[_qulr]

> People quickly forget what a tremendous liberation the App Store created for developers.

People quickly forget that software was distributed on the web long before the App Store existed.

>That's what has caused this flood of software purchases from consumers.

No, that was caused by a billion people buying shiny new mobile computers. They would have bought a lot of software in any case, even without an App Store. New platform, new software.

[ben_w]

> People quickly forget that software was distributed on the web long before the App Store existed.

I did that. Kagi.com was my payment… handler?

https://web.archive.org/web/20100303221537/http://www.kagi.c...

$0.75 + (5…8)%

So any transaction less than or equal to the $2.99 tier would be just as bad (as in, it costs you at least 30% of the list price), even if hosting was free.

I’m also old enough to remember Apple getting involved in the fight over the In App Purchases patent: https://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/08/lodsys-offers-update-on...

[_qulr]

> So any transaction less than or equal to the $2.99 tier would be just as bad (as in, it costs you at least 30% of the list price), even if hosting was free.

It's true that App Store has the best deal for payment processing for very low-priced apps.

But that's not truly a win for developers when the App Store itself caused the "race to the bottom". Who was selling 99 cent apps before the crap store?

[colejohnson66]

I remember that if I wanted to play anything other than Snake on my Nokia, I had to pay like $5 a game. And those games were even worse than the majority of 99¢ games on the store.

You can argue lower prices lead to more crap, but it also encourages people to spend more. Most people would debate a $4.99 purchase, but think nothing of 5 99¢ purchases if done separately.

[chipotle_coyote]

I think I agree with Lap Cat here. There's a place for cheap apps, but the problem comes for people developing productivity (or worse, vertical market) software that's going to sell "mere" thousands of copies, or tens of thousands at best, rather than hundreds of thousands or more. If you sell 10,000 copies at $50 a copy, you've grossed well over a quarter-million even subtracting Apple's 30% -- but if you're selling on a platform where it's hard to price anything over $5, you may have a problem, because one-tenth the price is probably not going to translate to ten times the sales.

[DaiPlusPlus]

Those kinds of apps today tend to be part of a SaaS service and listed as Free in the App Store. Provided it’s B2B and not B2C - and you do signups and payments on your own website - then you’re exempt from the self-service signup (and 30% tax) requirements.

The catch is that as you get bigger and seem more B2C than B2B then Apple might start to take notice (see: Hey e-mail).

[chipotle_coyote]

Well, I was thinking of things like media editing (or specialized text editing) and other apps, not all of which work well in a true SaaS model. On the other hand, it's significant that more and more of those have moved toward a subscription model...

[reaperducer]

People quickly forget that software was distributed on the web long before the App Store existed.

He's talking about when you used to have to pay $50 to $500 for software in a store, but the author was lucky to see $5-$10 of that.

[ethbr0]

True, but today is mostly certainly not 1998.

[x0x0]

And now Apple generously gives you up to 85% of $1 to $5!

[grumple]

What do you mean? Microsoft was certainly seeing more than 5-10$ per product sold.

[hn_check]

"People quickly forget that software was distributed on the web long before the App Store existed."

Independent software development was an absolute wasteland. It was extremely hard to get a user to give you money outside of a few extremely fortified ghettos (Steam, for instance, which takes a 30% cut as well). Begware was the most common tactic.

Even now with multiple options, while everyone piles on Apple, we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms. Apple did more to liberate payments from a user than any other platform. Through trust, through standardization and normalization, and even through things like the wide availability of App Store gift cards (which are often heavily discounted - $85 for $100 of App Store gift cards at Costco many times through the year).

Elsewhere people are arguing that Windows is a wonderful platform because look, it's so open. Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is. Unless your name is Microsoft or Adobe, you are in for a really, really rough time of it. You'll get 100% of nothing.

As always, of course this is downvoted. Anyone looking to HN for rational, reality-based discussion might find it a bit disappointing. Here apparently the Windows ISV market is a vibrant, lucrative market. Everyone here is profiting from it, right? (LOL -- close to none of you are). This is farce.

[_qulr]

> Independent software development was an absolute wasteland.

I had a 10 year career in that "wasteland".

> we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms

Citation? From what I've seen, that's not actually true.

> Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is.

For a time, the Windows version of our product was my company's biggest money-maker. It seems that in recent years though Microsoft as a company has pivoted away from Windows as their primary product. Away from desktop, toward "the cloud". I personally find that unfortunate, but I'm not a stockholder.

> The whole torch mob anti-Apple angle seems entirely detached from actual reality.

I'm not anti-Apple, I'm pro-Macintosh.

[j-pb]

Thanks for having been a part of this golden age of computing. There's not a day that goes by where I don't reminiscent about the time when companies like "rogue amoeba", "made by sofa", "monster", or "Strange Flavour" and people like Alexander Repty, Austin Sarner and Brian Ball made really great mac software.

There was so much community, and such an optimistic mood with things like the Appsterdam movement.

And then it all crashed and burned, because Apple decided to get greedy, and that 99cents was going to be the default App price, with 30cents going to Apple.

Those are scraps, and nobody who wants to make an artisanal niche app to scratch their own itch, and maybe sell it, can live from that money. It was either win the lottery, or starve.

Apple killed its own ecosystem, most app store apps suck nowadays. It's ironic that they were the ones with an ad saying "we mistake abundance with choice".

I wish all the old mac devs would get together and collaboratively write a good GUI-toolkit for linux and a new Userland. Right now there is not a single good operating system. Having all those apps on linux would be a dream come true. But a dream it is...

[TedDoesntTalk]

> Independent software development was an absolute wasteland. It was extremely hard to get a user to give you money outside of a few extremely fortified ghettos

Utter nonsense. Shrink-wrapped and downloadable software in the Windows world was all over the place using activation/serial codes either thru email or on a CD.

Two examples:

VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/

SnagIt screen capture (which is now cloud based, I think. I still use an old version)

[pier25]

> we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms

Almost 80% of Fortnite players are on console, so I very much doubt that's even remotely true.

https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoos-battle-royale-s...

[monadic2]

Not sure why you're downvoted.

It seems like the unavoidable conclusion is that there are no longer any good places to make or find decent consumer software without having a corporate entity get their undeserving cut.

[xtracto]

Tell that to John Carmack or Lord British or even Microsoft. The wasteland of the 80s / 90s surely ended up their careers.