is there such thing still developers that make desktop apps and making a living out of it ? that is i guess indie small teams not the big companies like adobe
Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
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Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#2Certainly still an option. There's a long history of folks like that, the market for e.g. Mac apps was if anything helped by the launch of the Mac app store (some devs more than others, long story, ask them for the specifics). I could give you two dozen examples from my social circles but most of them would not appreciate the publicity.
That said: can I talk you out of it? I've done both, and from a business perspective doing it as a web app is a MUCH better option.
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/09/05/desktop-aps-versus-web-a...
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#3[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#4[deleted]
I am certain he meant as an indie dev.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#5It depends.
If you mean desktop apps in the like of Twitter clients, mail apps, media players and etc I'd guess the answer is no. There are a lot already and new ones are not needed.
But if you mean desktop apps in the like of 'fat clients' for big companies, Eclipse or NetBeans RCP based apps for example, the answer is yes. There are a lot of companies who have a lot of data which they'll be happy to have a good UI to be able to use it in their own purpose.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#6Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#7Certainly still an option. There's a long history of folks like that, the market for e.g. Mac apps was if anything helped by the launch of the Mac app store (some devs more than others, long story, ask them for the specifics). I could give you two dozen examples from my social circles but most of them would not appreciate the publicity. That said: can I talk you out of it? I've done both, and from a business perspect…
link is wrong or something ...
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#8We are (at http://www.blumentals.net). Windows apps, in fact, and not for big companies but regular people. I don't know what to tell you, the market is far from dead, maybe it will be dead someday, but right now things are fine. The hardest thing about making mass-distributed Windows apps is getting your good app to the customer through a pile of crappy ones.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#9I do. I split my time between firmware and desktop apps. I work for a small company of about 5 people. Before that I worked at a larger company, but was the sole developer of an Audio Recording app. I also worked on speaker modelling and configuration apps. All the apps I've worked on recently have very small user bases and tend to be part of a larger system.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#10Certainly still an option. There's a long history of folks like that, the market for e.g. Mac apps was if anything helped by the launch of the Mac app store (some devs more than others, long story, ask them for the specifics). I could give you two dozen examples from my social circles but most of them would not appreciate the publicity. That said: can I talk you out of it? I've done both, and from a business perspect…
And it's down, here's a cached link for everyone else: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yjYTJSo...