Jonathan Rentzch, a Mac developer, wrote an interesting post about the pros and cons of buying Mac apps in the Mac App Store versus buying them directly from the developer.
I think that he sums up the developer experience really well. From an end-user perspective, I think he’s overly dismissive of two major points (easier to buy and install apps, infinitely easier to know when software is updated). I think that he also completely leaves aside the point that the MAS gives a lot of visibility to apps that would otherwise be overlooked. This is good both for developers — even though the MAS takes a bigger cut of sales than developers would have by selling through other methods, the increase in sales probably more than makes up for it — and for end-users. He also doesn’t include the point that developers cannot offer trials via the MAS today, which is negative for end-users. For example, I’m using a trial of BusyCal right now because I wanted to see if it would fit into my workflow before plunking down $50 for it1.
It’s my hope that many of Rentzch’s points, especially those which are about the current sandboxing implementation, will disappear over time, and that the MAS will be a great solution for buying Mac apps.
- The answer, by the way, is yes. It’s certainly miles and miles better than iCal! ↩
He’s also just kind of full of shit on a few things, but at this point, he’s got a hardon for Apple that is based in “YOU’RE NOT THE COMPANY I WANT YOU TO BE”.
It is not “preferable” to buy your applications any one way or the other. It is different.
His “more money goes to the dev thing” is also just bollocks. It does not. The dev has to host the applications. That’s overhead. The Dev has to manage all the banking and credit card stuff. That’s overhead. Maybe Wolf never had to actually sell software in a global economy, but the costs involved are not minor. Bandwidth is not free, nor are credit card processing fees. Apple handling all that for you is not minor. In fact, it’s enabled some devs to be able to cut pricing because of savings on overhead.
Wolf has decided that if it’s not what he likes, it pretty much must must be crap, which is pretty standard for the I Am A Super Programmer type.
I’d certainly like to see numbers on that one. Hosting and credit card fees are obviously not free, but I have utterly no clue how the costs compare to Apple’s cut.