The Saelyx Mac app is not in the Mac App Store. It is worth clearing up first what did not happen: nobody turned it down. We never sent it.
It is a decision, and like every decision it has two sides. We'll tell both.
01What it gains
That nobody decides for us when a version reaches your Mac. If we find a bug this afternoon, the fix ships this afternoon. There is no review queue standing between our mistake and your computer.
That is not theory. Today alone we corrected three things on the same day we found them. In a store, two of those corrections would have waited days.
It also gains what the app is able to do. An agent that sees your screen, types for you in any application and works in the terminal needs permissions that are natural outside the system's sandbox and a negotiation inside it. We prefer the whole product.
02What it costs
That you have to trust us more than you would trust the store. That is a real cost and we are not going to dress it up: when you download something from the Mac App Store, Apple has looked first. Here the ones who looked are us.
It also costs us in discovery. Nobody is going to find us by browsing the store. Everyone who arrives, arrives because someone told them or because they read something of ours. It is slower and it is more expensive.
03What we do so that trusting us costs you less
The app is signed and notarised by Apple. Notarising is not the same as reviewing: Apple doesn't look at what the app does, but it does check that it carries no known malware, and it seals the package. Your Mac verifies that seal before opening it, and if anyone had touched the file along the way, it would not launch.
It updates itself, with the same mechanism many Mac apps outside the store use. And there is an honest detail worth stating: updates only go forward. There is no way to return to an earlier version from within the app.
And the code that decides what leaves your machine is described in the privacy policy in more detail than is usual, including the part that does not flatter us.
04This applies to the Mac, and only to the Mac
It pays to be exact here, because it is easy to blur: not sending it is a decision about the Mac app. The iPhone one is a different story and we are not going to tell it here as if it were the same.
On the desktop there is a real alternative to the store —sign, notarise and distribute it yourself— and on the phone there isn't. When somebody says "I don't believe in app stores" and has an app on the phone, they are telling half the story.
05And access, which is what we get asked most
Being outside the store doesn't mean hitting download is enough. Today you come in by invitation: you ask, we review it by hand, and we write when there is room.
It is not scarcity out of a marketing handbook. It is that an agent that sees your screen and hears you is a product where the first few hundred people matter far more than the first few thousand, and we want to be able to look after whoever comes in.
06Will it change?
It might. If one day the store stops costing what it costs today in capabilities, we will reconsider and we will say so here. What we are not going to do is fly it as a flag: it is a calculation, not an identity, and calculations change when the numbers do.
07Frequently asked questions
Is it safe to install something that doesn't come from the store?
It is signed and notarised by Apple, and your Mac checks that seal before opening it. That is not the same as a content review: it means the package is ours and that it has not been altered.
How does it update?
On its own. It detects the new version and updates. It only goes forward: there is no way back from within the app.
Is there an iPhone version?
The product you can use today is the Mac one. When there is something to announce about the iPhone, we will announce it; we are not going to put a date on something we cannot hold to.
Does it work on Windows?
No. It is a Mac app.
How do I get it?
By invitation. You ask on the website and we approve requests by hand, one at a time.