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Mac App Store Very Promising But With Restrictions

Now, for this week only, we have lowered our price on the App Store by 80%. Purchase MS Windows by the 15th and enjoy an 80% savings...

Seriously, I wonder if the Mac app store will get the attention of the justice department ???
 
I'll just be a horrible person and say that I would much rather get all of my software in one place than to search around the internet for it like I do now. Sure choice is great, but sometimes it's a pain in the butt - I don't care where I download something, I just want it to be easy and quick. It's nice to finally have a central location for this.
 
A Mac App store is a great thing to begin with. And we can be sure that Apple will never ever restrict developers to distribute here, not in near future anyway.
 
tdmurphy said:
Several people have said that the App Store is wonderful for developers too because it will make it easier for people to find your apps, install them, you won't have to deal with bandwidth. However, I think 30% is simply too much. I design applications myself, and I work on apps for weeks. It feels wrong for Apple to basically say they are doing a third of the work. I think something along the lines of 5%, for bandwidth costs and the review process, would be more appropriate.
Click to expand...

If you think you can sell the over 70% as many of your apps from your own web site as from the App store, then go ahead with the marketing model that's more appropriate for you.

For some small developers, Apple will be doing over 90+% of the work just by sticking the app's icon on iTunes, because a lot of customers would never hear about or buy an app from an unknown developer with an unknown web site.

If that's you, that means that Apple's less than 30 seconds of work plunking it in their store is far more valuable than your weeks of work in terms of actually creating revenue. Deal with it.
 
I don't like the vision of the future this presents

Superdrive said:
This is a big deal because Grandma and Joe iPhone user who are new to the Mac, now have a place to find apps just like they are used to doing with their phone.

Most MacRumors users can still download their power user apps from wherever they want to. Now, there is another easy option for users.
Click to expand...

I hope that remains true for many years. I do not like the vision of a future where all apps must be approved by Apple (or any one company) Just because they can't lock out arbitrary 3rd party apps on OSX now doesn't mean they won't be able to 3 or 4 OS generations farther along. As long as the Mac App Store remains optional (in the sense that you can install any app yourself, not in the sense that you can choose to never install anything) then I'm okay with it.
 
What would Apple do if lets say another company decided to create their own store, and give something like 88 - 95% of the profits to the developers? Lets say it becomes more successful. Would Steve want to block them out of OSX?
 
Seriously, I wonder if the Mac app store will get the attention of the justice department ???
Click to expand...
I don't think they enforce those types of laws anymore (at least not in the United States); after all, they are way, way too busy sending SWAT teams to bust drug offenders and trying to prevent gay people from getting married.

What would Apple do if lets say another company decided to create their own store, and give something like 88 - 95% of the profits to the developers? Lets say it becomes more successful. Would Steve want to block them out of OSX?
Click to expand...
I think you know the answer to that question already.
 
inlovewithi said:
What would Apple do if lets say another company decided to create their own store, and give something like 88 - 95% of the profits to the developers? Lets say it becomes more successful. Would Steve want to block them out of OSX?
Click to expand...

http://appbodega.com/

I don't want to argue about it's success, but it is fair to say that a non-preloaded app store has many disadvantages when every 10.7+ user gets the official app store in their face.
 
For those who are concerned about Mac OS going to a closed architecture like iOS, remember that Apple still has to compete with Microsoft and Google. Closing off the development at this point would be like shooting themselves in the head. They could kiss the 10% market share they have goodbye. As it is, I would wager that a good portion of the Android users are people that are choosing Android because it's not the closed iOS model. Which will ultimately win out in the mobile world still has yet to be seen, but mobile devices have been closed since long before Apple was involved. Ever try syncing a Verizon phone with iTunes for instance? As for the desktop until Windows has a closed architecture, I really don't see Apple locking down the Mac OS.
 
tdmurphy said:
Several people have said that the App Store is wonderful for developers too because it will make it easier for people to find your apps, install them, you won't have to deal with bandwidth. However, I think 30% is simply too much. I design applications myself, and I work on apps for weeks. It feels wrong for Apple to basically say they are doing a third of the work. I think something along the lines of 5%, for bandwidth costs and the review process, would be more appropriate.

I think a lot of the amount is Apple being greedy, and I think people might rebel. I know I wont buy an app from the App Store when I can buy it from the developer's website and really reward them for their work. I don't think Apple deserves $3 of a $10 app. Devs might start imposing an "Apple tax" where the App Store version of their app is more expensive to compensate, or they just wont submit their apps at all. People might start putting a badge on their page that says "This app is NOT available in the App Store".

And Apple, what will this lead to? Fragmentation. You had a chance to give the world a really beautiful unified system, and I feel like you are trying to get too much out of it.
Click to expand...

Wow weeks huh? You really must develop some amazing apps.

Perhaps when you grow into more functional applications and work on marketing them and getting them to people and selling them to support you and your family, you will find 30% for what Apple provides, is not that much.

Not to mention given the nature of software, having them take 30% and provide a massive increase in sales, is potential huge increase in revenue/income for some/many developers.

Weeks lol.

Can you list some of the apps you have made and where you sell them currently?
 
Mac App store is good - for N00bs who haven't a clue about computers... and generally, a store is an 'easy' place to find new software for all users.

However, Apple need to improve the search because as is on the IOS store, software gets 'lost' in the 1000s of other apps.

Also, I'm concerned that this is a stepping stone to locking down OSX - Apple would love nothing more than a locked down OSX - it will mean less security issues for one, which impacts existing software, such as software that relies on kernel extensions.. ( which isn't necessarily a bad thing ).

Apple may say they will "never" lock down OSX, or have no plans to do so. However, "never" doesn't mean never - for Apple or any other company out there.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
Maybe they invent a sandbox for kernel extensions, so that they can allow all applications, which use/must use kernel extensions.
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That sandbox has already been invented. It's called user space. It's precisely because some types of software have to manipulate resources beyond the confines of the sandbox that kernel extensions exist. Unfortunately they can also crash the OS. That comes with the territory.

By the way, I was being sarcastic in case you missed it.

Anyway, I welcome the new app store. It will be interesting to see where it's going. I almost never install anything not present in a package manager on Linux but the fact that Apple takes a rather large chunk of the profits makes it quite a different setting. If it becomes a success it will one day contain millions of applications which means that companies will still need to do their own PR.
 
Stella said:
However, Apple need to improve the search because as is on the IOS store, software gets 'lost' in the 1000s of other apps.
Click to expand...

Let's say someone writes the best chess game ever. There are already 200 chess games in the store. It would be nice if you could search for "best chess game ever" and it would pop up but somehow I doubt that.

You can either promote the game or trust the word of mouth. An improved search function doesn't make sense. A magical search function might ;)
 
marksman said:
Wow weeks huh? You really must develop some amazing apps.

Perhaps when you grow into more functional applications and work on marketing them and getting them to people and selling them to support you and your family, you will find 30% for what Apple provides, is not that much.

Not to mention given the nature of software, having them take 30% and provide a massive increase in sales, is potential huge increase in revenue/income for some/many developers.

Weeks lol.

Can you list some of the apps you have made and where you sell them currently?
Click to expand...
What a respond just because someone dares not agree with Apple 100 percent. Very immature response. Wow, just because he didn’t agree with the 70 30 split. I'm so happy that I'm not a fanboy.

Will Apple market his specific apps for that price, or will they get lost in the list of thousands of other apps?
 
The average user probably couldn't give a damn if OSX was locked down.

It would be the above average user that would notice.

Unfortunately.

Apple is about the Toys and catering to the average user - that is what brings them the $$$.

However, I agree with you, I'm very concerned about a locked down Mac platform and this is something I fully expect to happen, over time. The mac platform would become useless if you deviated from the 'average user norm'.

I see Mac AppStore as a backdoor into locking down OSX in the long term by using excuses such as "viruses will destroy your Mac", "think of the children"...


baleensavage said:
For those who are concerned about Mac OS going to a closed architecture like iOS, remember that Apple still has to compete with Microsoft and Google. Closing off the development at this point would be like shooting themselves in the head. They could kiss the 10% market share they have goodbye. As it is, I would wager that a good portion of the Android users are people that are choosing Android because it's not the closed iOS model. Which will ultimately win out in the mobile world still has yet to be seen, but mobile devices have been closed since long before Apple was involved. Ever try syncing a Verizon phone with iTunes for instance? As for the desktop until Windows has a closed architecture, I really don't see Apple locking down the Mac OS.
Click to expand...


Sneakz said:
If you read the Mac App Store rules, applications like Office 2011, Parallels 5, VMware Fusion 3 would all be rejected. I'm curious to see how this works.
Click to expand...
Apple will make special exceptions for such software.

Apple need to make the Mac AppStore a success and cannot afford to exclude such high profile software. There is no way Apple is going to refuse VMWare, for example.
 
maknik said:
I might have missed it, but did they say anywhere about whether you can offer your software for sale *both* in the app store and outside it? So they get 30% of the app store sales -- which is arguably justified by the advertising they implicitly provide, along with all the other stuff -- but you still get 100% of sales through your website or whatever?

This would also allow you to offer betas and trials for direct download, although I guess Apple would want some weird rule where your app store app would be disallowed from even referring to the beta/trial version available on your website... And they'd also presumably ban you if you tried to sell your direct-download version for 30% less... So thinking about it a bit more, it seems likely Apple might take to rejecting apps that are also sold outside the appstore...
Click to expand...

Using other channels to sell your App is not explicitly forbidden but " Apps may not use update mechanisms outside of the App Store"; technically, it seems to be a big deterrent.

As a few have mentioned before, the transition mechanism for existing paid Apps that already have a user base is going to be tricky. They may not want to opt-in until they offer a major upgrade.
 
moki said:
The split isn't so much the issue, IMHO. For any company, it's a simple cost/benefit analysis. If the attention the app store brings is worth the 30% hit, then it's a no brainer to do it.

The restrictions on what will or will not pass muster in the approval process are what concern me. There are an awful lot of apps that will be rejected based on the criteria they've laid out. Apps that do very legitimate, useful things.
Click to expand...

True, but in this case, if a developer creates an app that is rejected, the developer has other channels for selling the app unlike on the iPhone (if we ignore apps for jailbroken devices since they are a small minority). It's not the best but there are still options.
 
Here is my two cents-

Yes-this whole Mac App store is aimed at the clueless about how to obtain use and learn about new Mac software. Us power users know where to get stuff and what are the best to use.

That said, I do see some potential usefulness of this idea-instead of having to go to a store to buy iLife, iWork or even aperture, you could get it from the Mac App store-THAT would be extremely useful and hopefully cheaper(not likely but one can hope....)

I could also see Adobe possibly jumping in on this as well as a quick and easy (and cheaper) method to distribute Creative Suite-i mean Cable and DSL internet speeds have gotten fast enough that you could likely download the software in a reasonable amount of time.

It will be interesting, however to see what kinds of Apps are allowed-if all the utility like apps get booted, then we may be stuck with lots of repetitive apps and endless number of useless games
 
Bernard SG said:
Using other channels to sell your App is not explicitly forbidden but " Apps may not use update mechanisms outside of the App Store"; technically, it seems to be a big deterrent.
Click to expand...

How is it a big deterrent? Any app distributed outside of the app store can have it’s own updating mechanism just like many apps currently do. App store apps would just use the app store for updates. That line only applies to the mac app store, not other apps - Apple cannot control or exert any control over what other 3rd party apps do for updates.

If you are hosting the distribution of your own app, your going to have to distribute updates anyway.
 
tdmurphy said:
But I think Apple is trying to profit too much off of people it should show some respect to.
Click to expand...

This is the best deal any small developer ever got with a distributor. I notice that after Apple all the other App stores are just matching Apple. No one seems in a hurry to offer the developers a better deal. In fact you can probably thank Apple that 70% has become the norm.

As far as Apple profiting too much, there was detail on this during an earnings report call at one point and Apple runs these stores at very close to break even. It costs money for the hosting, the coding, and mainteance of the the app stores. It cost money to have people vetting all the applications (whatever you think about the process, it is still expensive).

In short I don't think you can expect better.
 
pdjudd said:
How is it a big deterrent? Any app distributed outside of the app store can have it’s own updating mechanism just like many apps currently do. App store apps would just use the app store for updates. That line only applies to the mac app store, not other apps - Apple cannot control or exert any control over what other 3rd party apps do for updates.

If you are hosting the distribution of your own app, your going to have to distribute updates anyway.
Click to expand...

It's a big deterrent to trying to distribute your App both on the Apple app-store and any other channel because those who have purchased outside the app-store won't have access to your updates.
 
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