Comment by filmgirlcw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by filmgirlcw | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

As good as Wolf's points are, it doesn't change the fact that more and more Mac developers are starting to shift to a MAS-preferred market.

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.

1Password and Coda are both sold direct — what do you mean by "it's already happened"? A developer big enough to set up a direct payment channel is likely to see it pay for itself through bulk sales and site licenses even if that's the only reason they keep it around.

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.

1Password 4.0 will be Mac App Store exclusive[1]. The only upgrade path available is from 3.9, which only available in Mac App Store.

[1]: http://support.agilebits.com/discussions/1password-in-mac-ap...

Hey all! Friendly neighborhood AgileBits Support personnel here.

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

Thanks for taking your time and clearing things up. Although I'm happy with either decision. :)

Apple should provide the ability to import "legacy users" (Cydia offers this feature, for the record, and it has come in very handy and made the decision to support it much easier for both developers and customers, so I'm not just talking out of my ass without knowing the ramifications of having such).

I don't disagree, but how do you define and identify "legacy users"? Most importantly from Apple's perspective, how do they properly identify "legacy users" who purchased apps from a vendor's site before the App Store launched, vs. users who purchased apps from a vendor's site after the App Store launched.

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.

As has already been discussed ad nauseum, Apple is not bein irritating to get a "30% cut" (which is a bothersome way of describing it as they don't den get 30%: they get what is left over after paying you your 70% cut and then handling their numerous fixed costs with relation to selling your products): they want control over distribution. For more information, read this entire thread.

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).

Apple doesn't care about the distribution of apps. Gatekeeper makes that abundantly clear. Please present a cogent argument that takes that under consideration.

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?

And yet, they have all these free apps...

But it's still dirty and cumbersome and error-prone and they have to assign some staff to this thing... In Steve Jobs's word: "Yuch"!

That is not to say I wouldn't want this. I think it would be wonderful, but I wouldn't bet on it.

"Apple should..." Ha! Apple, as a whole, doesn't care one whit about the way people used to buy Mac software. The App Store, both iOS and Mac, doesn't allow for any sort of nuanced models like timed trials, paid upgrades, package discounts, student discounts, etc. etc.

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.

You can achieve paid upgrades through in-app purchase.

Just a small note here, but Coda 2 is for sale on Panic's website just like previous versions. After some consideration I went with the MAS-option because of iCloud-integration. Being able to easily sync your sites from your computer to your iPad sounded like a nice thing.

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.

Right you are -- I misspoke there. Like you, I opted MAS for Coda 2 for iCloud -- especially since I imagine that'll come in handy for Diet Coda in the future.

I am curious if there are any numbers comparing revenue from direct sales vs MAS sales.

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.

Revenue numbers would be very interesting indeed. I can imagine (small) developers receive more purchases from the Mac App Store compared to their own website, since apps are very easy to find in the MAS.

I'm not willing to give out concrete numbers but, from my experience, that's absolutely the case. Our Mac App Store reveunes far eclipse our own store's revenues. I certainly wouldn't say maintaining and supporting our own store hasn't been worth it – we're able to offer deals and discounts to bulk and educational purchasers that we couldn't on the MAS, thus making us more appealing to those markets – but I'd give up selling on our own store before I ever considered giving up selling on the MAS.

Interesting. Are you willing to share a ballpark ratio of Mac App Store vs web storefront purchases?

I suspect the numbers for a typical app would look something like 5:1 or even higher.

For us, it's more in the 4:1 range, but I suspect you still might be right that many apps see a MAS:private sales ratio of 5+:1.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com