What happens when you dump the App Store?
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
There are only three reasons people might buy something from the mac store vs. from the developer directly:
1. To keep it getting updates through the app store vs. having to download from the developer when a new update comes out. 2. They found it in the mac store, and thus purchased it in the mac store. 3. They trust apple to reduce the risk of malware when using the mac store vs. a developers web page.
The mac store is getting really hard to navigate, and it doesn't give any useful search functionality, so #2 is disappearing as a reason people are buying from the apple store. #1 is nice, but with auto updates, it is disappearing as well. #3 isn't generally an issue for developers or "power users", so it is gone as well.
Honestly, I can't think of a reasonable reason to put something in the mac store that is oriented towards developers or power users. The hit in revenue just isn't worth the benefits. Though I would love to hear from someone who came to a different conclusion.
That could explain why someone chooses to buy it in the store if it is available both on and off the app store, but it's unlikely that there is many (any?) people out there who refuse to install an app that isn't in the app store.
For many apps where I wouldn't mind spending $10 to $20 in the App Store, I am probably not going to deal with all of the above to buy it directly from the developer.
However, I have no data to back up that claim, so I could very well be wrong.
I personally don't feel like you do because I use burner cards and emails to solve the hacking and spamming problems, and apps still have to be sandboxed unless you turn off that safeguard explicitly for the app.
Pretty much everyone takes PayPal which shields you from this
It's not necessarily a dealmaker or breaker; but if someone really cares about that and the market has many substitutes, it could be enough to sway them towards App Store purchase.
Example: Steam
I just don't think any implementation has really been that great yet. However as I think about Steam, it's rare I even consider a game I can't install via it - mostly due to it being an easy way to "back up" my games for later availability. That and they keep things up to date so it more or less Just Works.
Mobile app stores post-iPhone just took off. There was no 'slowly at first' phase, in the sense that they had an uncertain future. They went gang busters from the start. But we're past theorising about how the first 5 years of the Mac App Store might go. They've gone. It really doesn't look good and I don't see any signs it might improve any time soon. A few people appreciate the convenience, but as this case study shows it's not enough to make an economic difference to developers. Steam killed it, but the Mac App Store is completely stalled.
Plus, most laptops don't come with a recovery USB (neither do Macs) and IMO having a recovery partition is silly when installing it from scratch is cleaner/easier.
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
>Sign in to the Volume Licensing Service Center to download Enterprise editions.
>Sign in to your subscription on the MSDN Portal for MSDN downloads.
> Visit the Windows Insider site to download Insider Preview builds
> Visit the Download Academic Products page for Education editions (product key required).
If you browse from linux, it shows links to directly download the ISO files.
I'm not sure what it does if you browse from MacOS.
Maybe try changing your browser's useragent? Frankly, it is a bit annoying that Microsoft tries to push their download tool.
ISO
So basically you're renting software from the AppStore. I think I paid 100 EUR for Abby FineReader and now I can't access it any more.
Can I use apps from the Mac App Store on more than one computer?
Apps from the Mac App Store may be used on any Macs that you own or control for your personal use.
I have never once hit it on apps.
Not having to enter payment information again.
Not having to trust a new third party with your payment information.
Trusted refund support.
Apple makes it seem scary to install software outside the app store.
Sure, Apple wants a cut of sales but they’re already listing totally-free apps so they’ve shown that money isn’t everything.
If they made it dead-simple to list apps (e.g. free listing pages to all developers, where software storage/downloading/sales are clearly another tier), they’d soon have all Mac software in their list. They could then build on that repository to become the Google of software search. Search could be truly powerful.
Instead, search is not only pointless on the Mac App Store but it’s the opposite of that. I now EXPECT crap, I don’t even EXPECT a reasonable match. For every search for “software that does X”, I KNOW that the results will probably not include any well-known programs and will certainly contain cheap crap and clearly-misleading scam-ware. The rest of the list will be software that was last updated 3 years ago.
Also, what would listing software that hasn't been through the submissions process actually mean? That the app is verified by Apple? That going to the site and putting your credit card number into the shopping cart is guaranteed to be secure? That other things that haven't been listed yet are not as favoured in some way?
I'm not saying I like the app store model, or that they can't have a second tier of lower-scrutiny apps. I do think it would need a lot of thought and care, however.
They don’t need much of a warning for outside software sites. The page could have a banner at the top, or display one when you click the outside link.
If you use iTerm, you know what I'm talking about.
I didn't have a backup of ABBY and the Patterns backup doesn't work because when run it complains that it doesn't work with the latest macOS and that I should update for 15+ EUR.
Unfortunately it's a piece of garbage.
For me this is the number one reason for not buying via the Mac AppStore.
At this point almost every mac app uses the tried and tested Sparkle update mechanism [0], which is very fast and rather unobtrusive. I'm mostly done updating through sparkle before I even see the list of available updates in the App Store. It's slow as hell, requires my AppleID more often than I like and is overall simply a very cumbersome experience, that leads me to postpone updates endlessly.
Its a total momentum killer. Like, imagine if randomly (every month or so) instead of loading immediately hackernews took 1 minute to load instead, and it required that you babysit it the whole time while you hit "next".
Personally I wish all apps used Chrome's update mechanism. Its unobtrusive, the patches are tiny compared to the size of Chrome and it works great. Most users don't even know the updates are happening.
Thats how I want all apps (and, frankly, my OS) to update. Just, silently and reliably. No annoying popups. No decisions to make when I'm trying to get work done. No waiting for the update to happen. Update yourself quickly in the background, and do it without bothering me.
Given how long chrome's updater has been out I'm surprised there's no embeddable Sparkle-like version for 3rd party apps to use.
You can accomplish by checking the "Automatically download updates like this in the future" box in Sparkle. The problem, though, is that you have to trust the software to handle these updates perfectly if you want them to happen in the background for critical software. Chrome can do that, because Google has some of the best developers around working on the project, and because they have absurdly good development practices. (Not perfect, but far better than any independent developer or small shop working on the majority of apps that we're talking about).
Automatic updating is hard. About a year ago, there was an update to iTerm2 that broke the software completely. The fix was to temporarily downgrade while waiting for the next point release - but for people who allowed automatic updates, they simply discovered one morning that they couldn't open their terminal[0].
Slack had an issue as well about a year ago as well, though that issue was with their auto-updater itself being broken, and preventing them from upgrading. In that case, they had to request that affected users uninstall and reinstall the application, just to get the new version of the automatic updater installed[1].
[0] I think this was the one: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues/4699
[1] It's hard to push an update to your software automatically if your automatic updater is what's broken.
The only one I can think of that makes a copy is the one from Omni Group, which seems to leave an old version in the Trash. Plus, it renames the application so it has an exact “version” for clarity.
I've never used the mac version, but Squirrel for windows works great and is unobtrusive. The Mac version promises the same: "Squirrel is an OS X framework focused on making application updates as safe and transparent as updates to a website.".
With the appstore on the other hand, besides being horribly slow, it will always present you everything that is updateable, even if you only need that tool only 3-4 times a year. So I will always have to make that call per every app in the list, every time I open the updates panel.
My next thought was that I generally don't discover things through the iOS App Store. I usually have to be told that they exist first, and even then the search doesn't always give me what I want since the App Store is full of knock-offs that should have been deleted for copyright infringement.
But the App Store on desktop? Most folks are still used to the old way of going to a website and downloading a DMG.
It's still a pretty profitable app for me and I actually enjoy the freedom of not having to have it go through review process.
For most mac apps people are googling rather than browsing the app store anyway.
To me the icon indicating it's app store is this: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/marketing/guidelines/#...
But now you actually got me wondering if I should change it.
Edit: In fact, thinking about it some more, it's very clearly much closer to the App Store logo than anything else. It's literally the white silhouette design from the logo (as opposed to the colored non-sillhouete version from generic app icons), placed on a blue button that's similar to the app store logo's blue background.
The folder on my mac uses that icon for Applications.
Personally I thought that it would either open the app store, or that is was something related to Apple pay (although that one needs "[logo] Pay").
It felt a bit misleading.
I know they have improved a little but I frankly don't need them as the Mac appstore market is nothing like the iOS appstore market. There is no benefit really.
I was also pricing it on my own website at $4.99 back then.
I realized that the value I was creating was more than $4.99 and I haven't seen a drop in revenue based on that.
So you have to find the sweet spot in order to afford keep developing it.
https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2017/02/10/piezos-life-outsid...
We can certainly debate how well-established or tech-savvy our users are (though I will note that Piezo is by far our simplest application, and used by the least technically savvy among our user base). But to say that we did this in a “public fashion” is just false.
It's still 2nd to 3rd page of search results despite having some reviews and only a couple of competitors. So a considerable investment in SEO is required.
https://www.appleworld.today/blog/2016/2/13/rogue-amoebas-pi...
http://www.imore.com/piezo-improves-application-audio-record...
https://www.macstories.net/linked/piezo-exits-the-mac-app-st...
Smaller developers may have to go through considerable pain and anguish in setting up their own store, or they can suffer through even more angusih and pain when the store they entrusted to do their sales goes down in flames, as with Kagi. https://tidbits.com/article/16665
Being self-hosted is obviously better if you can swing it, but it's more work and it's not for everyone.
[1] http://christiantietze.de/books/make-money-outside-mac-app-s... #noaffiliation
I guess I don't understand the alternative. Go out of business?
It takes a lot of effort to build out your own store and get it right, this is no small task, which is why the 30% fee charged by these stores is not necessarily the biggest obstacle.
These intermediaries add considerable risk.
Edit: Sorry I know those were just two examples - I'm not trying to refute your point
For example, you can bang together your own store with Magento, Spree, or any number of other ecommerce store kits and pick one or more back-ends without a whole lot of sweat. This presumes you know a thing or two about web development and security, which is not necesarily a given for any group of developers. If you do know that, the difference between Stripe or PayPal is a few lines of configuration and API keys, if that.
Don't hard-link to a third party service. Abstract everything through your own site that you have 100% control over, so you can swap out the underlying services whenever you want.
It's slightly more work to sell outside the App Store, yes, but it's really just not that difficult. If a developer plans to make a living, or even just side income, from app sales, it's work that's worth doing.
It's quite simply much harder to build a link profile in 2017 than it was 15 years ago.
It's not impossible, but don't underestimate the difficulty of starting up now. I started things in 2002, I'm still starting things now, and building an independent web presence now - at least, one which anyone will find - is considerably more difficult.
(Technically it's much easier - getting the actual website serving to the Internet is easier. But that was never the hard part.)
The post title here is the same as the article title but I would still recommend changing it, even if just to "macOS App Store".
This can fly on mobile because ultimately mobile devices are just dumb terms for accessing the cloud. I don't think it'll fly on real computers, especially for the pro market and developers.
Interface for browsing content ( itunes) : sucks, absolute disaster.
Interface for publishing content ( itunesconnect) : feels like the work of an intern
Review process : lottery. Never know for sure if your business isn't going to get killed by an eula update.
Development tools ( xcode ) : so bad it becomes embarrassing.
Commission : 30% is a total ripoff. Should be half of it, max.
Content indexing / discoverability : nonexistant. So bad they had to force developpers to remove working but non updated apps.
And I could go on and on, but really, the only reason it remains this bad is because apple is in a de facto monopoly position on everything related to their products.
Mac apps are more niche than their mobile counterparts. Why is a discussion for a different time, but _selling_ niche products is very different than freemium or even paid mobile apps.
If sales are low on a daily basis I'd say the downloads came from users who knew what they wanted and just needed a way to get it, which is what I suspect is happening.
I'm not trying to defend the Mac App Store here, obviously it leaves a lot to be desired as it related to discovery. I'm not sure if we can blame Apple for that or not though. Desktop app stores never really took off with steam being the only exception. And steam isn't for apps.
The only real advantage I see the MAS could have is credibility when it gets to subscriptions. Let's see how Apple will handle that.
Mobile app stores aren't for apps (or at least paid apps) either. If you filter out all the games, the frontends for external services and all the other free apps, how much is left? How significant is it?
The reason? home-brew is just such an elegant way of administering installed Apps without doing the 'download, mount, drag to ~/Applications, etc.' dance ..
* The centralised payment really incentivises users to buy apps (myself included, I find myself thinking about buying something a lot less when only having to trust one source with my information, and that source ensures that their system works well for me).
* iCloud Sync is a really big bonus for most of the work-related apps I bought and it's painfully missing when you read that devs pulled their software from the store and you cannot access it anymore.
* The fact that I can comfortably download all the software I bought without keeping track of it is a bonus - if I ever have to reset a device, it's a giant bonus.
And the negatives:
* It stifles innovation -- content discovery is almost impossible! Within two clicks you can arrive at endless lists of shovel-ware - the top lists are almost completely unusable in my region as a way to find new and interesting apps. Same goes for categories (on stores that even have a somewhat OK system of categories). The Watch / TV stores are horrible! For some reason I always seem to run out of content to browse, even tho there are (possibly) hundreds of thousands of apps on that platform. The only half-acceptable way I found to look for new stuff is to browse Apple's curated collections (which almost always are very samey). Now I wouldn't say this is worse than Google Play, for example, I recently browsed through it and had a similar experience, however that should be enough to call attention to the issue, since the Apple app store is usually considered more sophisticated
* Search: it's not very good, from the App Store to Apple Music tolerance on misspelling names or searching for approximates is bad.
* You're forced to only use their system of delivery, unless you're on macOS (which's future is looking dubious on that front as well), so you're inherently forced to deal with the negatives, without having a choice of other ecosystems.
I love my Apple products, I've almost completely switched to their ecosystem within the last two years, but I am really hoping to see as much work on these issues as on the pull-up music player menu on the Control Center. Just because the competition is not on another, better level, it does not mean that having to constantly Google to discover great new apps is acceptable.