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Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#101

Post by lstamour »

netman21 wrote: post #88

I would pick my app carefully. Things that are specific to desktops like AV, disk cleaners, performance monitors would have staying power. Also word processors for specific constituencies. Scriviner, for instance, is for serious writers and is still supported by its creator. Diagram creators, slide presentation creators, even a database with an easy to use interface would be popular. I personally would love to see an…

That's the problem with desktop software though -- it's expensive to build and often, there's a solution already out there or will appear in the next release of the OS. For instance in Activity Monitor, you can view every process simply by clicking the View menu, then "All Processes". It will even show them hierarchically. Which then leads to users often picking something that works and rarely switching unless an app fails on them somehow. Contrast this with the web, where we routinely "switch apps" because there's so little cost to install them, keep them up to date, commit to them and save our data in their format, etc. AV software is much less useful these days as systems ship more securely by default. Disk cleaners also have less utility as folks learn of free or built-in options, or buy larger drives than they need...

About all I can say to sum up is, yes, pick your app carefully, but solve a problem you've researched and haven't found an easy solution to, and then ... see if you can build that into a business? :) It'd also be fun to build a meta-app: e.g. gamify learning about OS X, such as the activity monitor. Maybe it could be social, where you get points for being the first to get something set up amongst friends on the same wifi? That sounds like an incredibly niche market though...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#102

Post by randhnuser »

azeirah wrote: post #93

I've made an addon-program for game streamers, one day I decided to go "heck", why not ask some money for a license. I can't really say I'm making a "living" off of it but for a student I do have a /really/ nice income. It's a /very/ specific application though. It swims along with the bigger fish like Open Broadcaster Service and xsplit, when they go down, I go down.

I'm currrently reading "Don't just roll the dice" which is a really nice and short book about software pricing. It's freely available too at https://www.red-gate.com/library/dont-just-roll-the-dice

What I want to say to you and the others in the thread is: maybe you can extract more money at a different price point by reading that book.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#103

Post by khedoros »

lugus35 wrote: post #20
GnarfGnarf wrote: post #13

Yes, I am thriving with a niche C++/Win32 graphics app. Web apps are a long way from having the responsiveness and control of a desktop app. Do you really think users will be doing Photoshop and AutoCAD in a browser? No matter if you have a fibre op connection, the lag is always there. Recently the main player in this domain moved to Web apps. There was an overwhelming protest from its customers, who insisted they pr…

Well, as an autocad replacement you have: https://www.onshape.com/ and as a Photoshop replacement, you have things like : https://pixlr.com/ And yes, there are people using these online tools.

OK, yes, people use those. How many people actually use them as replacements for the tools you mentioned? Are they practical alternatives, or "alternatives" in the sense that Gimp is an alternative to Photoshop?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#104

Post by stcredzero »

partisan wrote: post #100
stcredzero wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risks come from not being able to _easily_ make changes In my experience, this is pretty much the same thing as being unable to change your mind.

If you are a developer and good at what you do, you will layer your application to buffer against changes. If you aren't then just write the code the best you know how because building a business AND learning how to be a good coder at the same time is not the most efficient path. That path is littered with constantly rewritten, half-finished, failures. Get a product out and then figure out where you could have done b…

If you are a developer and good at what you do, you will layer your application to buffer against changes.

That's a good place to start. That's 80's and 90's best practice, though. (Most of the industry is stuck in this mindset, to be fair.) I'd say the 21st century version of this would be to structure your code in such a way that transformation tools can be easily applied.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#105

Post by stcredzero »

dejv wrote: post #91
stcredzero wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three main things: - memory space for printers and sound cards changed in Vista, so when you have some constellation of printers and you change the printer in dialog whole program just crash, because it is trying to touch restricted memory or something. Can this functionality be separated out into a different process, or called from a DLL compiled using Visual Studio?

Probably not: the application has around 100 printouts (with tons of spaghetti logic behind it making it impossible to count all variations) and it will be very hard to switch to new reporting framework. The big problem with legacy software without huge user base and limited space for growth is that it just don't make sense to invest huge amount of time and money in it.

This is funny. I saw the same pattern in Smalltalk apps: Reports being the locus of spaghetti code.

Reports are added as an afterthought. Then the resulting spaghetti code patterns are replicated cut & paste, where they then slowly melt into surrounding code in a way that makes them impossible to extricate. After some years, it then becomes obvious that reports are the primary driver of value for those clients.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#106

Post by dorfuss »

asimuvPR wrote: post #14

Oh, the future. The land of what ifs. Listen, you described your market already. Non technical people go to Google and type in facebook.com. A simple desktop app that they can just click will do. Still worried about future proofing it? Put it inside a webview and move on.

Off topic - googling facebook.com drives me nuts.

A couple of days ago I went to an administration worker at a university and asked her to help me with getting the vpn to connect to the net via university wi-fi. She told me to google the vpn to download it. I said: well, this is the very problem, I want to connect to the Internet, I cannot google it while I'm offline. People no longer distinguish between the address bar and google search, searching for files on your local drive or looking for them online. It's become one blob of "computer stuff". And you might think that when we moved from command line in DOS to Windows that was creating a new kind "stupid user". There is the next level, certainly.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#107

Post by partisan »

stcredzero wrote: post #104
partisan wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a developer and good at what you do, you will layer your application to buffer against changes. If you aren't then just write the code the best you know how because building a business AND learning how to be a good coder at the same time is not the most efficient path. That path is littered with constantly rewritten, half-finished, failures. Get a product out and then figure out where you could have done b…

If you are a developer and good at what you do, you will layer your application to buffer against changes. That's a good place to start. That's 80's and 90's best practice, though. (Most of the industry is stuck in this mindset, to be fair.) I'd say the 21st century version of this would be to structure your code in such a way that transformation tools can be easily applied.

So you understand my point.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#108

Post by arcaster »

I've considered creating an app with node.js and electron to turn my current soundcloud archiving script into a desktop app. It makes taking essentially all of someone's soundcloud and archives everything with proper ID3 tags, also tracks updates to your playlists and likes.

Initially I built this to archive indy music and prevent losing tracks that people removed from their soundcloud pages.

This project would require some major legal hurdles, which is why I've never really built it as a proper desktop app.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#109

Post by azeirah »

randhnuser wrote: post #102
azeirah wrote: post #93

I've made an addon-program for game streamers, one day I decided to go "heck", why not ask some money for a license. I can't really say I'm making a "living" off of it but for a student I do have a /really/ nice income. It's a /very/ specific application though. It swims along with the bigger fish like Open Broadcaster Service and xsplit, when they go down, I go down.

I'm currrently reading "Don't just roll the dice" which is a really nice and short book about software pricing. It's freely available too at https://www.red-gate.com/library/dont-just-roll-the-dice What I want to say to you and the others in the thread is: maybe you can extract more money at a different price point by reading that book.

Thanks for the recommendation, will have a look. I'm a little skeptical of price changes though. Partially because of ethics ("Why'd he have to pay 5$ while I have to pay 8$?"), and partially because of my target audience, mainly students and young adults (18-28)

Regardless, it's interesting to look into

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#110

Post by kidproquo »

jventura wrote: post #52
pabloski wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, if I can ask: "why QtWebkit instead of Qtquick?".

+1, I'm wondering if anyone is using Qt Quick for productivity-like desktop applications?

I built Tasktopus[1] using QtQuick/QML/C++. Highly recommended. I built it on the LGPL version.

[1]https://gumroad.com/l/ADWm/tasktopus

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