Desktop apps still have a place in some B2B settings. For a year I worked for a company that developed software that managed fork lift battery inventories for warehouses. These were warehouses that had little to no internet connectivity on the floor and so having a desktop application was crucial. It was a niche market but highly profitable.
Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
31–40 of 93 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#32Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#33We 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.
It does seem like there's no single distribution channel that a Windows app developer can reach out?
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe it is the history of the Mac. Mac users want good software and since the number of Mac developers is equal to the ratio of Mac:Windows users you had fewer choices so users were incentivized to pay developers, or else development dried up. On the other hand since there are so many Windows users and Windows developers it's a perpetual race to the bottom. For example, you have no shortage of Windows text edito…
VIM ftw
Even though I think that VIM is the best text editor (please no Emacs vs VIM now) it is not a good editor for the casual user and doesn't blend into Mac OS X too well. Most of my coworkers in my old company didn't touch it with a ten foot pole - even though they were programmers. They used TextMate or Sublime or Coda. I tried to sell them on VIM but in the end the learning curve was too high and they settled for something where everything was easily reachable through menus.
So I think VIM is not a good example of a good free Mac text editor.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#35I'm a lone developer hacking away on a couple of Mac apps. I also have a few iPhone apps, but these generate little to no income. The Mac apps are better. Most notable is InstaDesk ( http://www.instadesk-app.com ) which generates my main income and I can live off it thus living the dream (i.e. right now I'm sitting outside in a small cafe, enjoying the sun, watching people, and fixing a couple of bugs for the upcomin…
Do you mind if I ask how you go about learning how to build Mac OS apps? I've seen a ton of tutorials for iOS but hardly anything for Mac OS.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#36I'm a lone developer hacking away on a couple of Mac apps. I also have a few iPhone apps, but these generate little to no income. The Mac apps are better. Most notable is InstaDesk ( http://www.instadesk-app.com ) which generates my main income and I can live off it thus living the dream (i.e. right now I'm sitting outside in a small cafe, enjoying the sun, watching people, and fixing a couple of bugs for the upcomin…
Do you mind if I ask how you go about learning how to build Mac OS apps? I've seen a ton of tutorials for iOS but hardly anything for Mac OS.
The books by Aaron Hillegass are good. I also like the Cocoa book by David Chisnall.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#37Certainly 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…
What is definitely dead are Java Swing apps. I believe desktop BCC was a Swing app. Swing app installation and updates are a major pain.
Native apps on an App Store dont suffer from these issues, and their ability to integrate with special OS features make them more compelling vs a web app. Not so with Swing.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#38I make a nice living (so far) out of making windows desktop apps, but they are very niche oriented. Mostly statistical analysis of millions of rows. All though it is possible to make them in html, it would be really hard to meet the UI, performance, and mobility requirements with web apps.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#39We 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.
It does seem like there's no single distribution channel that a Windows app developer can reach out?
Windows 8 aims to fix that with a built-in app store, it's a bit simplistic so far but works.
Apps can either be hosted on the Windows app store, or it can be hosted by the developer with just a link from the app store to a download page.
Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?
#40Desktop apps are still used for a lot of equipment command and control scenarios. I work on a small team who make a desktop app that needs to communicate with some custom hardware over an RS-232 (serial port) based protocol. For this sort of application, laptops which have a real serial port (or via a port extender) are the only option.