Is tomorrow Armageddon for Mac developers? | Hacker News Reader

Is tomorrow Armageddon for Mac developers?

zdnet.com

72 pointsdholowiski45 comments

Put another way - in the last Ten years as an owner of:

  o PowerBook - 2000
  o PowerBook - 2003
  o MBPro - 2007
  o MBAir - 2010

I have purchased the following Applications:

  o VMware Fusion+Upgrade
  o Windows XP
  o Microsoft Office (Twice - 2011 rocks my world)

Yet - I have 40 or 50 apps on my laptop (VLC, Colloquy, Acorn, ChickenofVNC, etc, etc..)

Looking at my iPad + IPhone, I see that I have approximately 200 applications, purchased, on average, for about $3 each + a few premium apps (Omnigrafflle, OmniFocus - $50/each) Subscriptions to the Economist, Zinio, PressReader, WSJ, and copies of Time, Wired, The New Yorker, PosSCi.

Reviewing my itunes Bills - I see I have spent approximately $40/month on applications - or about $1500 in the last three years, not even including content - which adds another $2k I don't even _think_ about purchasing $1.00 Apps, I just do it. I'm also comfortable buying, with a bit of research, the nicer $5- $10 Apps.

None of which seemed to have hurt the price points of Applications like Omnifocus/Omnigraffle that much.

I expect that my behavior on the iPhone/iPad will carry over to the Macintosh, once a nicely curated store is available for me.

I _love_ rewarding developers - I just need the channel that I feel comfortable in doing so. The Apple Store is that channel for me.

I've had the same experience with Steam.

I don't think I purchased a single PC video game since I discovered torrents and usenet (unless I needed a multiplayer key).

But recently I've been buying games on steam for the pure convenience of having a nice store with trailers, one click purchases and quick downloads.

Compared to having to deal with shady torrent sites, torrent download speed shaping from my ISP and cracks.

There's also lots of $2 games on Steam and it hasn't killed the premier developers' ability to charge $30 or $40 or more for their AAA titles.

I'm not following your point. Are you saying having a curated store is what causes you to buy more apps? So what specifically drives the increased purchases? Ability to easily discover more apps? Lack of free alternatives? Low pricepoints?

The reason my purchases on the Mac/PC side are fairly low is the amount of free programs that fit my needs (and do it well). Whenever the best app was not free I bought it (Disco, Transmit, come to mind).

Apologies - I should have been more explicit. The point is that I am the type of individual who has the means, and desire, to purchase applications and show my appreciation to the developers that create them; I have done this on the IOS platforms (iPhone/iPad) - but I have NOT done this on the OS X platform - despite using that platform as much, or more, than my iPad/iPhone, and despite there usually being somewhere, a PayPal funding button for those more popular Apps.

Some other thoughts:

  o Once there is a curated environment that offers
    low friction, and reasonable prices for applications, 
    I will buy them for OS X.

  o Even though there will be $10 VNC apps on the MacStore 
    I will still  pay $119 for Microsoft Office.  

  o Finally, (and not stated) - I am looking forward to 
    paying through the MacStore for tools like VLC, 
    Colloquy, etc...

As to _why_ - I'm not really sure. It might be the desire to believe that I'm not the only chump clicking on the Paypal button (Though, rationally, if my desire is to reward developers, that shouldn't play any role). It might be the convenience of having the curated store track, and filter out the nefarious malware (Though, once again, google, plus only choosing the popular software out there, is a good substitute for that). It might be the belief that I have some control over what is installed on my laptop (though, ps -ef, launchtl list, netstat -an, and find / -cmin -3 after an install usually gives me a pretty good hint)

All I know is that this time, next year, I expect to have purchased about $600 worth of OS X software from the Mac Store, which is about $500 more, on average, than I have in the last 10 years for OS X.

I may be a couple standard deviations away from the mean, but I don't think I'm three.

Net-Net - I believe the MacStore is going to be great for Mac Developers, and will result in significantly more income flooding into that software channel, without wiping out the higher end products. I disagree with the posted article's hypothesis.

Let's check back in a year and see who ends up being correct.

These used to be shareware-level games that (at best) would get bundled for $5 with 99 other games and the author hoped for some payment (or would unlock a feature for a small price). So think of it as a massive pricing increase, not a price decrease. As fun as, say, Angry Birds is, it doesn't compare to, say, Worms 2.

Seriously: I remember playing an Air Hockey line-drawn 3D game on my friend's Macintosh LC (I think it was). His dad had downloaded it free.

I'm not denigrating the work of these devs: let's just not pretend we're creating epic worlds and employing hundreds of designers for these releases. And as always: if your product is worth more, people will pay more for it. If you've been able to keep your price high solely because of some platform insulation, be happy the ride lasted as long as it did.

> As fun as, say, Angry Birds is, it doesn't compare to, say, Worms 2.

Except for me Worms is currently £1.79 for the iPhone. Worms 2 is £2.99. I get what you're trying to say, but this Christmas EA had their games on sale for 59p (about 99c I think) and they were mostly good games too. The Mac game market is nowhere near as mainstream as PC and Consoles, and there's a risk that mainstream developers may choose not to port games if they're competing with £2.99 games with equivalent quality to Worms 2 or Fifa 11 on the iPhone (in terms of use of native platform).

IMHO The author is blowing this out of proportion. He is comparing an iPhone photo editing app to PhotoShop or asimple iPhone game like chopper to games like Halo.

These are two different levels of software. It is amazing what software can be written for mobile apps today but they are still not as fully functional as their desktop equivalents. The Mac App Store is going to be a big push for Desktop App developers to lower their costs slightly but you are still getting more functionality out of Pages for Mac OS X rather than Pages for iPad.

Though Mobile Apps may continue to grow as an industry I think we are still a few years away from seeing a serious threat to high functionality desktop applications.

Also, iPad applications seem to be up to twice as expensive as iPhone applications -- even if they're essentially the same app. I expect the same mystical price expansion will happen for Mac apps.

I always thought this was a result of developers realising they started too low with the iphone and adjusting accordingly.

Only a little. While prices will get driven down, the total amount of money getting spent on Mac apps will increase hugely.

I've been using macs since the days of the Plus, but when was the last time I actually paid money for a boxed piece of software apart from MS Office? Probably about a decade ago. And I'm not talking about piracy -- I just haven't felt a sufficient desire for any third-party piece of software that would entice me to go down to one of the very few places where such things are available by retail (even the Apple Store has a rather embarrassing small corner of mac software).

It's times like this I wish I had some time to actually write some Mac apps.

Nope. Look at Steam, for a good example. There are plenty of indie games priced at the ~$10 dollar level, and there are also AAA titles priced at ~$60. Neither one has doomed the other. The games market allows for simpler, low priced indie games, but there is still space for the blockbuster games that cost 5 times as much. They're different products, and different markets.

I don't know enough about Mac software to speak for that though. I'm a Windows/Linux user, and virtually every piece of software I use is free or a corporate application.

But most mac apps are created by indie shops.

Are there ever any "Blockbuster" mac app releases?

You rarely see marketing for mac apps. Most of the big names (ex photoshop, word) are so established that they don't need to bother worrying about price (or possibly even using the app store). But still thats a small percentage of the market.

Omni Group are the best example of a great Mac developer that isn't huge like Adobe or MS. They sell best-of-their-kind software for the iPad for quite high prices, and are doing very well. I don't see this changing in the Mac app store.

The app store means

  * nearly zero worry about piracy* 
  * much much easier discovery process for average users
  * much higher purchaser confidence (due to b and c)
  * lower purchase activation energy

All of these together mean that apps which traditionally scraped by as shareware, thrilled if they got 5% conversion, can now just sell at an impulse-purchase price of $1-5. Larger professionally-produced titles, like games, that have always had problems with piracy, no longer have to overcharge the people who do pay in order to compensate for those who would have paid, but didn't.

*: Part of this analysis is based on the assumption that if the app store DRM gets cracked (likely), the procedure is sufficiently unpalatable that it cracking is not widespread. There are a large number of pirates of convenience out there, who if faced with an app store where what they want is noticeably less expensive than it was before, might decide it's not worth the risk/bother.

Part of this analysis is based on the assumption that if the app store DRM gets cracked (likely), the procedure is sufficiently unpalatable that it cracking is not widespread.

There are no jailbreaking hassles with Macs, so probably all pirates will have to do is download a single app/kernel extension/whatever. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple uses that as an excuse to lock down Macs in the next few years.

I don't think any of us know that until we see it in action.

Isn't piracy of IOS apps from the app store rampant?

I'm a teacher – around 70% of kids have their iPod's jailbroken purely to use pirated apps. The reason? They don't have a method to pay for apps (so can't even download free apps), and their parents don't trust them to link their cards.

The point being that the sales in these cases aren't lost sales, they could never have been sales.

That’s, by the way, a lame excuse of the kids. They do have the ability to pay. Gift cards for iTunes are available everywhere and if you have one you do not need a credit card to set up an account. I think even kids will be able to afford a 15€ card once which gives them an account. (I might be wrong about this but I think there are even ways of getting an account without a gift card or credit card. I’m not sure about that, though.)

I’m not a kid but I don’t have or want a credit card and I’m always too lazy to set up the alternate payment method available in Germany so I just use gift cards. (They have the added bonus that various electronic retailers will discount them by ten, twenty or even fifty percent every year or so. I have my Google Alerts set up. I’m consequently not paying as much as I would with a credit card.)

What is frustrating for me now that I have one is that they require a fully set up account in order to download free apps.

You're saying kids have to leave the house, go to the grocery store (good luck if you live in the suburbs), buy a gift card, go home, activate it, and then they can buy their app? Oh, and a bonus! They get to do it all over again next week to buy another few apps!

Homework: Go ask your parents (or grandparents) how they used to get money for the weekend. The answer is that they and 300 of their neighbors stood in line at the bank on Friday to withdraw cash. They'd have to plan the weekend before, grocery shopping, a trip to the movies, ice cream for the kids, gasoline, so they knew how much to withdraw. Ask Grandpa if he prefers that over swiping his debit card at any time of day on any day of the week.

It's not just about the ability to pay but the ability to pay with low friction.

Well, it doesn’t get much more low friction than piracy, especially if you are thirteen-year-old with hardly any money. I was merely pointing out that “my parents won’t let me use their credit card” is a lousy excuse on all levels.

All I’m saying is that it’s ridiculously easy to get iTunes gift cards. (There are at least three stores which sell gift cards within easy biking distance from me, getting to a store which, for example, has a decent selection of music is quite a bit harder. Buying music was quite a bit harder when I was thirteen only ten years ago.) It’s perfectly safe and there is no need for a credit card. The excuses are invalid, the kids pirate apps not because it’s hard for them to buy them, they pirate them because they don’t want to pay anything. (Thirteen-year-olds, myself included, are like that – I can’t really say that I’m surprised.)

You've made an assertion with nothing to back it up. Thirteen year olds pirate because they don't want to pay? Please provide data and evidence to support your case.

You are funny.

I was responding specifically to the assertion that kids can’t legally download anything from the App Store if their parents are not willing to hand over their credit card. That’s patently untrue. It’s easy to get an account, it’s easy to pay.

Now, teenagers might pirate for other reasons than not wanting to pay (I don’t know what those would be), I can only guess. They are not in any way forced to pirate, though.

Presumably you read my first reply, in which case you do know "what those would be". Once again, it's about convenience.

There will still be piracy. If anything, more, as those currently benefiting from obscurity of their chosen DRM and software will be lumped in with the high profile releases with unified DRM. So once the hard work is done, it'll be trivial to automatically crack and cross-post anything new that is posted to the store.

The benefits are all about discovery, performant hosting, confidence, and lower friction of purchase/installation/uninstallation.

A lot of Apple products don't have any activation at all and rely on the honour system. The times I've pirated desktop software was because I was annoyed that I had to tie the installation to a single machine. The Mac app store lets you install on multiple machines, so that will be enough to make me happy to pay for more apps.

Apparently the Mac App Store has already been cracked and the devs are just waiting for "lots of crap" to show up before they release their pirating tools:

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-apple-app-store-innovates-wit...

Sure the price will drop by an order of magnitude, but the number of units sold will skyrocket. I bet by at least that same order of magnitude. The current number of units sold by a developer through their own store is microscopic. The incremental cost for selling another unit is almost zero.

The ability to be part of a store that every mac computer has installed automatically, with super easy purchasing, credit card processing, and installation, will offset the drop in price.

It also gets developers out of the business of maintaining their own storefront, payment processing, etc. A cost that is a burden on many of the existing developers.

No. http://bit.ly/a4Qb2Z

EDIT: Bit.ly'd because apparently HN doesn't allow apostrophes in links.

Link that works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines

Derp. Thanks, completely forgot about URL encoding.

Doesn't the smaller Mac market mean that prices will be higher than those for iOS?

Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking. If iOS developers try to sell a ton of copies for a dollar, they'll soon discover there are less people buying. Prices may go down some but they won't hit iOS levels.

This article is ridiculous because the author does not address the fact that volume will increase dramatically: a $3 app on the Mac app store will undoubtedly sell many times, perhaps 10+ x, more than the app distributed on a CD/DVD via Amazon for $30.

How many copies does a typical Mac application sell? What are the margins, marketing expenses for comparable apps in both worlds? Or are mobile apps almost always tinier and less capable or just too different to compare?

And do you even have to sell your app in the new store? Or will you have to because you will now suddenly have competitors? Is your app that easy to duplicate or is it that selling will be so much cheaper or it will be easier to get attention? And if its not better in some way, why would you stop selling your app the old way?

Commoditize Your Complements. Cheaper and more abundant Mac software improves the experience for users, which should increase the appeal of the platform. If it works then it should mean more money being spent on Mac software in the long run, even if it's less per unit. If it works out any way similar to iOS the most popular apps will make a ton. The traditional developers just need to make sure that their software is the best, and if they can't beat the new guys then can they really complain?

This is a testable prediction. Rather than speculate, is anyone willing to bet money on the price movement of Mac apps over the next 6 months, and at what odds?

Prices are dictated by the market, since everybody wants to generate as much profit as possible. Not to mention covering development costs as soon as possible.

iOS is more popular than OS X. Selling for iOS means more copies sold. It's not hard to do the math and nothing stopped the hordes of iOS developers from attacking the OS X market anyway.

If anything this will provide a channel for crappy apps that you can develop in a weekend and still generate some revenue for it (instead of giving it away for free).

And Windows has had a shareware culture for quite some time (tones of crappy games included, e.g. Zuma). It did nothing to stop the selling of quality apps for higher prices, as prices are only affected by other apps in the same category.

I agree that there could be some price pressure due to increased competition and choices. However, given the inherent differences between iOS and OS X apps, I don't see many iOS developers being able to instantly compete with the established independent Mac developers and companies (e.g. Panic, Omni Group, etc.). The years of experience of the established Mac developers shows through in their quality. If anything, they may need to alter their marketing a bit to justify the premium pricing.

One person's app store is another person's package manager.

I've been selling $5 apps for Mac and Windows for over 3 years now already, completely independently and homegrown, so this won't impact me much. :)

There was a point in the past where I did a lot of research in the traditional PC/Mac shrinkwrapped boxed retail bricks-and-mortar software market, and the pricing model was rather shocking. Speaking in very general terms, and especially more about PC software, what I found was that for a say $50 priced unit of software, in a box there at a retail store, about 50% of that went to the retail store, about 25% or so went to the distributor, 20% to the publisher, and then only about $3-5 went to the actual developer. (Approximately, details varied.) Add-in traditional publishing industry shenanigans that try to turn developers effectively into sharecroppers, and almost require huge hype-driven sale numbers, and the situation is even worse.

Now with things like Steam and the App Store and with PayPal, etc., developers can publish software directly, much more easily, and the distributor/online-retail middleman takes a smaller cut, so say the retail price can be $5 and the developer takes home 70%-97% of that, depending on if more like App Store or PayPal model, respectively. So the take home income per unit for the developer can be about the same, but at a much much lower retail price point, which is a net win for consumers. And since there are less publishing shenanigans with compensation structure, it's actually possible to sell a small number of units per month and achieve at least Ramen profitability. Which at least buys you runway to develop additional stuff or work on side ventures, so it's a virtuous cycle/snowball effect.

Which begs the question, would you publish on the Mac app Store?

I agree with what you are saying about the traditional bricks and mortar approach being an exercise in rogering the developer. Which was why when the iTunes App Store opened up I thought it was a huge deal that they were only taking a 30% cut, and yet were doing all this other stuff effectively for free: hosting, payments processing.

But - if you already have all that set up and in place, is it still attractive to you? If only for 'marketing' purposes? E.g. to say that you're on there, to be searchable etc.

NB: I realise that the walled garden is very restrictive, so your particular apps might not apply, ignoring that, is there any aspect of the deal that appeals to you?

I am considering making distributions for the Mac App Store, yes. But I've had higher priority things on my plate in recent months.

But yes, it could be a net win, or at least an additional channel. The biggest potential net win, in my mind, is that even if my net take home pay per unit is about the same for a Mac App Store sold unit, if it gets exposed to a larger number of eyeballs, the overal revenue stream should be higher. And may be a different, non-overlapping demographic as well. So yes, I am considering it and if it looks like a net win I'l do it. I haven't studied their packaging/platform requirements yet, however. Some of my apps may have technical or content qualities which are disallowed or at least problematic due to their requirements/policies.

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