[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.