Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
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Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
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Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#2Really solid article. I love that it includes actual numbers.
"Apple has taken $600,000 (USD) of that in fees. Ouch!" is much more concrete than just "30% of revenue."
Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#3Another point to add is that applications sold outside the App Store can avoid the sandboxing restrictions of the Store, and consequently contain functionality that would be not permitted by Apple on the Store (file access, deeper system access, etc.).
That said, for my side project ( http://artfulmac.com ) it is absolutely worth it to me as a solo developer to pay Apple their 30% to have them handle fulfillment (including system-integrated update notifications), payment processing (with currency conversion), tax form creation, and refunds. It's a trade of financial overhead for time. The App Store also conveys a sense of trust to consumers.
Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#4Really solid article. I love that it includes actual numbers. "Apple has taken $600,000 (USD) of that in fees. Ouch!" is much more concrete than just "30% of revenue."
> taken
Well, there are providing a service in return for those fees as well as high-visibility amongst potential customers. Striking out on your own means a lot of work in getting people to your website.
Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#5The Mac App Store is a ghetto. It's completely neglected by Apple. I'm not sure who they imagine to be the target audience -- maybe it works for mobile-style game experiences, I wouldn't know, but it's certainly no good for professional apps.
Important issues with sandboxing were never resolved. Meanwhile existing APIs keep being moved to the restricted list, so as a developer you can't even count on your product being able to stay on the Mac App Store.
Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#6The Mac App Store is a ghetto. It's completely neglected by Apple. I'm not sure who they imagine to be the target audience -- maybe it works for mobile-style game experiences, I wouldn't know, but it's certainly no good for professional apps. Important issues with sandboxing were never resolved. Meanwhile existing APIs keep being moved to the restricted list, so as a developer you can't even count on your product bei…
A ghetto huh? Many apps I bought are on the App Store (many can be bought outside the app store too so I bought them directly though). I'm not sure how well MAS is doing but a ghetto it is not.
Target market? Well lets try the average user who is much better off with buying from Apple who already has their credit card than going through some little website and their pain in the ass credit card form, registration and what not.
Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#7The Mac App Store is a ghetto. It's completely neglected by Apple. I'm not sure who they imagine to be the target audience -- maybe it works for mobile-style game experiences, I wouldn't know, but it's certainly no good for professional apps. Important issues with sandboxing were never resolved. Meanwhile existing APIs keep being moved to the restricted list, so as a developer you can't even count on your product bei…
A ghetto huh? Many apps I bought are on the App Store (many can be bought outside the app store too so I bought them directly though). I'm not sure how well MAS is doing but a ghetto it is not. Target market? Well lets try the average user who is much better off with buying from Apple who already has their credit card than going through some little website and their pain in the ass credit card form, registration and…
So the Mac App Store is highly convenient, yet you always choose to buy outside the App Store when possible?
That's not the greatest endorsement ever.
Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#8The Mac App Store is a ghetto. It's completely neglected by Apple. I'm not sure who they imagine to be the target audience -- maybe it works for mobile-style game experiences, I wouldn't know, but it's certainly no good for professional apps. Important issues with sandboxing were never resolved. Meanwhile existing APIs keep being moved to the restricted list, so as a developer you can't even count on your product bei…
Speaking of sandboxing, Reeder 2 for Mac (one of the best RSS readers) was forced to remove the option to be set as the default RSS reader from within the app. This is because a function on Yosemite is longer allowed in sandboxed apps but still works fine on 10.9 [1]
While it's not the end of the world, it's just plain annoying having to remove such a common sense feature. The consequence of this means that if you were to distribute a web browser via the MAS, you will not be able to ask the user to set it as the default web browser. That's just a subpar experience.
My hypothesis for the added restriction is that it might be considered a security hole for an app to just set itself as a handler, for say, http links.
The correct way to have handled this particular situation was to introduce a new entitlement and define what content types an app might want to handle, which will get reviewed by the MAS review team. Unfortunately, the solution [2] is: "There is no solution; it can't be done anymore in the sandbox."
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26241689/lssetdefaultrole...
Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#9I tend to think of selling to an app store as basically selling through Wal-Mart or Best Buy vs selling direct. Yes, selling direct is higher margin, but it's also got a different set of challenges. For example, you have to acquire customers on your own.
Probably the best way to look at it would be to treat the Mac App Store as a secondary channel. If it was a secondary sales channel, then it's additional revenue and new customers which is a nice to have.
You are probably best off creating your own customer list and selling directly to customers over time away from the Mac App store. Or, you avoid it alltogether and figure out how to sell direct. The only downside there is you have to do your own advertising and use something like Gumroad or FastSpring or some homegrown Stripe solution for delivery and such.
Nothing is perfect and there are tradeoffs to both approaches.
Re: Benefits of Selling Outside the Mac App Store
#10The Mac App Store is a ghetto. It's completely neglected by Apple. I'm not sure who they imagine to be the target audience -- maybe it works for mobile-style game experiences, I wouldn't know, but it's certainly no good for professional apps. Important issues with sandboxing were never resolved. Meanwhile existing APIs keep being moved to the restricted list, so as a developer you can't even count on your product bei…
Speaking of sandboxing, Reeder 2 for Mac (one of the best RSS readers) was forced to remove the option to be set as the default RSS reader from within the app. This is because a function on Yosemite is longer allowed in sandboxed apps but still works fine on 10.9 [1] While it's not the end of the world, it's just plain annoying having to remove such a common sense feature. The consequence of this means that if you we…
I would add that something as complex as a web browser would be impossible on the Mac App Store anyway -- a sandboxed browser wouldn't even be able to open file:// URLs.
Berners-Lee's original web browser was developed on the NeXT (direct ancestor of OS X)... But if he wanted to take that 1991 browser and distribute it on the Mac App Store today, he would have to remove important functionality.