Hacker News Reader

Comment by unityByFreedom | Hacker News Reader

> They pretend with a straight face like it was somehow impossible to sell software or reach customers before their magical store made it happen.

I never heard them claim it but speaking as a developer it's obvious that Apple was a driving force here. Sellable desktop software became obsolete due to piracy. Everything is server-based now. Mobile apps, particularly on iOS, is the only place where the general public consistently buys client software. Most people don't want cracked apps on their devices, and they want secure, privacy-focused phones. Apple has had that focus for years.

View on HN

Phrased differently you'll find these kind of statements in the testimonies by Apple execs in the Epic case. On the other hand your claim that:

>Sellable desktop software became obsolete due to piracy.

Is unfounded. Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine. What people want is fair prices and easy availability, which is the business model of every digital store since itunes.

> Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine.

Popular ones require an internet connection, and license authentication piggybacks on that. Blizzard and the original WoW's were among the first to do this successfully and the trend continues. Prior to that, people would either crack software and/or refuse remote connections for games that didn't require internet in order to avoid paying for and licensing them.

> What people want is fair prices and easy availability

And developers and investors want to be able to securely sell software. Apple's store provides ease of use along with a secure platform that users trust.

Games have used a form of content protection since the 80s. It's not a new thing. We traded code wheels to CD keys to online activation. Most games actually DON'T require an active internet connection, they require an online activation at install and then they can be played offline. With digital downloads it's basically moot and games can still be pirated anyways. Some big titles like the Witcher 3 are actually entirely DRM free.

Steam is a marketplace that gives developers and investors a place to securely sell software and is easy for consumers to use and have fair prices. And it doesn't require users to give up all control of their PC to the manufacturer. Nor do all purchases have to flow through Valve.

And Steam as a game store predates the App Store by a few years too.

That wasn’t true for iTunes where copying MP3s was trivial. Of course theirs still piracy, but why did the DRM-free Witcher 3 make millions of dollars? Your argument just doesn’t hold up with real life data.

SaaS and subscriptions are more prevalent and successful than software that does not require a remote connection. When client software sells well it's an exception.

Music was completely different. The RIAA was suing pirates for thousands of dollars, and Apple provided both a store and great hardware for their product. People cheered them on for finally convincing the music industry to make content digitally available. It turns out all people wanted was easy access. And now for things that could be desktop software, we have subscriptions, memberships, etc.

> Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine.

I don't know anyone who's bought a PC/Mac game from anywhere that isn't an App Store in the past 5 years. Steam is a juggernaut, and so is Microsoft for that matter.

>Is unfounded. Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine.

On Stream, the App Store, console stores, and other similar plaforms.

There's piracy, sure, but I'm not losing 30% of sales due to it.

I currently run a freemium software business just fine for Windows and macOS. Just sign the code for Windows, notorize it on macOS and sell it through a service I use called Paddle that handles payment, international sales tax and licensing for about 6%.

> Sellable desktop software became obsolete due to piracy.

This is almost certainly not true. If anything hurt selling desktop apps, it was Apples policies encouraging dirt cheap apps on the App Store that then led to customer expectations of the cost of apps dropping dramatically.

There were recent stories about how software shops like Panic are going back to selling only desktop apps and ending their iOS apps.

If anything, the technology to prevent piracy had only gotten significantly better by the time ios came out, and companies were doing just fine even before.

How did they encourage dirt cheap apps?

> Most people don't want cracked apps on their devices, and they want secure, privacy-focused phones

I agree - but apple fails on this point.

You should be able to protect your own phone. You should be able to install a firewall or further sandboxing, functions that the app store prohibit.

This is really simple:

- You should be able to find out what an app is doing - you should know what sites an app contacts - you should be able to block this - you should be able to block apple itself

This is so common sense yet not possible using apple's app store.

Err, I think you'll find plenty of people still spending heaps of cash on games than run localy on PC, which is where all the money is in the App Store too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com