Apple has replaced Launchpad in macOS Tahoe with a new “Apps” view hybrid of Spotlight search and a scrolling list of your installed applications.
Some folks prefer the Launchpad. However, according to a post by Michael Tsai, Apple has blocked an app on the Mac App Store that duplicate the Launchpad’s look and feel. One is AppGrid is a grid-based app launcher built specifically for macOS Tahoe.
Here’s some info from Attila Miklosi, the developer of AppGrid: About three months in, Apple blocked all further updates. The reason: too similar to Launchpad — the feature they had just removed from the OS. I appealed several times, got nowhere, and eventually gave up.
The weirdest part is that they didn’t pull the app, but forced it into a zombie state. It’s still on the App Store right now, still selling, and Apple is still collecting 30% on every sale. They just won’t let me ship updates. I can’t fix bugs, can’t respond to competitors, can’t add the features users are asking for. It’s frozen in place, generating revenue for both of us, without any way to improve the product further.
So I’ve been building direct distribution outside the App Store at appgridmac.com. The unsandboxed version can do things the App Store build never could — hot corner activation, for instance, which is the single most requested feature from former Launchpad users but is blocked in the sandboxed version.
[…]
Apple told me they would accept updates if I made the app look different enough from Launchpad. But by then thousands have paid for it already, and they paid exactly for it being as similar to Launchpad as possible, so I decided not to go down that route[…]
Interestingly, Apple does allow other apps such as LaunchMe to have modes that look like Launchpad.
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