Earlier quoted context omitted.
OmniFocus 2 is $39.99 on iPhone and very popular. Their suite is $149.99.
Does anyone purchase it for iPhone that hasn't made the investment elsewhere?
That's a bit of a goalpost move, isn't it?
The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
51–60 of 131 posts
Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#52Great, you're #8 on the App Store for an app that allows you to blur photos... you're so excited that you're going to get rich... Leaves me thinking: Who cares what rank you are on the App Store, making an app that does basically very little (though useful) should NOT make you rich. I just think of something like Monument Valley - not a throwaway - tons of work - and it DID make them rich. Rightfully so. I guess I'd…
It's not that you should get rich from such an investment. It's that basically no one is getting rich from the Mac App Store. The desktop app store is a failure in many respects. It did not take off the same way mobile app stores have.
As for Monument Valley, that's a pretty poor example. They invested 1.5m and made 5.8m. For a core team of 8 people it's not fuck you money. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/527b69fbe4b0febeee4fc...
They didn't even make 10x their investment. There is a strong argument to made that a 10x project is the minimum you need just to have a sustainable company. Sustainable! That's a long, long way from rich. http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-succes...
Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#53Great, you're #8 on the App Store for an app that allows you to blur photos... you're so excited that you're going to get rich... Leaves me thinking: Who cares what rank you are on the App Store, making an app that does basically very little (though useful) should NOT make you rich. I just think of something like Monument Valley - not a throwaway - tons of work - and it DID make them rich. Rightfully so. I guess I'd…
Its about exposure. A lot of people on iOS are using the app store not so much for Mac. In fact from some of my sources I have been told that a lot of people will only have the apps that come with the Mac when they buy it and never actually explore apps.
Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#54Great, you're #8 on the App Store for an app that allows you to blur photos... you're so excited that you're going to get rich... Leaves me thinking: Who cares what rank you are on the App Store, making an app that does basically very little (though useful) should NOT make you rich. I just think of something like Monument Valley - not a throwaway - tons of work - and it DID make them rich. Rightfully so. I guess I'd…
How about the problem discussed in the article?
"One Mac app developer made it up to No. 8 with just 59 downloads"
If you make it to number 8 with so few downloads, there probably isn't much of a market.
Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#55Anyone else reluctant to buy through the Mac App store because of the perceived lack of uptake? For example, I've been a longtime owner of a Transmit license...it's worked for years now. If I don't keep up with OS X releases, I can still download past binaries and use the key (within a limit...for example, Transmit 3 owners were required to upgrade to 4.x). But what if the developer decides that it's not worth mainta…
nah, I figure it's not going anywhere, and a lot of the software I bought using homegrown licensing schemes I ended up not using, since it's just too much of a pain in the ass to try to hunt up the licenses and restore everything on a new computer. edit: i do wish apple would relax the sandbox strictness a bit and other editor review criteria so it was a more attractive alternative to self-publishing.
I think Apple just needs to review their policy and add another entitlement "Entire Current User Folder ~/" to allow apps that traditionally cannot be sandboxed. I am sure they want us to re-imagine a way for FTP apps to work, but I don't want to change my workflow. I want to be able to browse any folder on my Mac on the left pane. So I won't buy the Mac App Store version. I fully agree with Panic and why they bailed out.
Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#56I have been lucky and is doing fairly well with Ghostnote on the mac app store. My product is also lucky to be the only one of it's kind as far as I am aware, which means no competitor and plenty of room to grow it. However I learned the hard way how dysfunctional the Mac App Store is mainly because Apple ignore it compared to the iOs app store and because their Sandboxing is so opaque it's hindering a lot of good in…
> top 5 in productivity apps.
Mobile purchasing is ruled by iOS in the states, at least. Desktop purchasing, especially in regards to productivity, is ruled by Windows. Those fancy macs you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook machines. Those people are interested in your product, generally. Or if they are, it'll be for their work computer and paid for by the IT department. Do you have a windows version and a relationship with a VAR or two and enterprise friendly pricing/terms?
I don't see how Apple can help you. You're selling running shoes to people in wheelchairs. Find where the runners are.
Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#57I have been lucky and is doing fairly well with Ghostnote on the mac app store. My product is also lucky to be the only one of it's kind as far as I am aware, which means no competitor and plenty of room to grow it. However I learned the hard way how dysfunctional the Mac App Store is mainly because Apple ignore it compared to the iOs app store and because their Sandboxing is so opaque it's hindering a lot of good in…
> top 5 in productivity apps. Mobile purchasing is ruled by iOS in the states, at least. Desktop purchasing, especially in regards to productivity, is ruled by Windows. Those fancy macs you see everywhere are little more than dedicated facebook machines. Those people are interested in your product, generally. Or if they are, it'll be for their work computer and paid for by the IT department. Do you have a windows ver…
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Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#58Great, you're #8 on the App Store for an app that allows you to blur photos... you're so excited that you're going to get rich... Leaves me thinking: Who cares what rank you are on the App Store, making an app that does basically very little (though useful) should NOT make you rich. I just think of something like Monument Valley - not a throwaway - tons of work - and it DID make them rich. Rightfully so. I guess I'd…
How about the problem discussed in the article? "One Mac app developer made it up to No. 8 with just 59 downloads" If you make it to number 8 with so few downloads, there probably isn't much of a market.
Notably, this article fails to mention that this is for only the graphics chart, and the selection of graphics apps fairly limited. Outside of Serif Labs, Bohemian Coding and Pixelmator, most of the apps are fairly one-note like Redacted. I don't think desktop users are of the same mindset for one-off applications outside of small utilities like SnapRuler or Colorsnapper.
Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#59"dash" app developer says he made $188k+ last year just from App Store alone: https://blog.kapeli.com/my-year-in-review-2014
But it seems he also includes iOS App Store figures. The original article is about Mac App Stores.
Re: The Mac App Store Won’t Make You Rich
#60The article makes some fundamental mistakes:
1) It talks about an app that reached #8 in "Top Paid". The more interesting list would be "Top Grossing"
2) It talks about a trivial app that was created with very little effort. While gimmick apps might work on iOS, people prefer to buy actually useful software on the Mac.
The title is still somewhat true: It's unlikely you will become very rich by selling Mac Apps. But you can make a decent living; I currently make around 6000€/month (gross revenue) from two Mac Apps.