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Maybe not rich, but if 5000 people buy a $5 app that you spent 30 hours on, that's a pretty good ROI for your time.
I seriously doubt you could design, develop, prep, submit app, and market for 30 hours and have anything that anyone would download for free, let alone pay $5 for. The sheer volume of users doesn't obviate the fact that there's a minimum level of quality for discoverability to kick in.
I think it's taking a long time for the Mac App Store to catch on-but I think it'll get there. When I find an app I want to buy I've gotten in the habit of checking the MAS to see if I can buy it there-I'd rather buy through the MAS and let Apple handle my credit card details and tracking of purchased software. Users are slow to change, and buying your software through a portal on your computer is a big change.
The bit I found most interesting about this whole Redacted app story, but haven't seen mentioned anywhere, is that the app also happened to be at #1 on Product Hunt for a good portion of that same day.
A high profile example of that is: https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-mac...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I seriously doubt you could design, develop, prep, submit app, and market for 30 hours and have anything that anyone would download for free, let alone pay $5 for. The sheer volume of users doesn't obviate the fact that there's a minimum level of quality for discoverability to kick in.
I have actually done exactly that. Twice. If I can do it, anyone can.
Maybe not rich, but if 5000 people buy a $5 app that you spent 30 hours on, that's a pretty good ROI for your time.
An app in 30 hours? Believe me that this is not the usual time it takes to build an app !
I can spend almost no time on an iOS app and make myself rich. Even kids can do it.
According to the hype. So it must be true.
Maybe not rich, but if 5000 people buy a $5 app that you spent 30 hours on, that's a pretty good ROI for your time.
People are also forgetting that the time spent writing an app in your free time is "fun", or should be. I program in my free time for fun, getting paid after the fact is gravy. Getting paid $6600 for 30 hours of fun time (or so he says) is awesome.
I think it's taking a long time for the Mac App Store to catch on-but I think it'll get there. When I find an app I want to buy I've gotten in the habit of checking the MAS to see if I can buy it there-I'd rather buy through the MAS and let Apple handle my credit card details and tracking of purchased software. Users are slow to change, and buying your software through a portal on your computer is a big change.
1) Upgrade pricing. At best you'll get convoluted instructions on how you can obtain an upgraded version: http://www.barebones.com/store/bbedit_MAS_upgrade.html https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-2-upgrades/
In many cases, you can't go back and forth (bought on website, bought v. 2 on MAS), so you're expecting people to understand that it's a "different" version - imagine if you had to explain that because you bought the Best Buy XBox One, you can't play games purchased at Wal-Mart.
2) Sandboxing. If users are going to pay anything near full price for something they expect full functionality.
Due to these headaches, publishers are abandoning the App Store:
http://www.panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/
Personally I wish the MAS was a better solution for the reasons you described (I have purchased a good amount of software there)
On the other hand, the Mac App store isn't as cluttered, and Mac users are much more willing to pay $19.99 or $29.99 for a Mac App. Who would pay $29.99 for an iPhone App?
OmniFocus 2 is $39.99 on iPhone and very popular. Their suite is $149.99.
Go figure. The store limit app developers so much that a lot of otherwise useful software is being sold outside it. A high profile example of that is: https://blog.sourcetreeapp.com/2012/02/16/abandoning-the-mac...