March 5, 2021
Free love at the Mac App Store
Sometimes there's a weird disconnect on the Mac App Store — in the section called Apps and Games We Love Right Now.
Let's deconstruct this a bit.
First the "love" part. According to Wikipedia, "mostly commonly, love refers to a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment."
To say that you love something is about the highest praise you can give it.
Then there's the "right now" part. I take this to be a way of amplifying the love — that it transcends all other considerations.
Finally, there is the "we". I have a vision of Apple employees making these choices, but that's probably naive. There's no way employees are being trusted to make independent choices without corporate approval. These apps have the Apple seal of approval.
All in all, it's a bunch of marketing bafflegab, but I'm sure most people would agree that the message is that these apps come highly recommended by Apple.
So it's only natural to check them out. After all, Apple, it would appear, has gone through the thousands of apps in the app store and chosen a few of the most outstanding.
The first one I looked was DaVinci Resolve, a video editing program. Maybe this was just coincidentally a bad choice, but it felt like I had entered an alternative reality.
The app has 19 ratings for an average of 3.2 out of 5 — kind of mediocre. And it's a generous 3.2, given the stream of complaints in the written reviews.
"I uninstalled and reinstalled and it still will not load"
"It won't let me add in any files"
"It did not work at all after multiple attempts."
"Cannot add files, progrm hangs... Complete dissapointment..."
"When i try an add things to a project it does not work please fix this"
And these complaints go back three years! In other words, this app suffers from major issues and the developer has apparently not fixed or even acknowledged them.
How, then, did Apple come to love DaVinci Resolve right now? Did Apple employees seriously look at the reviews and decide they loved this app anyway?
A new version came out about a week ago. Did it solve the problems? There is no mention that they even existed.
The most generous thing I can think of to say is that DaVinci Resolve is free, so just download it. Who knows? Maybe you'll get lucky and it will work for you.