A Mac developer asked people to guess how much money he made from it | Hacker News Reader

A Mac developer asked people to guess how much money he made from it

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18 pointsEnindu3 comments

It is interesting how he can be so highly ranked with so few downloads. How is that?

The Mac App Store is a complete failure for both users and developers.

I've had several apps there, and it's been mostly a loss. The process of "sandboxing" an app for the Store can be time-consuming. Because of the limited APIs, users often have to put up with functional deficiencies compared to a regular Mac app distributed outside the Store. (Of course Apple's own apps on the Mac App Store don't suffer these limitations.)

Then there are the other fundamental issues like lack of paid upgrades. I can't recommend the Mac App Store to anyone.

I've got to agree. I've bought a few apps from the Mac App Store but only because they didn't offer direct sales. I've seen a number of apps leave the MAS because of sandboxing issues and other limitations. Also the MAS is littered with shit, pure shit. Let's take a look at the developer section and it's top 5 paid apps

Picture: https://s.joshstrange.com/WsjR.png

1. Asset Catalog Creator - One of a billion image resizing apps in the MAS

2. PaintCode 2 - I've heard good things about this but at $100 I'm going to need a demo/trial which, of course, is only available on their website (and behind an email-wall)

3. FlashFTP - Looks half-way decent but if I'm looking for free FTP/SFTP I'm going to use Filezilla and if I'm going paid I'm using Transmit by Panic

4. Paw (HTTP & Rest Client) - I've heard good things about this app but have been using Postman (Chrome bundled app) just fine and that's free and cross platform of which Paw is neither

5. JSON Editor - I'm not even going to start on this one. Tons of online tools to do this but at $2 it's not too bad I guess

So of the top 5, 3 of them have free online alternatives, one more or less requires a demo (Who throws away $100 without trying first), and the last is one in a sea of apps that do the same thing. That last point is the most damning IMHO, there are hundreds of apps that all do the same "FTP/SFTP", "JSON/XML/ect Editor", "Asset Management", "HTTP Request GUI", "Shitty tunnelling GUI", and the list goes on.

It's also worth mentioning that the OS X apps I use DAILY are NOT on the MAS:

* SequelPro

* Bartender^^

* Hyperdock^^

* PHP/WebStorm

* Alfred

* Caffeine^^

* Stay^^

Programs with "^^" after them cannot be on the MAS due to sandboxing and limitations yet they've saved me a ton of time and made my Mac even more pleasant to use every day. Note this is only a small list of what I use all the time.

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