201–210 of 229 posts
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I pay PayPal about 2.5% for payment processing. For a full featured ecommerce provider you typically pay 5 to 10%. Hosting costs for a commercial software vendor are pretty trivial. 30% is taking the piss.
That's great until they balk at turning over a few hundred thousand dollars for whatever reason.
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Negative -1? Really? Voting system is broken. I recommend for the Nth time that only trusted admins be allowed to take any piece of content down below 1 point. Right now, if any particular user simply disagrees with a given comment, they have the power to penalize and reduce another user's karma. Not because the user said something rude, trollish, juvenile or "evil", but merely because they might disagree. That to me…
I missed you being in negative land, but it may have been a simple result of your remark being both silly and flip at the same time. Silly in that you don't address the substance of the point and flip in that you felt the need to invoke the T-Shirt cliche. Obviously getting software onto desktop computers has happened before. You're ignoring the power of Apple's approach. I mean, what, should we stick with distributi…
> "The problem of distribution and monetization for desktop software is significant and largely unsolved."
This is a factually untrue statement. Folks have been distributing and monetizing software quite successfully at least as far back as the 80's. I personally bought software, and sold software, in the 80's. Shocking, right? In the pre-App Store era. It's not difficult actually. Has Apple made it a little bit easier, given certain assumptions and constraints? Of course. But only if in exchange for that you put up with a whole extra set of problems and Big Brother rules you have to deal with, and hurdles to jump through, and restrictions to deal with, and uncertainty around what they will or will not allow you to do. I've been creating and shipping iPhone software for about 2 years now. I've distributed and monetized software both without and before the App Store, and in the App Store. I know whereof I speak.
I find your comment rude and full of hyperbole. Statements like these are just as easily reversible and would still hold true:
> "The amount of work you simply do not have to do with Apple as your App Store distribution partner is incredible."
For example, could be reversed as: The amount of extra work and bullshit you have to put up with simply by distributing through the App Store is just incredible.
Here's another one: > " (...) Instead of giving away a piece of software because it wouldn't bring in enough money to offset the trouble and cost of a licensing mechanism and merchant account, you can throw it onto the App Store for $5 and make a bit of cash in a few clicks."
PayPal makes it pretty darn easy to let people buy your software on the web. And however "easy" you think it is to just "throw something" in the App Store, I guarantee you it's easier to just throw something up on a web server. I can write a shell script, then with a few keystrokes push it up to a live site and my customers can get it, instantly, with no complex submission process, no rules, no fear of either the content or functionality being proactively or retroactively rejected, at any time.
I have an additive view of the world in that I think having more options is always a good thing. Does the App Store have good points? Sure, so it's great to have as an option. Are there bad things about it, and the iOS development model, and Apple's behavior/control in general? Of course. But to simply dismiss other ways of distributing software, and describe it as an unsolved problem, is clearly factually false and hyperbole. It looks at it through rose-tinted glasses, at a minimum, and arguably also with a great lack of awareness of both modern and past alternatives.
I am someone who uses multiple computing devices throughout my day, and the idea of having my phone, a hand held tablet, and my desktop/laptop all in sync sharing my data with a click of a button is a very enticing proposal.
Yes there are concerns about whether Apple completely closes down developers of OS X, but I just cannot see this as a likely event.
Apple is all about user experience. What Apple is doing right now is laying the ground work for the future.
Imagine 10-15 years from now your vehicle, home, place of work, even a personal robotic assistant all running on one platform acting in sync. Some may think it is scary, but to me it is the natural progression of technology.
Helping to make life more entertaining, and helping to rid us of our everyday problems is why we consume these devices. I think we are all lucky to experience what is happening in this industry.
Change is hard, but we are the consumers of these products and we get to shape them contrary to what it sometimes feels like.
Here's to hoping I can get away with using this loophole in the desktop App Store as well.
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I'm not suggesting it would be an evil master plan. I could easily see Steve Jobs deciding that the Mac experience would be much simpler and better if Apple reviewed all software that went on the Mac, exactly the same way he's decided that for the iPhone and iPad.
No, you're just spreading FUD, and it is a dead horse. One thing Apple has over most other businesses is a much higher level of integrity.
As for integrity - personally I think they've done many things that lacked integrity. The language ban was very low and put many small companies that were developing cross compilers right out of business. That's a huge ethical issue even if you think it was justified for whatever reasons Jobs claimed it was necessary.
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Speak the truth on hacker news and get voted down. Here's the truth: Facebook: promised your data was private so you could open up with friends, then made data public by default, allows friends to leak your data. now spreading data all over the web. Google says "do no evil" yet arbitrarily punishes websites with ranking, cancels people's adwords and adsense accounts, and employes (apparently) zero customer service an…
Yes, you could go on — to include Apple. Apple brands itself as "different" and progressive, using '60s counterculture icons, then turns into the most prudish schoolmarm imaginable and bans any app that could offend anyone — including a Pulitzer-winning political satirist, and any book-reading app that doesn't explicitly block you from reading the Kama Sutra. I swear I am not making that second example up. Apple proc…
Not saying it's fixed, but I do think it's a lot better.
This is very exciting. The problem of distribution and monetization for desktop software is significant and largely unsolved. Steam is already proof that a digital store can make desktop users really happy, but it addresses gamers, who are cheerful early adopters. Most other people who don't game only know this model through their mobile device, but now they're ready for more. As for developers? For more than half of…
I'm not so excited about this. Am I the only one who thinks this is Apple's first step in exerting more control over developers and users on the OS X platform like they do on iOS? EDIT: to all the replies about how you still have a choice of distribution on OS X: yes, you do right now, but who knows how long that will last? As I said, this might be the first step in locking down the platform. I don't believe this wil…
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Re. point #2: IIRC, in the talk today, Jobs mentioned that apps installed via the mac app store will work on all your personal macs.
That was my point. As a developer, you lose that tier of licensing revenue. * edit : Example, 1password is normally 39.95, 5 user family pack is 69.95. How would it be priced on the App store?
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I missed you being in negative land, but it may have been a simple result of your remark being both silly and flip at the same time. Silly in that you don't address the substance of the point and flip in that you felt the need to invoke the T-Shirt cliche. Obviously getting software onto desktop computers has happened before. You're ignoring the power of Apple's approach. I mean, what, should we stick with distributi…
from your original comment: > "The problem of distribution and monetization for desktop software is significant and largely unsolved." This is a factually untrue statement. Folks have been distributing and monetizing software quite successfully at least as far back as the 80's. I personally bought software, and sold software, in the 80's. Shocking, right? In the pre-App Store era. It's not difficult actually. Has App…
Thanks for talking it out with me – I definitely see your point.
Especially with regard to my being hyperbolic. I should have said it's unsolved to the degree of my preference – in that there's no one-click purchase that lubricates things as there is on iOS. I mean, I'm biased because the App Store's market power really, really worked for me, so I want to believe it can work for many others.
PayPal, in the end, isn't bad, but it is frictiony by comparison. And while it solves the monetization problem, it does nothing for distribution, which is even harder.
For me, I view Steam as the finest digital distribution mechanism yet devised. I've been eager for it to go beyond games, and Apple's App Store is doing that, so I'm excited. Everything else looks like ass by comparison, regardless of the tradeoffs in Apple's devil's agreement.
This is very exciting. The problem of distribution and monetization for desktop software is significant and largely unsolved. Steam is already proof that a digital store can make desktop users really happy, but it addresses gamers, who are cheerful early adopters. Most other people who don't game only know this model through their mobile device, but now they're ready for more. As for developers? For more than half of…