Hacker News Reader

Comment by _mlbt | Hacker News Reader

I see that this software is available for direct sale, the Mac App Store, and through Set App. What is your revenue breakdown from each if you don’t mind sharing?

View on HN

It's a bit too soon to tell reliably, since I've shipped v3 as a new app and it hasn't settled down yet. For v2 it used to be 60% App Store and the remainder direct/Setapp. So far for v3 it is approximately 60% direct, 25% App Store and 15% Setapp.

This is a bit of a shift, but the numbers aren't really stable yet so it's hard to tell if it'll stay there.

Thanks for offering this app outside of the App Store too. Why don't you support older versions of macOS though? Does this app really rely on any new macOS APIs that it has to be built only for macOS 15+?

One of the things I found limiting in previous versions was supporting older versions of macOS. I’ve decided this time round to only try to support the latest and previous versions. Since the release of Tahoe is probably quite soon, I’m starting with just macOS 15 and will support that and macOS 26 to start.

From what I have observed, apps built for macOS Mojave (64-bits) or macOS Catalina all work fine on the latest versions of macOS. So I guess you must be hampered with App Store requirements ...

Apple frequently introduces new APIs that enable new functionality or make things easier and more maintainable. Also, testing software on older operating systems creates additional work. Unlike other OSes, macOS puts several limitations on running it under a VM, so in some cases you have to boot the OS up on real hardware. If you don't have 5 or 6 old Macs laying around this means setting up multi boot. There are also limitations on which versions the latest Xcode can target.

I understand. In this particular case, I am making an assumption that they aren't really using any new OS API's (this is, after all, a reasonably simple app) in which case they could just build and test on macOS Mojave or Catalina (the minimum OS version) and the latest macOS Whatever (the maximum OS version, for the APP store). As I highlighted, most older apps run without issue on newer macOS versions, and so that is a reasonable assumption to make and forego testing on all versions. Then, only if you get some bug report on some particular version, you can test for that ... (as you pointed out, the best approach - testing on all versions - can be very resource intensive, and this can be a practical middle-way approach for an independent developer).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com