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Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#41

Post by mej10 »

gawker wrote: post #35
terhechte wrote: post #14

I'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.

There is a ton of documentation and example applications on Apple's developer website. Most major parts of the API have example applications.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/navigation/

If you already know how to program then this is a pretty great resource.

There are also some introductory articles to help you get started. For example: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Gener...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#42

Post by LTheobald »

There most definitely is still a market for people making desktop applications. Take Sparrow (http://sparrowmailapp.com/) for example. They seemed to be doing well for a desktop application - so well they got acquired by Google. An number of other applications I have purchased on my Mac are done by small teams: Alfred, 1Password, TextExpander, Things, Coda, Tweetbot. As other comments have mentioned, it may be easier on the Mac due to a perceived higher quality & richer client base. Independent games are also doing very well. Look at games like Braid & Limbo (true these also were XBLA titles). Games are still desktop applications after all.

So yes, I'd say there most definitely is a market for desktop apps & I wouldn't be surprised if the market was the strongest it had been for a while with the rise of the Mac App Store.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#43

Post by EwanToo »

umenline wrote: post #23
axx wrote: post #17

I think there are three kinds of desktop app developers that make real money today: * People who make huge profits fast, because they built a desktop client for popular webservices (see terhechte and his InstaDesk) * People creating good software for niches that REALLY NEED that piece of software to get work done. * Companies building large software suits for big companies that spend huge amounts of money in licences…

do you have examples for the second section ?

A good example of a developer in a specific, unfashionable, but successful niche is Progressive Solutions [1].

Their target market is far from glamorous, but it's a very successful business (they've actually just been acquired last month).

1 http://www.progressive-solutions.co.uk/products.php

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#44

Post by mej10 »

patio11 wrote: post #2

Certainly 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…

Do you have any data on how well non-App store applications are doing? Specifically I am looking at the power-user/developer market.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#45

Post by DavidThi808 »

I started off with it being just me - part time. Then full-time me and a salesperson. And year by year we've grown - a lot (we don't release numbers).

We did this a sale at a time. No venture funding and not really even any self-funding. Just keeping it profitable and growing from those profits.

So yes, it can be done (my company is http://www.windward.net). The trick is to create something of value. And then to focus on what you need to do next to grow the company.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#47

Post by tonyedgecombe »

axx wrote: post #16
kaitnieks wrote: post #8

We 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.

I don't want to offend you or anything, but maybe a redesign of your site would give you some extra boost!

It looks fine to me.

In fact I've become a little suspicious of sites that are highly polished but seem to have little history.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living from Desktop apps?

#48

Post by terhechte »

gawker wrote: post #35
terhechte wrote: post #14

I'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.

Not much to add, the other comments are pretty good. I learned the most from Apple's sample source code, and from reading through open source projects on GitHub. Also, my former company send me to WWDC and the sessions are pretty insightful, too. If you pay for an Apple Developer membership, you get free access to these videos, and many of them are worth it. Though nowadays it's mostly iOS. In 2007 or 2008 there were lots of introductory Mac development presentations.

It's probably best to start with a small project and tackle one project after the other.

I also read this book which helped since it tackled all the basics that one needs to know for a full Mac app. It's german only though (http://www.amazon.de/Objective-C-Cocoa-Nachfolger-Tiger-XCod...) alternatively the aforementioned Hillegas (http://www.amazon.com/Objective-C-Programming-Ranch-Guide-Gu...) which is really good.

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