Mac App Store Update Pricing

[iScience]

What does the new Mac App Store mean for all those shareware apps? If I am not mistaken, iPhone/iPad apps offer their upgrades for free, so users pay once and then receive all further updates automatically. This does not sound like a very sustainable business model, as you cannot make repeat business with happy existing customers and are forced into acquiring new ones, no matter how large your existing user base is.

Will Mac Apps on the store be forced to follow this same model of offering all future upgrades for free to existing customers and hence maybe having to release a "new" app to cash in on any major upgrade (i.e. from version 1.3 to 2.0).

[dejo]

Originally Posted by iScience

Will Mac Apps on the store be forced to follow this same model of offering all future upgrades for free to existing customers and hence maybe having to release a "new" app to cash in on any major upgrade (i.e. from version 1.3 to 2.0).

That's how I would envision things working. And it's happened like this before in the App Store, so why not?

[iVoid]

iOS Apps are pay once and updates are free...

Of the same app.

Developers just release a 'new' app when they want to charge for an app.

So instead of
iFlashlight 1.0
iFlashlight 2.0
iFlashlight 3.0

We get:
iFlashlight 1.0
iFlashstrobe 1.0
iFlashbulb 1.0

I imagine the same will happen to these apps.

Great for monetizing simple little apps, but bigger more expensive apps will be sold as they are now.

[iScience]

Originally Posted by dejo

That's how I would envision things working. And it's happened like this before in the App Store, so why not?

It just seems weird to have to release an entirely new app for each major upgrade with no user reviews directly attached to it. Does releasing a new app for a version 2 also entail a more thorough review by Apple than for a minor upgrade? And do users looking at my "brandnew" version 2 need to look for previous versions to find reviews of it by other users? Doesn't seem as elegant a solution like the traditional model.

Originally Posted by iVoid

iOS Apps are pay once and updates are free...

Of the same app.

Developers just release a 'new' app when they want to charge for an app.

So instead of
iFlashlight 1.0
iFlashlight 2.0
iFlashlight 3.0

We get:
iFlashlight 1.0
iFlashstrobe 1.0
iFlashbulb 1.0

I imagine the same will happen to these apps.

Great for monetizing simple little apps, but bigger more expensive apps will be sold as they are now.

Wow, I didn't know that was how it worked. Doesn't seem right to me. Developers should be able to directly monetize major updates to their work. I don't understand why the app store doesn't include upgrade pricing, if and when developers choose to charge like that. Sure, it saves a little bit on implementation complexity for the app store and is less to think about for end users/customers, but I don't see how anyone would actually benefit from this little saving.

[Brien]

I'm hoping that both App Stores support upgrade pricing.

[smithrh]

I also very much want to see the ability to keep past versions alive and available.

There's far too much history across all platforms and OSs of failed upgrades and needing to go back to what you had before.

Heck, there's also the issue of reduced functionality in newer releases.