Reading the recent threads about Sublime Text and Atom is making me wonder if there's a blind spot amongst us programmers: What kind of desktop software can one still build and expect to make a living? (It could be for the casual user or tailored for professional use cases).
Notwithstanding that, I recommend to think about a services/product business model more than in selling "millions of units" only. Although a little old now, I recommend Michael Cusumano's work on this [1]. My small company uses (complex) desktop and server software products as a marketing tool for services and support.
Now the question is what is the minimum profit you will accept to make. Is it $ 100k / year, $ 200k or $ 1mm ? From that picture you can deconstruct how many units of your app/service/support you need to sell to be there. As a thumb rule I will say that selling few units for a higher price will be much easier than selling a lot of units for a few dollars. If you want to try, I would recommend start selling to SMB companies who have a budget for this.
Regarding finding ideas, talk to people who have real software problems in their companies.
[1] http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/197_Cusumano_ProdSr...
Lots of programming isn't very visible to outsiders, but it often provides wonderful opportunities. Web and mobile are the trendy career alternatives to the desktop, but there is a whole world beyond that. You might think from Hacker News that all the world is web and mobile, but no no no...
Think of the people writing software for air-to-air missiles. Well OK, it is sort of "mobile", but not in the usual way. These people tend to get paid extra for any overtime and they often get to live in places where houses are affordable.
Think of the people writing software for industrial robots. Sometimes they get to fire lasers. Again, they get to live where houses are affordable.
Think of the people writing software for medical devices, engine controllers, satellite modems, printers (inside the printer), routers, telephone switches, spacecraft, UAVs, hard drives (in the drive itself), commercial HVAC, NSA tools, hospital billing, and so much more.
Fix it. Preferably for less money than buying Macs.
(Note: definitely not saying you're wrong! More saying "hmm, my assumptions are obviously wrong. More info would be very interesting".)
- Even on supposedly "locked down" machines, you'll come around for a support call and find 15 IE toolbars sometimes. It apparently requires a genuine domain expert (which some $100/hour enterprise network consulting firms in the Midwest don't have) to accomplish a seemingly common goal on a Windows domain with Group Policy: only run the software we preinstall for you.
- The infrastructure to automate installation of your Windows image via netboot technically exists, but is expensive (requiring salespeople and resellers) and difficult. Large corporations tend to have it, small-medium ones tend not to. I spent most summers of my adolescence clicking through Windows installers.
- People install (and are exploited by) malware pretty regularly.
- Windows Server and particularly Exchange are dominated by quirky, undocumented behavior on the sysadmin side. You cannot do what seems natural or what it says in the manual - you need a subject matter expert who is experienced in all the ways common admin tasks will break things and how to fix them. Not 1/1000th of the time, more like 1/5th of the time. It also generally requires a business partnership with Microsoft so you have access to real support people. Even they aren't always helpful.
Managing a healthy Windows domain is certainly possible, and lots of big companies do it more or less, but it requires a whole lot of effort, highly experienced people who can "eat" the quirkiness and complexity, and a special relationship with Microsoft.
This might be reasonable for a very large, complex deployment, but it's also required for the simple case of "deliver an office suite and web browser to ~35 computer-illiterate people." I think any modern SaaS company would be appalled to deliver something with UX as poor as Windows for small-medium companies.
I could make a living from my windows installable watermarking software http://www.watermark-image.com (I am kinda, I also run a consultancy and is bootstrapping http://timeblock.com with the reveneu from those two business)
I have been working on it for five years and 5x the revenue after attending MicroConf in europe 2 years ago.
Currently I work on the software and do supports 5-10 hours a month making $4-5k i could probably grow it some more, but is using my energy on TimeBlock.
Also maybe deployment would become easy and secure. Another big web advantage.
So maybe change is coming.
Technologies aiming the enterprise also have an opportunity with desktop software, Slack is a clear example.
Not much opportunities in the consumer tech space for desktop apps.
Personally, I've paid money for the WebStorm IDE, the PyCharm IDE, Sublime, Dash, Paw, Balsamiq, and more. I've bought ready-made UI components, database drivers, etc., and I'm about to start shelling out $4,000+/year for a commercial Qt license even though I could probably get by with Qt's free LGPL version.
And that's just me as an individual; companies are even more willing to spend money on developer tools.
My first thoughts would be video games and CAD.
on the other hand, you can build your game and sell it on Steam with DRM support.
with that I'm sure.
Good Luck!