May 21, 2013 at 20:10HackStore - Alternative App Store for Mac OS
Hello! Today I would like to talk about my project HackStore - an alternative application store for Mac OSX.
In January 2011, Apple launched the Mac App Store, similar to a similar iOS app store.
Staying true to its traditions, Apple has set tough proprietary conditions for developers. And if iOS since its birth was a closed system, then Mac OS, on the contrary, has always been an open platform in relation to third-party developers. Since the advent of the first OS X, developers have managed to create a huge number of both paid and free utilities, games and applications.
When the Mac App Store opened, many developers faced a difficult choice. To get to the App Store, they needed to change the application, cut some of the functionality, change the license, buy the Mac Developer Program. Otherwise, they had to continue to distribute their application as before, while at the risk of losing users.
At the same time, due to the strict requirements of the AppStore, many popular and well-known applications do not have a chance to get there at all. So, for example, the App Store is closed for applications that are distributed with Open Source, MIT or CCL licenses, as well as those that even slightly change the system functions or design. Access to the application store is also closed for many popular utilities and tweaks, such as CleanMyMac, MacHider, Magician, Adium, Skype and for many other equally convenient and useful applications.
Having studied this issue more deeply, I came to the conclusion that it would be nice to provide users and developers with a centralized solution that would be as convenient as Apple's solution, but would not have such restrictions.
After reflection and planning, on March 15, 2012, I contacted my friend Ilya Shkolnik and suggested that he try to implement my idea together. Ilya liked this, and we started our HackStore project.
HackStore is a client-server application written entirely in Objective-C using the Mac OS X SDK. It implements both interaction with servers in which a database of applications is stored, and means for downloading and installing them. There is also a check for updates to already installed applications. HackStore scans the user's local applications and checks for newer versions on the server. The list of updates is cached and stored all the time while the application is running. The application automatically determines the system language and sends this information to the server so that the store is displayed in the language that the user needs.
But back to our start.
In a month, a lot of work was done on the application and server. Together with Ilya, we spent whole days on this and just enjoyed it a lot from what we worked on. After a month of work, we had a ready-made application, and I started looking for editors who would fill our store with applications. During the search, I found a man who was inspired by this idea, his name was Timur. Every day he downloaded 5-10 applications to our server. By early April, we were almost ready to present our project to the public. I will not hide that at that time I could not find a suitable designer for our project, and the interface looked rather untidy, but I had to move on. On April 6, I contacted America's largest portal, Cult Of Mac. They liked our application and they wrote a short story about us. This story brought us to a new level, on the day we received more than 20 letters with offers of cooperation and simply warm words to our project. After a week of final work, we released HackStore, and it was great. Together with Ilya, we saw our success: thousands of users downloaded our application, commented and enjoyed our work.
Further we systematically developed, releasing updates, closing vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, by July, the moment of monetization and acute shortage of resources was getting sharper and sharper both in terms of development and in terms of costs. Ilya and I spent whole days talking with many people in order to somehow improve our situation, and finally we found a way out. We met a wonderful person, the owner of the Inloc data center. He liked our project and he entered our position and not only provided a powerful server, but also since then has helped us with its configuration and advises us on all issues regarding servers. So, by the end of July, we had almost solved all our problems, except for one - we still did not have a good web developer and designer. This was a big problem that did not allow us to develop further. Once we received a voluminous message in the mail about our design errors and inaccuracies. The letter was very detailed and, in general, was true. We were very interested in this man, and it was he who was perhaps the best acquisition for our team. Somewhere in early August, Daniil Pronin joined us - a web developer and designer who brought our team to a whole new level. In late August, an important update was made - we completely changed the architecture of the application and the server side, and we managed to make a functional, convenient and simply beautiful application as well as the official website of the project best acquisition for our team. Somewhere in early August, Daniil Pronin joined us - a web developer and designer who brought our team to a whole new level. In late August, an important update was made - we completely changed the architecture of the application and the server side, and we managed to make a functional, convenient and simply beautiful application as well as the official website of the project best acquisition for our team. Somewhere in early August, Daniil Pronin joined us - a web developer and designer who brought our team to a whole new level. In late August, an important update was made - we completely changed the architecture of the application and the server side, and we managed to make a functional, convenient and simply beautiful application as well as the official website of the projecthack-store.com .
Currently, our application is fully localized in 6 languages, has a system for automatically installing applications in Launchpad and removing them, the function of updating installed applications, sharing on social networks, and also provides an extensive selection of unique and open software. Every day, we receive many unique applications from developers from all over the world, which makes HackStore a source of exclusive content. Almost 60 thousand unique users from all over the world visit us every day, and the monthly traffic from our servers is about 6 terabytes.
A distinctive feature of HackStore is that any developer can send us their applications for free, in addition, we do not have strict rules and restrictions. And also, we are pleased to work with developers of paid applications. We tried to simplify the process of sending your application to our editors as much as possible. You can send your application at any time directly from the top menu:
Each application is carefully tested by our editors and, after a full check, appears in HackStore within 1-2 days.
Also, we are always open for new offers, help, questions and collaboration. Almost any questions or suggestions coming to us are resolved as soon as possible, we really love our job and try to do it 100% :)
We will be glad to your comments, suggestions and advice, write - we always answer!
Website: Hack-store.com
We are in social networks:
Our Twitter
Our FaceBook
Our VK
Background
In January 2011, Apple launched the Mac App Store, similar to a similar iOS app store.
Staying true to its traditions, Apple has set tough proprietary conditions for developers. And if iOS since its birth was a closed system, then Mac OS, on the contrary, has always been an open platform in relation to third-party developers. Since the advent of the first OS X, developers have managed to create a huge number of both paid and free utilities, games and applications.
When the Mac App Store opened, many developers faced a difficult choice. To get to the App Store, they needed to change the application, cut some of the functionality, change the license, buy the Mac Developer Program. Otherwise, they had to continue to distribute their application as before, while at the risk of losing users.
At the same time, due to the strict requirements of the AppStore, many popular and well-known applications do not have a chance to get there at all. So, for example, the App Store is closed for applications that are distributed with Open Source, MIT or CCL licenses, as well as those that even slightly change the system functions or design. Access to the application store is also closed for many popular utilities and tweaks, such as CleanMyMac, MacHider, Magician, Adium, Skype and for many other equally convenient and useful applications.
Start
Having studied this issue more deeply, I came to the conclusion that it would be nice to provide users and developers with a centralized solution that would be as convenient as Apple's solution, but would not have such restrictions.
After reflection and planning, on March 15, 2012, I contacted my friend Ilya Shkolnik and suggested that he try to implement my idea together. Ilya liked this, and we started our HackStore project.
HackStore is a client-server application written entirely in Objective-C using the Mac OS X SDK. It implements both interaction with servers in which a database of applications is stored, and means for downloading and installing them. There is also a check for updates to already installed applications. HackStore scans the user's local applications and checks for newer versions on the server. The list of updates is cached and stored all the time while the application is running. The application automatically determines the system language and sends this information to the server so that the store is displayed in the language that the user needs.
But back to our start.
In a month, a lot of work was done on the application and server. Together with Ilya, we spent whole days on this and just enjoyed it a lot from what we worked on. After a month of work, we had a ready-made application, and I started looking for editors who would fill our store with applications. During the search, I found a man who was inspired by this idea, his name was Timur. Every day he downloaded 5-10 applications to our server. By early April, we were almost ready to present our project to the public. I will not hide that at that time I could not find a suitable designer for our project, and the interface looked rather untidy, but I had to move on. On April 6, I contacted America's largest portal, Cult Of Mac. They liked our application and they wrote a short story about us. This story brought us to a new level, on the day we received more than 20 letters with offers of cooperation and simply warm words to our project. After a week of final work, we released HackStore, and it was great. Together with Ilya, we saw our success: thousands of users downloaded our application, commented and enjoyed our work.
Present
Further we systematically developed, releasing updates, closing vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, by July, the moment of monetization and acute shortage of resources was getting sharper and sharper both in terms of development and in terms of costs. Ilya and I spent whole days talking with many people in order to somehow improve our situation, and finally we found a way out. We met a wonderful person, the owner of the Inloc data center. He liked our project and he entered our position and not only provided a powerful server, but also since then has helped us with its configuration and advises us on all issues regarding servers. So, by the end of July, we had almost solved all our problems, except for one - we still did not have a good web developer and designer. This was a big problem that did not allow us to develop further. Once we received a voluminous message in the mail about our design errors and inaccuracies. The letter was very detailed and, in general, was true. We were very interested in this man, and it was he who was perhaps the best acquisition for our team. Somewhere in early August, Daniil Pronin joined us - a web developer and designer who brought our team to a whole new level. In late August, an important update was made - we completely changed the architecture of the application and the server side, and we managed to make a functional, convenient and simply beautiful application as well as the official website of the project best acquisition for our team. Somewhere in early August, Daniil Pronin joined us - a web developer and designer who brought our team to a whole new level. In late August, an important update was made - we completely changed the architecture of the application and the server side, and we managed to make a functional, convenient and simply beautiful application as well as the official website of the project best acquisition for our team. Somewhere in early August, Daniil Pronin joined us - a web developer and designer who brought our team to a whole new level. In late August, an important update was made - we completely changed the architecture of the application and the server side, and we managed to make a functional, convenient and simply beautiful application as well as the official website of the projecthack-store.com .
Currently, our application is fully localized in 6 languages, has a system for automatically installing applications in Launchpad and removing them, the function of updating installed applications, sharing on social networks, and also provides an extensive selection of unique and open software. Every day, we receive many unique applications from developers from all over the world, which makes HackStore a source of exclusive content. Almost 60 thousand unique users from all over the world visit us every day, and the monthly traffic from our servers is about 6 terabytes.
A distinctive feature of HackStore is that any developer can send us their applications for free, in addition, we do not have strict rules and restrictions. And also, we are pleased to work with developers of paid applications. We tried to simplify the process of sending your application to our editors as much as possible. You can send your application at any time directly from the top menu:
Each application is carefully tested by our editors and, after a full check, appears in HackStore within 1-2 days.
Also, we are always open for new offers, help, questions and collaboration. Almost any questions or suggestions coming to us are resolved as soon as possible, we really love our job and try to do it 100% :)
References
We will be glad to your comments, suggestions and advice, write - we always answer!
Website: Hack-store.com
We are in social networks:
Our Twitter
Our FaceBook
Our VK