Despite reports earlier Thursday evoke that Apple would disallow Mac App Store apps from apply systemwide keyboard “ hotkey ” shortcuts , sources nigh to the affair confirm toMacworldthat such apps remain welcome in the cozy confines of Apple ’s software store .
descend June 1 , apps submit to the Mac App Store will need to follow out Apple ’s sandboxing requirements . Sandboxing refers to limiting what data and functionality a hand app can get at for the user ’s security measures and protection . TUAW mention sourcessuggesting that , as part of the Mac App Store ’s June 1 sandboxing implementation deadline , Apple would stop accepting new apps with orbicular hotkeys , too .
Such hotkeys are common in OS X. Apple provide numerous such key combinations of its own , like Command - Shift-3 for drive a screenshot . And many apps in the Mac App Store ( and elsewhere ) go through global hotkeys of their own : iTunes menubar restrainer might let you pause or rate music ; Twitter apps can tender a command to bring your timeline to the foreground or start compose a new tweet ; and launching program let you bring up their interface with a global keystroke , too .
TUAW ’s post understandably kick off a panic : If accurate , it entail that legion apps offer up utile functionality via hotkeys — include those apps whosecore functionalitystems from their use of hotkeys — would no longer be allow to introduce significant updates to their apps in the Mac App Store .
But again , Macworldcan confirm that no such hotkey Bachelor of Arts in Nursing is number to the Mac App Store . In fact , Apple offer developer several public genus Apis that make simple work of create worldwide keyboard shortcuts , and those APIs are n’t going by .
There are other API call or backend technologies that developer could use to power worldwide hotkeys , and which developers could also practice , in theory , to catch and show a exploiter ’s every keystroke — whether for villainous reasons , or for dead valid I ( like type public utility that can elaborate shortcuts into longer schoolbook ) . But that sort of systemwide keylogging would be explicitly prohibited for sandboxed apps , since they are n’t mostly permitted to access or put down your keystroke in other apps .
Thus , so long as developers use Apple ’s formally support APIs to record systemwide global hotkeys , their apps will remain eligible for cellular inclusion in the Mac App Store . But developers and their user can rest easy — that functionality is n’t run short anywhere , and the Mac App Store wo n’t reject apps that implement it properly .
