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Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#51

Post by DizzyDoo »

fitzwatermellow wrote: post #46
DizzyDoo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Unity is the engine I use, these engines are immensely valuable to developers like me, I can't invest years into building my own stable core right now, and although it has its rough edges and problems, it suits my projects very well. Builds to all sorts of targets, too. For my latest project I'm using the FMOD middleware for positional 3D audio. On the graphical asset side of things, I paint everything in…

+1 for Spine. Will literally change your perception of what's possible in sprite animation and illustration ;) Check it out: http://esotericsoftware.com/

Oh man, Spine is amazing. The latest 3.0 release has some great new scale features, and the fact that you can browse all the runtimes on github and submit patches is just the best. And the community is great too, lots of support on the forums, and bugs I've reported were fixed in days. So yes, Spine is absolutely worth the investment.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#52

Post by jventura »

pabloski wrote: post #49
ownedthx wrote: post #4

We have a desktop application that uses QtWebkit for the UI. We had no choice technically-we need to use audio APIs on Win/Mac to get our job done. Based on my experience, I would not recommend building a desktop app unless there is a technical reason to do so. Data storage, building installers, signing your app for target OS's, and dealing with auto-update are all technical problems that I'd prefer to avoid if I cou…

Hi, if I can ask: "why QtWebkit instead of Qtquick?".

+1, I'm wondering if anyone is using Qt Quick for productivity-like desktop applications?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#53

Post by WA »

I run a web app and am happy with it. Advantages:

- no update process

- support is easier, because you don't have to dig in the users specific setup

- monthly subscription model might be easier to accept for people, if they don't have the feeling of "owning" the software like with traditional desktop apps

- no multiple platforms (although people want apps, but at least, you don't have to also provide Linux and OS X versions)

Disadvantages:

- no offline mode (some people want that)

- some people want the feeling of ownership and privacy

I think as a one-man business, it's easier to maintain a web app than a desktop app.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#54

Post by jventura »

d--b wrote: post #15

There are many ways you can actually not ask yourself that question. 1. You can package your web app into electron or similar 2. You can use a portable platform like QT or Xamarin But more importantly, you should chose the one that will help you conclude that this is a good idea sooner. You'll probably end up rewriting the tool once you get feedback about where it rules and where it sucks. So I'd say that unless you…

That is the tricky part, is that I know how to make web apps (used to work as backend web developer), desktop apps (did my fair share of them), and can also play a bit with Android (did some small experiments and patches for Cyanogenmod). It seems that I just need to commit to something and work from there..

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#55

Post by ownedthx »

pabloski wrote: post #49
ownedthx wrote: post #4

We have a desktop application that uses QtWebkit for the UI. We had no choice technically-we need to use audio APIs on Win/Mac to get our job done. Based on my experience, I would not recommend building a desktop app unless there is a technical reason to do so. Data storage, building installers, signing your app for target OS's, and dealing with auto-update are all technical problems that I'd prefer to avoid if I cou…

Hi, if I can ask: "why QtWebkit instead of Qtquick?".

We have a website presence too, and the website UI (as visited in a normal browser) is 95% the same style and functionality as the desktop app.

So when you browse to our site via the desktop app, certain OS-only features turn on.

So it made a bunch of sense to use QtWebkit. I welcome the switch to QWebEngine though, if for nothing else in the hopes that the underlying browser code gets a update and the app will hopefully then feel more responsive.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#56

Post by ausjke »

pabloski wrote: post #49
ownedthx wrote: post #4

We have a desktop application that uses QtWebkit for the UI. We had no choice technically-we need to use audio APIs on Win/Mac to get our job done. Based on my experience, I would not recommend building a desktop app unless there is a technical reason to do so. Data storage, building installers, signing your app for target OS's, and dealing with auto-update are all technical problems that I'd prefer to avoid if I cou…

Hi, if I can ask: "why QtWebkit instead of Qtquick?".

For anything-QT that is commercial you need pay and it's not cheap for small teams.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#57

Post by Mr_Noodle »

Solo developer of a productivity app for the Mac for quite a number of years now. Yes, desktop apps are still very relevant and at least on the Mac, plenty of people willing to pay good money (unlike, say, the mobile market).

Whether to go desktop or web really depends on the application itself. Don't try and shoehorn it into one or the other. Ultimately, you'll need to find the right niche. Like in most industries, most people will fail (you usually don't hear their stories) and success will most likely not be immediate.

Doing things solo is tough so some general advice:

- You are going to be wearing many different hats but if you can afford it, contract out what you don't do well (like design, for many programmers). - You have fewer resources but also a lower bottom line. Don't expand without taking that into account, not just for the moment, but for the long term. It will affect how desperate you get with your revenue model. - Don't undercharge (especially if you go desktop). As mentioned, people still appreciate the value of desktop software.

Probably a lot more but those are the main ones plus I have support emails to deal with.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#59

Post by jventura »

mherrmann wrote: post #32

I'm just launching a file manager ( https://fman.io ). In general I'd say use web / SaaS whenever possible. If you do go with desktop, you may be interested in a blog post I just wrote about the technologies we ended up picking: https://fman.io/blog/picking-technologies-for-a-desktop-app-... .

I read your blog and it seems that you have something similar to my case, at least as technologies are concerned. I also have my business logic in Python and one of my ideas is PyQt (or Qml through pyotherside).

How are you shipping the application to users without Qt or Python installed? Are you using something like cx_freeze?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?

#60

Post by mattront »

Our desktop app Pinegrow Web Editor (http://pinegrow.com) is build with HTML / JS / Node.js packaged with NWJS/Electron. Three years ago I started by myself, now we're three working on the app full time and making a comfortable living (mid six figures in yearly sales).

Choosing this tech stack lets you postpone web vs desktop app decision and keep both options open. While recurring web app revenue sounds appealing it requires servers and responsibility to secure user data. With desktop app you'll never receive a 3am call that your service is down.

Btw. Subscriptions and desktop apps are not mutually exclusive. We give both options (one-time license purchase or monthly subscription) to our customers and the split is about even.

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