Mac App Store vs Buying Direct
rentzsch.tumblr.com
rentzsch.tumblr.com
At this stage, even though I would rather buy most of my apps direct from developers, I'm often half-afraid to do that because of the inevitable "what happens when they shift to MAS-only" question arises.
It's already happened with 1Password, Coda 2, Pixelmator and a number of my other favorite Mac apps -- it's hard, as an end-user, to support the old regime when maintaining two separate software branches continues to be a PITA for developers.
And that's the real problem. Developers retain two branches because they want to offer customers options (as well as legacy support for regular pre-MAS releases), but most of the Mac developers who are both selling direct and in the MAS are seeing much more income from MAS. If forced to choose, I can't imagine a developer picking the option that gets in front of fewer customers.
Still, there are some very, very real concerns for Mac software due to the new Sandboxing rules. Fortunately, now that the deadline has passed, we'll actually get to see just how bad it is.
If Apple allowed vendors to import any user as a "legacy user", then that's a clear and supported way for vendors to get around Apple's 30% cut.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4037065
As for how you do it, in practice 99% of licensing schemes are based either on "serial number", "mac address", "license key given to user and typed into app", or a combination of such. While some people then can't import still, almost everyone can, and that is enough to be game-changing.
Note: you don't even need to allow this list to e changed after you import the product if you are still concerned about a "30% cut". (Though, Cydia does allow this, and even fully automates it by way of a backend licensing API vendors can implement to take control of the purchasing process, and in practice vendors that start using this mostly use it as a temporary measure and eventually just switch over entirely).
That is not to say I wouldn't want this. I think it would be wonderful, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Apple, however, doesn't want to be on the hook for maintaining and supporting and spending bandwidth on users who haven't given them a cent. I can't blame them. Again, I'd love to be granted the ability to bless "legacy users" into the Mac App Store, but I also don't understand why Apple has any incentive to ever allow me to do so. It costs them money and resources, with absolutely no benefit in return.
Why do you think they have an incentive?
I think this is a overreaction to unregulated markets where merchants are constantly playing pricing games. As a consumer, it feels unfair when different people pay different prices depending on what hoops they've jumped through. However, Apple's approach feels unfair to me too, particularly the lack of trials and paid upgrades. I feel that this pushes everything towards "disposable" software rather than products that could grow over many revisions supported by upgrade from their users.
We'll see if I'll come to regret it in the future, but it would be nice if Apple allows app-developers who get crippled by future restrictions to offer their users a licensecode for the non-MAS-version as a replacement.
I'd also dispute your last point that we'll be able to clearly see the effects — despite the continued ability to sell direct (Developer ID looks like a great thing), sandboxing as Apple's chosen to implement it is going to result in fewer apps, not merely worse ones.
[1]: http://support.agilebits.com/discussions/1password-in-mac-ap...
This was previously true. However, we've not determined that for sure at this point. Users spoke, we listened. 1Password 4 is still a ways away and we'll determine whether it goes MAS exclusive sometime closer to release.
That said, nothing is ever set in stone with AgileBits. We do after all have Agile in our company name. :)
Our goal is to try to make our customers happy. We did make the MAS version cheaper upon introduction for users to make the transition a little easier. The pricing was roughly equivalent to what an upgrade would cost from our direct store.
We would also love to see a way to transition users to the App Store from our Direct Sales, but as you all know, Apple doesn't provide a mechanism for this.
We do always welcome users to comment and offer their comments and suggestions. This isn't the place to do that, but feel free to voice your opinions and suggestions (politely please, we are human after all) at our support site: http://support.agilebits.com
I'll do my best to follow up here, but due to a busy day here I may be a bit slow. Best to contact our support site directly where on duty support can assist you more quickly.
Kyle Swank AgileBits Support
I sell a Mac App exclusively via the MAS and have occasionally considered adding a direct sales option to our website, but the extra overhead of adding a secondary licensing scheme to the app, a web store front, processing payments, and dealing with sales support doesn't seem like it would be worth it.
I suspect the numbers for a typical app would look something like 5:1 or even higher.
Because we're able to offer bulk and/or educational purchase discounts through our own store, we see a fair number of licenses move through that vector. Other apps might not appeal to bulk and educational markets as much.
This article seems heavily biased towards the app developer's interests. Is it really better/safer for everyday customers to use non-sandboxed apps?
Apple is working hard to provide a secure and still fully functional system. Some things will break, undoubtedly. Some apps will be abandoned, either because of legitimate technical limitations Apple refuses to address, or because of political stances taken by the apps' developer. Things aren't perfect right now, and Apple still needs to continue refining and enhancing the OS X sandbox.
Is it as clear-cut as Rentzsch makes it out to be, though? Absolutely not. In fact, I think he takes a very biased stance in this article. For the vast majority of users, sandboxing is an enormous step forward for the safety and security of their data and system. For that reason alone, I encourage everyone to purchase apps via the App Store. It's a safe and trusted distribution vector that is now helping improve OS X's platform security. That's an enormous benefit to almost all consumers.
(And I say all of this as a developer who's having to wrangle with the sandbox right now.)
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Misce...
Assuming that they'll be available indefinitely strikes me as a willful mistake.
You clearly haven't heard about this new 'iOS'...
iOS, for all of it's failings and deficiencies, still offers one of the finest – if not the finest – development and distribution platforms in the world.
Yes, it's not open. Yes, it's restrictive. Yes, it's censored.
But, perhaps, those qualities are some qualities that make it the most successful software sales vector we've ever seen.
I agree it's not perfect. But to say it's not developer friendly is quite disingenuous. The iOS development toolchain is actually quite powerful and flexible (though still faulty), the distribution mechanism is broad and simple (though restrictive and censoring), and I can't think of a single other platform, including the web, that has been as developer friendly. At least for developers who wish to make an income. (Something about which I admit, without any bit of judgement, some developers aren't concerned.)
How friendly is a company that uses secret APIs to compete with you? How friendly is a company that rips off your software and then kicks you out of their app store? Gimme a break...
There is a command-line tool to list an app's entitlements, but it's not at all easy to use, or even find. I haven't found a way to determine the entitlements of an App Store app without installing it (and hence, paying for it, if it's not free). I expect that basically no users will ever look at this. It's a bit like the device in Dr. Strangelove: the whole point is that you're supposed to tell people!
In a perfect world, Apple wouldn't approve an app for the App Store which did something nasty (like upload the user's address book to a spammer), but it's impossible for them to catch everything even if they never made a mistake. Besides, every entitlement has legitimate uses.
Security is helped by transparency. It would be great if users could see what sandboxed apps are allowed to do. They can't, and at worst this makes users feel safer without actually being safer.
This would get you about half of his "buy non-sandboxed apps directly" advantages (More/Faster Updates, Less Risk, More Money), while still offering the user the advantages of the sandbox (e.g., I can see that a graphics program I downloaded only uses the entitlement "com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-write" and thus can't open network connections behind my back).
I have always an up-to-date image of my Macs created and updated each night with Carbon Copy Cloner (before that, I use SuperDuper!). In case of a problem with any of my Macs, I can simply boot from the image on another Mac and continue to work. If I cannot fix the problem, I copy the image to the respective Mac or a new Mac …
Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC): http://www.bombich.com/ SuperDuper!: http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
In the Mac App Store, prices in non-USD currencies don't compare favorably with the original price in USD due to the exchange rates Apple uses. If you can still buy an app directly from the developer in USD, the price is usually less than in another currency. In many cases, the difference in pricing is substantial and the developer gets more from the paid prices anyway.
For what it's worth I have also bought Divvy directly so I don't know what you mean when you say you "won't receive updates" for it.