Releasing Outside The App Store | Hacker News Reader

Releasing Outside The App Store

mattgemmell.com

97 pointsjoao49 comments

Do you want to be a sharecropper? Or do you want to own your own business?

I've had vaguely uncomfortable feelings about the app store concept on phones from the very beginning (and I've commented on those misgivings here on several occasions over the years, to mixed response), and I think all of the concerns I aired back then are coming to be proven to be real problems. When you sell an app via these stores, you don't have a customer...you have a sale. A customer is more valuable to a software developer than a sale by a vast amount. A few thousand customers can sustain a business indefinitely.

Customers can help you make your product better, and you can help your customer get more value out of the application (which means they'll be happy to pay you more). Customers can be rewarded for recommending your application to friends or coworkers. Customers can help support your product in your forums or support tracker. Customers can end up becoming your best employees (our first employee is someone who used our Open Source stuff for years, and was one of our first buyers when we created a commercial product; he's a true believer in what we do). A sale without that direct customer relationship is just a sale.

I have hopes that this is a temporary anomaly in an evolution toward a more open web with more direct connection between developers and users, but I don't have a very high level confidence in that outcome. But, I can encourage folks to not become sharecroppers, I guess.

About 15 years ago, there was a really common sentiment among tech industry titans that curating the web would be where money was made (which led to things like push content, and "portals", which mostly failed, or evolved), and this seems to be that same idea coming back in a new form. But, the curators are simply extracting value from developers and users without substantially improving the ecosystem...in fact, they're kinda bleeding the ecosystem dry, and enforcing a "software-as-commodity" model...it's Walmart applied to software. Which is a pretty dangerous situation, I think, for independent software developers, and probably only serves the largest corporations.

That's a good point, but I think you're actually conflating two independent factors.

All else being equal, I wouldn't like working so that I can be shut down by another company at their whim. Nobody would.

But at the same time, I can get "customers" from App Store sales. Whether you develop your sales into customers is entirely independent of whether your work is hosted (and veto-able) by someone else.

For example, I bought an app on the App Store, and found a nasty bug in it, and so I sent an email to them. I got a personalized response, and started a dialog with the programmer. I've reported many issues and requested some features, was given a pre-release beta to test, and after a few weeks, the next release had my bug fixed. A "sharecropper" under Apple, perhaps, but earned my trust, and I'll buy from them again if I have the chance.

On the other hand, I have in the past bought software in a cardboard box from a store. The publisher wasn't under anybody's thumb, and I'm sure they were happy about this fact. But it was nearly impossible to give any feedback to them, and when I did, I never saw any of it included in any future release. Owned their own business, but made a one-time sale and definitely not a repeat customer.

So, I agree there is some conflation going on, but it's based on the way Apple is doing business in the app store. I didn't cause the issues to become conflated, Apple did.

Given your example:

'A "sharecropper" under Apple, perhaps, but earned my trust, and I'll buy from them again if I have the chance.'

That's the problem. You won't have another chance, unless the developer makes a new product. The store doesn't allow for purchase of upgrades or renewals of service. It is a one-time purchase and the purchase price has been driven down to insanely low levels; which is fine for one-off games, but unsustainable for large applications that need ongoing maintenance, bugfixes, enhancements, etc. to provide a great customer experience.

The ideal experience for both customer and developer for complex software is often one of constantly increasing value, in exchange for fair payment. It doesn't have to be a traditional "upgrade every year" model...it can be a subscription style service, where you pay a fixed, fair, amount, and get updates every couple of months.

And, I'm definitely not campaigning for a return to boxed software in stores, as it has all the problems of the app store, plus many more. That was a tradition imposed by technical limitations. There was no good way to deliver software without boxing it up and shipping it out. That hasn't been the case for well over a decade. Nobody should be delivering software in boxes, today, as far as I'm concerned.

"Do you want to be a sharecropper?"

Beautifully put.

Look at this way. Apple is not the first and last company to make a device that will function as a "phone". Or as an MP3 player.

How are they going to stop people from 3D printing their own cool casings? And from using free open source code that is the same or better as what Apple uses? With lawyers? It's not going to work.

For now Apple is riding high. But it won't last forever. Apple needs developers, as in the ones who do not work for Apple and can speak freely. Just like Microsoft needed developers in the 90's. They hired as many as they could and flooded the developer ecosystem with a gazillion closed API's and an easy peasy IDE. Strange as it may seem, these companies need you in order to stay competitive.

While we're on the subject of helpful deployment software, MarsEdit's Daniel Jalkut has an article about crash reporting for Mac apps on his blog:

http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/860/crash-reporter-roundup

I haven't yet tried any of his suggestions, and since the article is from 2009, I don't know how much has changed.

In any case, from experience on other platforms, I heartily recommend making crash reporting straightforward (1-click, or even opt-in to 0-click) for users. Once you have a few hundred people using your software, "rare" crashes happen all the time and tracking them down can be much easier than with just your internal testing.

Note that OSX's built-in crash reports go to Apple, not the App developer, so they're not much use to those of us outside the Cupertino ivory tower.

An option for automatically uploading crash dumps is http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/ - it's what Chromium and Firefox use.

I wrote up my experiences on releasing outside of the App Store: http://writing.markchristian.org/2012/03/30/make-your-own-ap...

I use Stripe for payment processing with a custom in-app UI for buying the app. Stripe has been great — they charge 50c+2.9%, so I lose about 44c per copy of DragonDrop sold (versus losing about $1.50 to Apple in the App Store).

I suggest releasing in the App Store if possible, but selling independently, too. The whole thing took about a day to set up and has been totally automatic since then.

Stripe is $0.30 + 2.9%, not $0.50 + 2.9%.

You're right; thanks for the correction. I was giving the figures from my faulty memory. :)

My app is $4.99, so I net $4.55 from each copy sold independently, and $3.50 from each copy sold from Apple. That's a substantial bump.

Hey Mark, any chance you could break down your sales percentages for us? How many are coming via the Mac App Store vs. your website?

As of August 21st, I've sold 5.9% of my copies through my independent store. This includes a few weeks at the beginning where the app wasn't available on the App Store at all.

The App Store utterly dominates.

However, I still think it's good to have your own release path as well, because it gives you a bit more courage to argue with Apple when you need to. :)

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I am under the impression that by selling outside the app store, you revoke the contract you have with Apple.

Without this contract, wouldn't simple use of any API involve infringement? Aren't you opening yourself up here to actual serious issues?

You're thinking of iOS. On the Mac, you can distribute apps out-of-band, although you still need to pay Apple for the digital signature, or else your app won't run on a default Mountain Lion installation.

Ah my mistake! I wonder if this will persist.

"...You can’t offer paid upgrades. The App Store model is “buy once, get free upgrades forever”, which is of course tantamount to encouraging disposable software (and support practices)..."

And this is recently one of the culprits why mobile app developers are struggling financially; so it seems to be a big factor.

I found this a very helpful article. In particular the thing which scares me the most is always the thought of Having to deal with people's money, and so it is really nice to see someone talk about how they did it, and and how easy it was.

I've had FastSpring recommended by others as well and I am planning to use that service. Having dealt with accepting payment via PayPal I can only say: never again - they still owe me money, but I eventually gave up after I spent days trying to chase it down.

For what it's worth, I really recommend Stripe. It took me about two hours to write my home-built store using it, and I plan on using it on a new project soon.

I'm already signed up to be notified when it becomes available to use in Europe. Until it does, FastSpring certainly seems good enough (and defers the effort of setting up a non-static website to handle purchases, which is worth a fair bit to me as well).

It's true you can't offer things called "paid upgrades" or "demo versions", but with In-App Purchases, you can mostly get around this. For example, make your app free, and make some key feature an IAP -- that's basically a demo version. Or when you make a big new version, make the key new feature of the upgrade an IAP, so new users have to pay base+feature, while existing users only have to pay for that feature.

I happen to like these: I love being able to try something out before I buy, so "free + IAP" looks great to me. But there are a lot of people who must think that "free" means "everything free, for all time", and when they discover a core feature costs 99c, they go and leave a 1-star review. So you have to tread carefully.

Another option is to make a free demo version, and just dump it on your own webpage. It's not as discoverable as the App Store, but if people learn about your app and go looking, it's not too hard to find. A demo probably has minimal needs for the things the App Store provides (like licensing, purchasing, and updating), anyway.

Here is a personal experience on what it can be like as a customer of a product available both in the MAS and outside it.

A while ago, I tried the Fantastical trial, and when I used the purchase link, I was immediately prompted to a credit card payment screen. I paid and bought the software, and all was fine and well.

But later on, I learn that the software was also available in the MAS - something Fantastical didn't really bother explaining to me. When I contacted them for any kind of refund (to be used to purchase the app in MAS), I was told that they couldn't accommodate that since a lot of other users have requested the same thing - which already seems like a weird way of thinking.

They price the software in both places the same - meaning they earn more money, if people don't by it in the MAS, and I felt the entire experience to be very deceptive.

All in all, a really bad experience that I can't recommend any developer to imitate, as it does nothing to inspire customer loyalty. Especially when the developer has a financial incentive to not addressing the issue. At least from my limited perception as a non-Mac developer.

Again, this is the impression you get as a customer. I'm not saying this is the intent, but perception is reality in the real of customer experience.

Consider this another con to double-dipping, if you intend to do something similar.

What exactly is the issue? You paid the same price and gave developers more money. Sounds like a good deal to me.

I assume the OP wanted the added value of MAS account association. Which is actually and interesting issue also, because he would gain that benefit on top of the software and the retailer would loose (30%-%otherpayementprogram) + service charge from previous vendor in revenue. That is an expensive customer service call.

Not really an response just a comment.

While I have no clue whether it applies to the mac app store, the ios app store has rules that you can't sell subscriptions for a lower price outside the appstore compared to the prices inside (where apple takes 30% of a cut). So that might be a reason why they're not undercutting the mac app store?

https://developer.apple.com/appstore/in-app-purchase/subscri...

So, you wanted them to refund you so you could buy it again in the MAS and they would end up with 30% less money? Why would any business agree to that?

You still get the same software, you paid the same amount, and they probably have an update mechanism (the only real difference between the versions is keeping your license key).

I can't see how you can be annoyed about this. If you really cared you could have spent a few minutes extra on the site to check if they supported the Mac App Store.

When buying other items, do you expect to pay less when you pay in cash? After all, the retailer is making more money by avoiding credit card handling fees.

Many merchants offer a discount for paying in cash or charge a fee for using a credit card for small purchases. The only reason such practices are not ubiquitous is that they violate the merchant agreement.

Many do, yes. For those that don't – the majority – I'm curious if pessimism finds their actions as distasteful as he found Flexibits', the authors of Fantastical.

Personally, I find nothing wrong with their actions. pessimism was never purposefully mislead about how Fantastical was being sold, and it's perfectly reasonable for Flexibits to charge the same price in both venues even though they have larger margins in one.

It is very common for gas stations to list a credit and cash price, but this depends on the state.

As a developer in the same boat, I can say I'd love to give users the ability to migrate licenses, even if it means losing a little bit of money for their happiness. Unfortunately Apple only provides 50 promo codes per version, and they aren't intended to be used for this purpose. I'd send feedback to Apple asking that they change their App Store/policies to support this.

I was under the impression that you couldn't install onto a non jailbroken iPhone/iPad without going through apple ( either App Store/AdHoc/Enterprise). This gives me hope that I am significantly wrong on that which would make my life much easier.

Can someone confirm that?

This article is about the Mac App Store. On iOS you must use the App Store to distribute apps (without jailbreak).

Thanks, that makes better sense.

How do I install apps from out side the app store? Doesn't it require the phone to be in developer mode or something like that? So why is it even worth investigating if its possible or worth the effort? What am I missing?

He's talking about Mac OSX apps, not iOS apps.

It's a Mac app., not an iOS one.

To release on iOS (which is not the major market any more btw) outside of the App Store consider Cydia. There's millions of jailbroken devices now and the Cydia store app is included in the process.

I just moved into a new house and the lawn needed to be mowed and all that, so one of my roommates made a deal with the neighbor and his kids came over to do the lawn. I went out to see if they needed anything, and I got talking with one of them. He asked me what I did and I told him I'm a programmer, and he asked me if I knew anything about jailbreaking iPods. I was completely and utterly flabergasted; I'd worked on jailbreaks back with the original iPhone and simply couldn't believe that a kid of maybe 9 or 10 in the middle of CT with non-techie parents actually knew about such things. Really speaks to how big jailbreaks and the like are these days.

Well it is the best thing if you want to play cracked games.

Gaming. I had hacked my Sony PSP back when those were a new thing, and finding information on the process was tantamount to wading through half written forums posts from 10 year olds. Few people knew what they were talking about, it was often wrong or warned you about the wrong things, lots of people bricked their PSPs, but the prospect of free games lured in all the kids with no real income to try it. People who want jailbreaks for free games without knowing what it really entails.

Since iOS has become a huge gaming platform, it's no surprise that same PSP/NDS piracy consumer demographic has made the leap as well.

iOS users continue to purchase more apps, and pay for more expensive apps, than their Android counterparts, despite the gulf in overall sales and user figures:

http://www.distimo.com/blog/2011_12_distimo-releases-full-ye...

In 2011 iPad app revenues alone topped Android Market revenues by a significant margin.

edit: some more recent sources: http://www.appannie.com/game-of-phones/

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/85911/App-Developers-Signal-Apple... "Running a comparison of revenue generated by top apps on both iOS and Android, Flurry calculates that the difference in revenue generated per active user is still 4 times greater on iOS than Android. For every $1.00 a developer earns on iOS, he can expect to earn about $0.24 on Android. These results mirror earlier findings from similar analysis Flurry conducted in Q4 of 2011 and Q1 of 2012."

This has no place in this discussion and you are the first to mention Android.

OP remarked that iOS is no longer the major market for app store developers, implying that some other mobile platform is. If not Android, what else would it be?

Probably Cydia as the OP stated.

The Cydia Store is also a much smaller community, which means that your new application is almost guaranteed to be noticed if it brings something cool to the table.

The piracy rates are high, just as with anywhere, but you can still make very good money on the Cydia Store, from personal experience (http://kramerapps.com/cydia/).

so.. is the app store more profitable or is selling software yourself better?

Great article! I have a question for you guys. Just today, in the past few hours, we are now featured on the App Store. Since we have made the decision to put an emphasis on that release - how would you go about sustaining the momentum from that channel? http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/14/quilt-launch/

I don't believe this has anything to do with the article, which is discussing the Mac App Store.

My apologies - conradev. My reason for posting was that people on this article are interested in app distribution. I have no experience in the Mac App Store, and was hoping to both learn something from the Mac discussion and piggyback off of anyone else's AppStore experience. Je m'excuse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com