Dear Mac Developer/Product Manager,

Having to update and relaunch Mac apps constantly sucks.

Your product is not a web app. I don’t get the new version “for free” [written with the scariest of scare quotes] the next time I open your site or navigate to a new page after deploying.

I know you look down on the whole notion of app review, and having to go through Apple to release a new version, and that’s one reason you aren’t in the Mac App Store… but sometimes friction is a good thing. Without friction, it’s very hard to change direction or stop, and you may just run over your valued customers with your ever-growing momentum.

I love that coding agents are empowering you to build features more quickly and tackle bigger challenges; but maybe use a quarter of the time you save on could to stop and think about should.

Is a new feature for 5% of your customers today worth 100% of them having to download, install and relaunch your app, right as they’re about to start work?^

^Yes, less-intrusive Sparkle updates and installing updates on quit are welcome changes. But they don’t completely negate the fact that overly frequent updates are annoying. ¿Por qué no los dos?

Embrace constraints. If they aren’t being forced on you anymore, perhaps you need to impose some self-restraint?

You don’t need to go all the way back to boxed software and only shipping a new version every 2 years… What if you gave yourself a rule that you won’t ship updates any more often than say every 2 weeks (emergency bug fixes excepted)? Would your “velocity” really suffer because your customers have to wait a week or two to see that awesome new feature you dictated to Claude while you were in the shower?

We love you, but we want you to make better choices.

Sincerely,
Your Customers
(Or maybe just one grumpy customer 🤷‍♂️)

P.S. This letter is open to all developers; I addressed it to Mac developers because historically they’ve been the most likely to actually care about quality and customer experience.