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The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

blog.wilshipley.com

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Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#101

Post by JohnQPasserby »

deedubaya wrote: post #42
sharth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You can. However, I would much prefer the world Wil describes over a world with in-app purchases. I would much rather pay the 20$ or whatever to upgrade my software, than be nickel and dimed all over the place.

I agree on the nickel and dimeing, but that is a matter of implementation. Imagine In-app purchase options for options X, Y, an Z, $0.99 each. I only use X, so I'm only going to buy that. You use all the features though, so the developer provides an In-App option for all three features for $1.99. Still feel nickel and dimed?

Yes. To put it bluntly, when I see features priced that way it looks like artificial price inflation to get more money. Especially in software that already has a purchase price.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#102

Post by msbarnett »

falcolas wrote: post #100
msbarnett wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His post suggests that each " feature pack" would also contain all of the previous years' features, for new-commers.

And yet the new purchaser ends up spending more under this model than they would under a paid upgrades model. New user pays $40 for features X, Y, and Z. User of a previous version, containing X and Y, would pay $10 for the new version. Under the in-app purchase model, both customers have to pay $50 for X, Y and Z, which provides a high barrier to entry, a poor customer experience, and poor reviews for the app. There…

I'm not following.

Say the app is originally $10.

A year later you push out the "2013 feature pack" for $10 more.

Existing customer pays $10 ($20 total over lifetime) for upgrade. New user pays $20 at once ($10 base + 2013 pack).

A year passes, 2014 pack comes out, existing user pays $10 ($30 over lifetime), new user pays $20 ($10 base + 2014 pack (which subsumed all features of the 2013 pack)).

The existing user is always getting an at-the-moment discount.

Now, yes, the existing user pays more over the lifetime than the new user, but this is no different than conventional upgrades. If you've religiously bought every Lightroom upgrade you've paid more than the guy who jumped in at Lightroom 4 over the lifetime of the product, even with the upgrade discounts.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#103

Post by wil_shipley »

Tloewald wrote: post #75

I assumed that Apple would add upgrades way back when but I now think the in app purchase model is better. Consider the reason for upgrades: new features? Sell them. Compatibility or big fixes? Why aren't these free for all customers? The one missing thing I think Apple needs is a neat mechanism for allowing existing apps to be upgrades into app store apps.

The model of selling only the new features really doesn’t work well when you’ve spent years refining every part of an app. How do you “sell” a whole new interface?

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#104

Post by wil_shipley »

ricardobeat wrote: post #58

I think this is mostly a mismatch in expectations. "pay full price, suckers" only rings true if it's not actually a major release - small features, security/compatibility updates should be free. A new version should offer enough benefits to be worth the price.

I’d rather offer existing customers a discount, since I figure some percentage of what they’re getting is the old functionality, and they’ve been there for me in the past.

Put differently: if I’ve written an app that 50% new, don’t I deserve to get paid by existing customers for that work?

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#105

Post by [deleted] »

ricardobeat wrote: post #58

I think this is mostly a mismatch in expectations. "pay full price, suckers" only rings true if it's not actually a major release - small features, security/compatibility updates should be free. A new version should offer enough benefits to be worth the price.

[deleted]

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#106

Post by wil_shipley »

TetOn wrote: post #5
kennywinker wrote: post #2

The consensus among all the devs I've talked to is that this feature will magically appear the next time Apple does a significant update to one of it's bigger ticket apps... Final Cut, Aperture, Logic, etc. I can't see any way they can get around this problem without adding paid updates. Until then 3rd party developers are high and dry.

Nothing in Apple's recent history suggests this is true. Think of the recent kerfuffle over Final Cut; they had no intention of continuing to sell the older version even though the new one was feature incomplete. It is highly likely that, when it appears, Aperture4 will similarly just replace Aperture3 at approximately the same price point. You can choose to buy the new one or not, but there's no discounted upgrade p…

Based on my numbers, it’d be great if the Mac App Store changed how it works so small developers can continue to reward their customers.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#107

Post by wil_shipley »

twiceaday wrote: post #3
kennywinker wrote: post #2

The consensus among all the devs I've talked to is that this feature will magically appear the next time Apple does a significant update to one of it's bigger ticket apps... Final Cut, Aperture, Logic, etc. I can't see any way they can get around this problem without adding paid updates. Until then 3rd party developers are high and dry.

Shucks. They will just have to sell another version of the App (Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio) for full price.

Angry Birds and other games are in a totally different category. If you buy “Angry Birds Space” it’s reasonable to assume (a) you’re done with the original, and (b) you’re going to get as many hours of enjoyment out of it as the original, so it’s fair to pay as much.

This isn’t the case with productivity applications, necessarily – you can keep using Delicious Library 2 and it’ll keep working great, so we need a way to reward customers who say, “Yes, I’ll pay to have some extra functionality.”

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#108

Post by wil_shipley »

deedubaya wrote: post #6

As a developer with Apps in the MAS, I can see where this makes sense from the developer's perspective. But I think it is a mater of laziness on the dev's part. Let me explain: From a users perspective, this would suck. It is an antiquated system. "I have to pay for an upgrade just so it works on the new OS?" Think of how many times you've had to do this in the past, and how you felt. Apple will act in the best inter…

We generally don’t charge to update our apps to a new operating system. In fact, that’s been a lot of what we’ve done to version 2 over the last couple years – it now runs on an OS TWO major versions beyond what we wrote it for. And that was a free upgrade for all users.

But if I rewrite an app and improve the art and the flow and the interaction and every little part of it, there’s no way to say, “Hey, pay and we’ll give you the better interface.”

I spend years tweaking every single part of my apps when I make a new version. I can’t just throw a switch to turn those on or off.

Finally: it’s pretty much my job to bitch about what Apple does wrong, just as it is yours: it’s the only way they will improve. They’re not gods. They need feedback.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#109

Post by cynix »

jacalata wrote: post #95
cynix wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I build a house for you for $X. You find out that the lights don't work and ask me to fix it. Would you be happy if I told you "Oh, sorry I messed up the electrical connections. It'll cost you $Y though, because I have to spend time fixing them and I need to get paid for that time."?

You build a house for me for $X. Two years later, I notice that if you hang three towels on the bathroom door on a humid day while the living room light was on, the door didn't close properly. Would you be happy if I came to you and demanded that you debug and fix this problem for free? Didn't I pay for a working house the first time? I very much do not believe that you paid me enough for me to guarantee that my prod…

If the problem is due to my poor worksmanship and it has always been there since the very beginning (even though you may not have noticed it for 2 years), I'd gladly fix it for free. Of course, with a bathroom door you'd have to prove it's not due to wear and tear, but this doesn't apply to software - the bits in your binary don't change with time.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#110

Post by wil_shipley »

cjensen wrote: post #17

The Mac software scene has always had lots of indie developers. Let's look at that scene for some facts... The indies generally charge an upgrade fee for "major" versions, and give free upgrades for "minor" updates. Most, like Wil, do the right thing. Delicious Library hasn't had a major release in years, but it is maintained. Others (for example, in my experience "DVD Remaster Pro" and Parallels Desktop), clearly ab…

A game is a different animal. If you add some new levels to a game people have finished, they’ll dive back in. That’s news.

If you’re making a productivity app, and you dribble out features, the press is going to ignore you. Can you imagine anyone running a story like, “Delicious Library 2.8 is out, and it includes a pretty new way to look at tables”? It’s just not going to happen, unless your name is Apple.

The press hit we get on a major release is part of what gives us the important spike in sales. It creates “buzz.” There’s a reason why even Apple doesn’t, like, just release iOS 5 feature-by-feature – they want to spring the whole thing on the world, so they get a ton of attention.

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