Back in November, Apple told developers of apps for the Mac App Store that they had until March 1st to "sandbox" their apps. Now the company has decided to give those developers a few more months to make their apps sandbox ready.
In a post on Apple"s developer web site it states:
We have extended the deadline for sandboxing your apps on the Mac App Store from March 1st to June 1st to provide you with enough time to take advantage of new sandboxing entitlements available in OS X 10.7.3 and new APIs in Xcode 4.3
For those of you who may not be aware of what "sandboxing" is, Apple is basically asking Mac App Store developers to limit how their apps interact with other systems and data. In theory, this will help prevent the Mac App Store from getting hit with malware and other software threats. However, it also means that app developers won"t have the freedom to link up to other applications and systems.
The fact that Apple has now decided to extend the sandboxing deadline might mean that Apple is getting some heat from developers who want to continue to have the freedom to pick and choose what systems their apps can interact with. Of course, developers can also choose to simply release their Mac apps outside the Mac App store if they want to be free of any sandboxing limitations.