Pixelmator Hits $1 Million in Revenue on Mac App Store

[malachiman]

Woah, this looks pretty comprehensive for 30 bucks! How does it compare to Photoshop?

I find it really good. I have PS CS4 and since I got pixelmator early last year I never use PS. For most people it will be more than enough.


I do wonder how much of this were people re-buying Pixelmator, because they uploaded a slightly different version to the App store than the one brought direct from them. Basically you could re-buy from the App store and would be given version 2 for free when it comes out. I re-brought lol

 

[BaldiMac]

Wow. They made Apple $300,000 in just 20 days!

Let's see; after they pay around 30% in taxes themselves, that leaves them about $300,000 too....

1/3 the money for 100% of the work. Apple and the government both have the sweeter deal I would say, getting their third for nothing.

Wow. That's using some messed up math to try and support your point.

 

[macduke]

When I first read this, I got really excited about Braid being on the App Store. I thought to myself, "When did this happen?" Then I remembered we are talking about the Mac App Store. My mind still has a really strong association of the App Store being iOS only. I'm actually surprised at how I forget about that new icon sitting on the doc, even though for the first few days I was pouring over all the content. Perhaps I don't look at it as often as the iPhone or iPad versions because there isn't as much new daily content? On iOS, there is always fun new stuff to try out and play with. Hopefully the Mac App Store becomes as successful.

 

[Steve Mobs]

I find it really good. I have PS CS4 and since I got pixelmator early last year I never use PS. For most people it will be more than enough.

Downloaded the demo.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

You don't see a relatively small company making a million dollars in less than one month of the app store being open as huge business? That's a very bizarre statement.

Runic Games made a few million in a few months, if I recall correctly. On their first program too.

 

[mrboult]

Well I'm glad for the devs. Pixelmator is a great program and a great price.

This app fits the gap that Photshop Elements never quite filled for me.

 

[APPLENEWBIE]

I know this isn't the time or place, but I bought Pixelmator with a MacHeist bundle. I'd really like to use it, but I really cannot figure it out. Any suggestions for a place/site/whatever to go to really learn to use this type of software well? I use iPhoto now but like to be a bit more advanced in photo editing.

Thanks

 

[rhoydotp]

Seashore?

have you guys seen this before: http://seashore.sourceforge.net/The_Seashore_Project/About.html ... pretty good and it's free

 

[Blu101]

Where did he ever say he regrets the purchase or that he doesn't use it? He implies that's the case with many applications.

On page 2:

...but like my only bundle purchase, you never use the applications again...

And? It's an application, he can check the Mac side and compare to the Windows side, it's a perfectly fine decision a well informed buyer would make.

We both know that's not what he was doing. He wasn't looking to buy, he was looking to bash.

However, people like you just have money trees growing don't you?

Yes, yes I do

There are many free apps that do it better.

Do share.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

You don't see a relatively small company making a million dollars in less than one month of the app store being open as huge business? That's a very bizarre statement.

They didn't make a million, though. I wish Apple took a little less of the share and they got more of the $$$.

 

[Kenrik]

I just use Photoshop CS5.. Really nothing even comes close.

 

[Kenrik]

Wow. That's using some messed up math to try and support your point.

No actually he's right (if it's going on someone personal tax return)

But he may forget that Corporations don't pay income tax... I doubt that Pixelmators creators are going to list it as income on their personal tax returns.

 

[gnasher729]

No actually he's right (if it's going on someone personal tax return)

But he may forget that Corporations don't pay income tax... I doubt that Pixelmators creators are going to list it as income on their personal tax returns.

Actually, he is not right. _If_ this company was paying 30% tax, then this would be 30% of $700,000 which would be $210,000. Not as Magnus claimed $400,000. So he overestimated the actual tax payment by about 95%. But the fact is that this $700,000 enables the company to pay $700,000 in salaries, new equipment, rent, etc. etc.

They didn't make a million, though. I wish Apple took a little less of the share and they got more of the $$$.

So which software distribution channel pays more than 70% to the developer? How much do you think does the developer get when you go into a store and pick up software with a $29.95 price tag?

 

[whooleytoo]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

$1 million in revenue is lower than I thought. A lot of time and effort went into this app and we dont know what their profit is. Just revenue. Lets say they rent office space, have a designer, developer, webmaster, etc. They aren't quite getting rich in this thing. One would presume that this is the busiest time for the app store too (the launch month). And if most people are making way less...

The Mac app store is certainly going to take off slower and stay smaller than the iOS app store; but $700K revenue in 20 days is impressive. I don't think many Mac software houses would be unhappy with that.

Particularly when you consider you have to upgrade your OS to get the App Store and lots of Mac users are slow to do so, unless/until they have to. The number of Mac App Store users is probably still very small, even in comparison to the iOS App Store when it launched.

 

[Dr McKay]

I have that picture up there as my Wallpaper

 

[08380728]

I have that picture up there as my Wallpaper

Wallpaper? Why are you here talking about your Windowz PeeCee?

We've been over run by windroid zombeez nooooooooo

 

[nelmat]

They didn't make a million, though. I wish Apple took a little less of the share and they got more of the $$$.

That's not the point. All companies have overheads, distribution, warehousing and reseller costs. You mark up the cost of your product or service to cover these overheads. Unless you're stupid.

Apple are not the first reseller in the world to charge commission.

Does no one here have any retail or commercial experience, or a basic understanding of economics? Thirty percent is just fine.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Great advice for you... never go into business.

Tax is on profit not revenue.

Yeah, like there's a difference with most of the home-brew software on the App store. Oh wait. I forgot to deduct my paid lunch and time to sit on the toilet and time wasted arguing with people that miss the forest for all the flipping trees hitting them dead in the face.

 

[MrSmith]

Is it worth the expense over free iPhoto for just tweaking photos before sending them to MobileMe gallery for the family to see? Is it better at rescuing flatlined photos?

Edit: Or GraphicConverter for that matter.

 

[E.Lizardo]

Wow. They made Apple $300,000 in just 20 days!

Let's see; after they pay around 30% in taxes themselves, that leaves them about $300,000 too....

1/3 the money for 100% of the work. Apple and the government both have the sweeter deal I would say, getting their third for nothing.

You are aware that boxed software in a brick and mortar Apple store would have a similar markup right?

Your line of thinking is just so wrong on so many levels...

Why not contact Pixelmator's developer and tell them what a mistake they are making!I'm sure they'll get a good laugh(as they go make another bank deposit).

 

[BaldiMac]

Yeah, like there's a difference with most of the home-brew software on the App store. Oh wait. I forgot to deduct my paid lunch and time to sit on the toilet and time wasted arguing with people that miss the forest for all the flipping trees hitting them dead in the face.

Yes, there is a difference between 30% of $1 million (gross revenue) and 30% of $700,000 (profit, if you go by your ridiculous assumption that the developers are not incorporated and had no additional costs.)

So we are talking 49% net profit margins which is amazing in pretty much any market. Even with your biased assumptions.

For comparison, Microsoft's net margins are around 30% and Apple's are around 20%.

 

[E.Lizardo]

They didn't make a million, though. I wish Apple took a little less of the share and they got more of the $$$.

They are making a hell of a lot more that they have from the various bundles they've has been part of.I wouldn't shed any tears.Both parties are doing fine,infact the devs sound ecstatic,and rightly so.

 

[RMo]

Since Outlook:mac has been written from scratch using Cocoa

Could have fooled me!

...is all I'll say about that situation.

 

[lpetrich]

It's actually rather nice, but it lacks some features that I remember from using Photoshop, features like

• Nondestructive editing other than text: layers that do fills, gradients, color adjustments, etc.
• Channel mixer: can't save or load the mixing matrix (I discovered that Pixelmator does have one)
• Actions: record them, edit them, and play them back

In fairness, the GIMP also lacks most nondestructive editing, though that has been in the GIMP developers' plans for some time.

But Pixelmator is *much* better integrated into OSX than the GIMP is -- I find the GIMP's open/save dialog box *very* annoying.

I also find annoying the lack of a promised feature: being able to use Quartz Composer patches with it. I constructed some color-blindness-simulation ones with Quartz Composer before discovering that, I must say.

 

[vladi]

Pixelmator is the perfect example of just how good an App can be when it is written specifically for the Mac and thus gets to make full use of OSX technologies such as Cocoa, Core Image/Animation, Quartz, etc.
As opposed to a program written with multi-platform releases in mind, or worse, programs that originated on Windows and were half-heartedly ported over to the Mac.

It's amazing to see how fast Pixelmator performs on my 11.6" MBA. It runs circles around Photoshop.
The realtime filter updates are incredible, even on something intense as a heavy Gaussian Blur operation on a 6000x6000 image.

I bought Pixelmator to run on my MacBook Air after briefly considering installing Photoshop (of which I am a 17 year veteran).
My reasoning had much to do with not wanting an elephant squatting on my 128GB SSD drive. A PS CS5 install comes in at around 1GB, whereas Pixelmator's footprint is about 1/10th that.
Then there was the price. In the UK, Photoshop is about 39 times more expensive now with the new Pixelmator Appstore pricing!
And don't even get me started on Adobe's dodgy price-hike legerdemain outside of the US markets.

While Pixelmator is not as feature rich as PS, it still boasts an impressive arsenal of painting, photo manipulation, and general image editing tools.
I have no doubt that Pixelmator's developers, self proclaimed Mac-fans that they are, and especially now spurred on by increasing sales figures, will keep adding features that Photoshop refugees are asking for.

Why would you put PS on 11' screen? Let alone on MBA? That doesn't make any sense unless you use it for light retouches and filtering then I guess this other program will suite well but then again doing any raster editing on such a small screen is not good for your eyes at all.

Also when it comes to Gaussian Blur they are not all the same. Photoshop has the most extensive script for its GB to make it more accurate and less defective and that is one of the reasons why it takes more CPU and RAM to complete. Gaussian Blur in PS is unparalleled, especially when working with big 300dpi images, and its one of few filters that gets major updates with each release.