Setapp, an app subscription service, was released and AWS turns on IPv6 for EC2 instances.

Just a short note before getting to the technical side of things. I don’t like to discuss politics here, but these past couple of days felt like watching a live episode of Black Mirror being played out on Twitter and elsewhere. I hope I don’t have to explain why the religion based travel ban implemented by the people currently holding the White House is terrible, as are the other things like the magical wall that will “stop bad things from happening”.

Similarly, the obvious lies and double-speak¹ to validate their actions are sickening. Oh sorry, did I say lies? I meant “alternative facts” of course. In a good countermove to this, with the official accounts of many governments agencies now being censored (as their data conflicts with the opinions of the US government) I was very happy to see rogue Twitter accounts crop up from those agencies that will still give true facts. While it helps, most of the good work comes from people on the ground protesting and actively helping those affected. Hopefully some semblance of sanity will hit the idiots in the White House over the head so I don’t need to write something like this every week just to vent my frustration.

Venting done, now let’s go back to your regularly scheduled update. </anger>

Setapp the App Subscription Service

Last week Setapp went live. It was in an open beta for a while (using invites/waiting lists), but now everyone can use it. Having read about it and looked into this service there are some questions that I have my own answers to, which might not be the same as what Setapp would give. This is all from the perspective of someone using the service, not a developer selling on it.

Which leads us to the first question: what is Setapp? This one is fairly easy to answer. It’s a subscription service for Mac applications. Another way to get a hold of applications that you would otherwise need to buy in the App Store² or on the developers site. You basically pay 10 USD per month to get access to these applications for as long as you’re paying.

Who is this for? Everyone who owns a Mac and wants access to these applications.

What applications are there? As I write this, there are 61 applications, several of which I use on a daily basis. Some well-known, others less so. Of course, the main selling feature is all the free upgrades.

What is it good for? This is the most important question, and one where the answer depends on your own position. There are two situations where I can see the advantage, but to be honest keeping the subscription for a long time isn’t one of them.

You may remember that after WWDC last year, I wrote about the ability to have subscriptions for every type of app and how this could be used to offer app rentals. In my mind, this offers that exact possibility. If one of the applications that are in this subscription package is something you’ll only need occasionally this is probably great value. Especially as the first month is free (obviously, that is only for the first time) this will let you use the application you need. In this regard, it might be a good way to save some money. For example, if you only want to use an application once every year, it means you don’t need to pay for a new version every time.

The other possible use should be obvious, you can try out various applications and see which ones you want to use. While many applications will have a free trial period (at least if you don’t use the App Store), often these are limited in what you can do with them. This way you can even try multiple applications, and see which one is the best fit before you buy it outright.

Because that’s what you’ll likely end up doing. Honestly, I don’t see the point in subscribing to a service like this long term. It’s an interesting idea, but unless you want to use a large portion of the applications in the account (and don’t already own them), the value is just wrong. Many of the apps cost less than 2 months of the service would. It might be convenient, but at some point the convenience factor is outweighed by costs.

AWS and IPv6

Because I don’t want to just repeat the AWS blog, I don’t mention everything that is posted there. However, AWS made a big move for IPv6 by supporting it for EC2 instances and ALBs. It is now possible to create VPCs with an IPv6 CIDR block in addition to the regular IPv4 block. Well, to be fair, it was possible in December in a single region (the recently opened US East (Ohio) region) but now it’s possible everywhere.

This IPv6 block will be provided by AWS, I assume to ensure it is indeed unique as that is one of the main attractions of IPv6, and you can’t set the size of it. Presumably it will be the same size as your IPv4 CIDR block. Once you’ve done this, any instances created in this VPC will have an IPv6 IP in addition to their usual IPv4.

This is a very good step in switching to IPv6, but I wonder why it’s a choice instead of giving every instance a range by default. Since the introduction I’ve used existing code (cfndsl/CloudFormation templates) to create VPCs, only to then realize the instances in it don’t have IPv6 addresses yet. Obviously, I can change this but it seems like a step that isn’t needed. Unless it poses a security risk because the security groups will let things through? I didn’t find any evidence of that though.

But maybe it’s just a temporary measure, to ensure their systems can handle it, and it will become the default soon.