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Comment by TetOn | Hacker News Reader

Nothing in Apple's recent history suggests this is true. Think of the recent kerfuffle over Final Cut; they had no intention of continuing to sell the older version even though the new one was feature incomplete. It is highly likely that, when it appears, Aperture4 will similarly just replace Aperture3 at approximately the same price point. You can choose to buy the new one or not, but there's no discounted upgrade path.

Based on Shipley's numbers, it would seem that developers wanting to make money long-term on the Mac App Store would be wise to get on the same "lower initial price, but all major upgrades are full price" app model as soon as they can.

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We have yet to see this problem. The switch to FCPX was the first version in the app store. There hasn't been a high priced Apple app that has received a major upgrade via the Mac App Store.

You may be right that they are going to stay at low initial / full price upgrade... I see two issues with that (for Apple).

One, if the upgrade is not major enough to convince people to shell out for it. This fragments their apps ecosystem, and increases the support headache.

Two, how do you carry people forward to the new version. If it's a separate purchase, that means it's a separate bundle, and won't show up as an update when you check for updates in the mac app store. Again causing confusion and fragmentation (you now have FCPX and FCPX.1 on your machine, which one opens that project file?).

Again, I could be wrong, but Apple's current strategy look unsustainable to me.

When Aperture was added to the App Store, it cost the same as the standalone upgrade version, lots less than the full version. That could be a signal that upgrade prices are the new full prices, but we're trying to extract a lot of data from only a few tea leaves.

If the vast majority of your market is upgrading, and the customers for your new product, are by and large the same as the customers for your previous product, then you can simply offer the upgrade price to everyone, without loss of revenue. Indeed, you make it easier for new customers to come on board - so, best of both worlds.

I'm not sure what's wrong with offering major new versions of your product at the upgrade price to everyone (new and existing users alike). Sounds perfectly sustainable.

This may be the "least bad" choice, but it still isn't a good one. Besides the lost revenue from new customers, Wil mentions another important problem: If existing and new customers are charged the same price for an upgrade at least some existing customers are likely to consider it unfair (especially given past practice in the software industry) and to be angry about it.

That may or may not be a rational response. After all, if someone thinks an upgrade is worth $X, why should he or she care whether or not a new customer is getting the same price? On the other hand, a developer demonstrating that they value customer history and loyalty (with a discounted upgrade) is a strong signal that they value the long-term customer relationship. That is something a customer could rationally care about. Either way, the potential for existing customer anger is a problem developers will have to deal with.

Wil's post might also be a pre-emptive strike against potential, future customer anger. After all, if a customer complains that they're not getting a discounted upgrade, he can point them to this post.

Based on my numbers, it’d be great if the Mac App Store changed how it works so small developers can continue to reward their customers.

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