Making More Outside The App Store

https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2017/02/10/piezos-life-outside-the-app-store/

by shawndumas • 9 years ago

119 55 9 years ago

weblog.rogueamoeba.com

bsaul2• 9 years ago

App stores for mobile phones were very convenient at start because they provided a safe gateway to curated content, and globally enhanced the quality of what independant developpers released. But now it's clearly a hindrance. I wish the european union would force Apple to enable the installation of other app store (distributing legal software of course) on their device.

Actually, a good start would be to have the "don't distribute an app that has the same feature as a preinstalled one" clause declared illegal.

x0x02• 9 years ago

And I hate that idea.

I get people in my life to buy ios devices precisely because, even when they try, they are unable to install malware. That is not a feature any other OS has. Particularly the over-easy access to sideloading on android.

Just last month my MIL managed to get her bank account password stolen because she used it on her PC and installed who knows what from one of those fake Microsoft support pop-over ads. The solution is to only access bank accounts on ios.

It's really a major selling point of the devices.

qzervaas• 9 years ago

Any explanation for the downvotes?

dalbasal• 9 years ago

I think you're both right.

IOS (and to a large extent, android) have genuinely found an OS paradigm that works for unsophisticated users and put more power and confidence in their hands. The appstore is a big part of that. The icon=app rule is another part, where removing an icon removes the app. Users have a much improved understanding of their phone's software on an iphone relative to a windows/osx PC.

That said, it also limits the more sophisticated user and puts more power into Apple/Google's hands than I'd like.

It's 10 years later now and it's time to fill in some of the holes. Allowing alternative appstores would be a good start and wouldn't affect most users who are happy with the app store as is. Removing anti-competitive curation rules and practices would be good too.

andyfleming• 9 years ago

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. This is legitimate reasoning and you are contributing to the conversation in a civilized manner.

There are absolutely tradeoffs of buying into a walled garden. I personally have mixed feelings. An open ecosystem sounds nice in ways. For example, on my mac, I would be very frustrated if I were locked into only being able to buy software from Apple's App Store. It would be a deal-breaker. However, I've never really found myself frustrated with the iPhone app ecosystem. However, I've definitely been saved hours and hours of family IT support by family members being on iOS.

bsaul2• 9 years ago

I completely agree with that point, and make the same recommendations to people around me for the exact same reason.

However, you could very well imagine apple creating a sort of "third party app store guidelines" that would make it compulsory for third party app store to check apps for security violations prior to publishing an app.

Apple would then move one layer up. Instead of directly enforcing and distributing apps, it would enforce store basic rules, and leave some rules to others. Pretty much like what you'd do if you were to create a franchise.

There are intermediate grounds between "we control everything, and are the only one allowed to push apps" to "we allow everyone to install anything they want".

The idea is just to open this part of the market (app distribution) to competition.

AnthonyMouse2• 9 years ago

The only thing required for that is no malware in the app store, not any of Apple's other restrictions on what you can put there.

It doesn't even require prohibiting independent app stores, all it requires is that adding one prompt for a separate password which you don't give to your MIL.

tdkl• 9 years ago

The solution is education.

She should be thankful, not so long ago people would loose their life being stupid and those genes wouldn't pass on. I guess idiocracy is inevitable.

Oletros• 9 years ago

Perhaps a middle ground is like what you can do on Android, by default is a walled garden without the capability of installing from third party sources but you can enable it with a very big and scary warning

hossbeast• 9 years ago

This post is about the Mac App Store, not the iOS App Store.

ge0rg• 9 years ago

It took me several paragraphs of wondering how they circumvented the iOS restriction until I realized that. They really should have added "Mac" to the title.

ci5er• 9 years ago

Thank you. Many many things have now been made clear.

kalleboo• 9 years ago

I still search for apps with Google instead of in the App Store, even for iOS apps, since the App Store is such a terrible user experience (poor search, slow loading, glitchy, limited information compared to websites)

AsyncAwait2• 9 years ago

App Store sometimes fails to find the app I am looking for, even if I know the name of the app.

pfranz2• 9 years ago

Someone mentioned it in the page's comments, but I'm really surprised they didn't even caveat what they get for paying Apple 30% (much of this is redundant if they already sold outside of the App Store); download/update infrastructure, payment (and refunds), security (serial numbers and piracy protection), customer support and service support for those things. At least as an individual developer, that's all stuff I wouldn't want to deal with if I was shipping something.

Clearly, Apple has dropped the ball on making the App Store compelling. It's sad that a classic indie Mac app brand like Rogue Amoeba only offers one app (Fission) for sale in it.

ikonst• 9 years ago

I think Rogue Amoeba was already doing serial numbers etc. for their other products.

re Payments: Have you ever seen how easy Stripe is?

pfranz2• 9 years ago

I did mention that selling apps both in and out of the store requires you to set up many of those things. I was just surprised they didn't even mention it as a caveat because the way the article is worded it sounds like not being in the App Store equals 30% extra profit.

I haven't used Stripe (but have heard good things), but it's still not free. With the App store you don't necessarily need a webpage and all of the costs associated with designing, deploying, and maintaining.

paulkafasis• 9 years ago

While I certainly didn't go into depth on this, this line acknowledges the cost of both direct and App Store sales:

“Direct sales cost us just a few percent, so each direct sale of Piezo earns almost $5 more than a sale through the Mac App Store.”

That “few percent” takes into account the cost of our site and our downloads, as well as handling payment.

As far as acknowledging what Apple provides, it's simply not worth very much. The cost of infrastructure is incredibly low (nowhere near the 30% they take), and none of what you list is difficult to manage. Further, any developer who's looking to earn money is going to want to replicate most of that anyway. You should have a website you control to provide information and promote the product (see the many comments about Googling for apps, rather than using the App Store). You also ought to provide customer support for the product itself - Apple certainly doesn't help you there. Once you've got a web site, adding direct downloads is easy. Payment processing and license keys are certainly the most difficult pieces, but anyone making a Mac app can manage them as well. It can all be set up in a manner of days, if not hours. I wouldn't tell a developer that they must steer clear of the Mac App Store, but I absolutely would say they're doing themselves (and their customers) a disservice if they don't also sell their product directly.

glasz• 9 years ago

the mac is dead. i said it. downvote. i don't care. but it's dead and so is the app store.

i hear they're rewriting the entire app store backend, ditching web objects. but i'm having a hard time seeing them rebooting the bloody thing in some serious manner to adress the issues.

$200b to spend and just a few things don't get better. it's sad.

fit2rule3• 9 years ago

They have to compete with brew cask, in my opinion, and that's just not going to happen in a way that pushes the homebrew developers out of the market.

Much better to have community-curation than corporate-curation in my opinion.

supercoder• 9 years ago

What is competing with brew exactly ?

fit2rule3• 9 years ago

I think one thing that might make a difference in this regard is inclusion in the brew Caskroom list .. I've installed more apps through 'brew cask' than through the Mac App Store, that is for sure, and usually its because I was able to quickly and easily search, locate and discover apps very rapidly with a simple 'brew search' .. its at the point where I consider inclusion in the Caskroom repo's more important than App Store submission at this point. I trust the community software collections a lot more than the 'official Apple' channels, for some reason - I'm sure its not rational, but more just a fear of corporate control and the ultimate denigrating effect it has on the quality of software.

Plus there's the whole 'brew update && brew upgrade && brew cleanup && brew doctor' factor, that gives me - rightly or wrongly so - the impression that I have far more control over the software on my system than that granted me by the graces of Apple.

skinnymuch• 9 years ago

I use Cask a ton too. But we have to be in the huge minority. No one I've shown Cask to has ended up using it. I'm mainly talking about slightly above average techies or a few people who are comfortable with the cli. I doubt any paid software listed in Cask has their download numbers change by more than a few percent, if that.

simplehuman• 9 years ago

Not sure about this. I feel safe and secure thanks to App Store. Won't download any app outside it.

AsyncAwait2• 9 years ago

I'd say that you're greatly limiting your choices, the App Store sandbox greatly limits what you app can do.

charlesism• 9 years ago

I wouldn't feel safe and secure without "Little Snitch" installed. Don't look for it on the App Store, it will never be there.

rcarmo• 9 years ago

I think there is an elephant in the room here, which is that app stores (Mac, iOS or otherwise), besides all the requirements for inclusion (sandboxing, approvals, etc.) have become massively unmanageable dumping grounds, full of junk that is very hard to sift through for the normal customer.

Yes, they afford some credibility, trust and security (even though evil devs are constantly pushing the envelope), but even simple mechanisms like search are fundamentally broken on Apple's stores.

And it's not just about devs gaming the keyword rankings (I see enough of that when my kids search for games). It's just hopeless.

So no wonder RogueAmoeba makes more money off the App Store. Even discounting other factors, their (rather specialized and very, very cool) apps are just easier to find via web search.

tempodox• 9 years ago

There is a massive irony in the fact that Google yields better search results for iOS and Mac apps than the AppStore.

I've gotten to the point where I use the AppStore only in absence of alternatives.

If Apple wanted to get more into services, the AppStores would be an obvious and easy way to demonstrate their ability and willingness to provide, if not valuable, then at least usable services. And all they do is botch it.

gcr• 9 years ago

Agreed 100%. The only time I use the App Store is after I know which app I want to install. Discovery is still very poor if you want to find something that wasn't featured.

dreamcompiler• 9 years ago

Completely agree. AppStore search is now in the same sorry state as web search before Google existed. It desperately needs an innovation that does for app search what PageRank did for web search. Unfortunately, Apple isn't going to let anybody else build it, and I see no indication that Apple is building it themselves.

luckman212• 9 years ago

Agree with the general sentiment here. AppStore search is badly broken and the system has been gamed to the point of being nearly useless.

A site that helps me (no affiliation whatsoever) that at least allows filtering based on release date and "star rating" is https://theappstore.org/

DasIch2• 9 years ago

[...] very hard to sift through for the normal customer.

Maybe it's just me but I find it completely impossible to sift through it. The search is completely broken, there is no catalog worth going through. The only think worth looking at are the lists curated by Apple but then again usually I'm looking for something more specific.

In practice the only reliable way to find a good App, is going to be searching with Google, reading reviews outside of the App Store and eventually following a direct link to the App.

It's incomprehensible to me how anyone not just a normal customer would out of their own free will sift through this virtual garbage can. Many of the apps you'll see in search are so obviously scammy and questionable looking, you'll even get the disgust you'd get from sifting through actual garbage.

bfred_it3• 9 years ago

Easy. A normal customer would download the first result and just deal with it.

Most people can't really tell a quality app from something made in a batch — or they don't mind using a just-ok app.

Mithaldu• 9 years ago

I find we're nearing an age where the venerable tradition of the librarian may find a resurgence in the area of digital goods like apps, games, music, movies and yes, books too; which become available in such volume that human intervention in terms of cataloguing into a useful search system becomes necessary.

dhimes• 9 years ago

This is an intriguing idea, but I feel Deep Blue and kin may beat them to it.

k__2• 9 years ago

PWAs are the future :)

bfred_it3• 9 years ago

Have you seen what kind of software Rogue Amoeba produces? They can barely make it work without kernel extensions, let alone browser APIs that would take years to develop and mature.

k__2• 9 years ago

Sure, but apps like that aren't the majority :)

camtarn• 9 years ago

For context, the app (Piezo) in question was removed from the Mac App Store (not the iOS App Store, as I first assumed on reading!) by its developers.

It's an audio recorder which can record audio from other apps. The App Store introduced a sandbox which prevented the app from working, but they got around that by simply not updating the app and thus retaining the ability to work outside the sandbox. However, other apps introduced changes which broke Piezo, and which needed a fix which couldn't be distributed via App Store, finally killing that methods of distribution.

https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2016/02/12/piezo-1-5-arrives-...

hellofunk• 9 years ago

My main concern about releasing outside the app store is the security of licensing. The App Store takes care of that for you, but common licensing systems for Mac and Windows Desktop (like Nalpeiron) are quite expensive. And there would be significant developer time integrating them. Are there better alternatives? Perhaps it is not as hard as I imagine it to be to roll your own payment and licensing service?

The App Store is also good if you want to sell app subscriptions. That too would seem complicated to do on your own.

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