles I could find are blog posts about how the sky is falling, with no sources from Apple that plainly state the app sandboxing requirements.
If you're going to write an article about how some upcoming thing is a doomsday event, please explain the event clearly and link to the proper sources, especially if your article is a criticism of a technical specification. That one or a few applications are backing out of the app store is not, in itself, evidence that they are justified in doing so.
This article has taught me nothing, but it has made me more afraid.
that's exceedingly arrogant. All I'm asking for is a link to the Apple rules. Surely there is a document that explains the rules. That is all I want to see.
There probably is and we have great tools for you to find it yourself. This is a growing issue and Marco's audience has been following it for a while. I see no need to bring readers up to speed with every single post.
(I, too am not a developer. But I know how to use Google to educate myself.)
I'd like to understand the implications of sandboxing too. It must have some large negative impact on Instapaper for Marco to care this much. What is it?
In short, sandboxing is an idea where every app lives in an isolated environment. By default an application can only access its own files, every other system resource is unavailable until the user explicitly allows the app to use it. It has impact on many apps, for instance your favorite git client won't be allowed to open the repositories you've been lately working on, just because they're located in Documents.
His complaints are entirely from the Mac user perspective. (And are complaints that I share.) Tons of great apps can't be sold via the app store unless they degrade themselves to comply.
If you're going to write an article about how some upcoming thing is a doomsday event, please explain the event clearly and link to the proper sources, especially if your article is a criticism of a technical specification. That one or a few applications are backing out of the app store is not, in itself, evidence that they are justified in doing so.
This article has taught me nothing, but it has made me more afraid.