Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to under the radar a show about independent iOS app development

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm Marco Arment and I'm David Smith under the radar is never longer than 30 minutes. So let's get started

00:00:09 ◼   ► So in in the absence of much iOS news this week

00:00:12 ◼   ► I wanted to talk a little bit about the Mac as I mentioned before I've been getting

00:00:16 ◼   ► Slowly into with a couple of small utility apps the first one being quitter, which I launched

00:00:21 ◼   ► I don't know a month ago something like that. And now I'm working on a basic podcast post-production tool

00:00:28 ◼   ► I wanted to talk a little bit about the considerations behind selling this Mac app potentially in the near future

00:00:33 ◼   ► You know both releasing it to the public polishing it up and then whether to charge money for it

00:00:39 ◼   ► Do I sell it in the Mac App Store versus non Mac App Store? Do I worry about piracy stuff like that?

00:00:44 ◼   ► the first concern I had is

00:00:47 ◼   ► Do I want to release this app to the public at all?

00:00:51 ◼   ► When you're in the middle of building an app and you're like, oh, this is kind of fun

00:00:55 ◼   ► You might think you know, oh it's right now. I I've gotten to a point where I can use it

00:01:00 ◼   ► And it's kind of done for a while and then you might use it for a while

00:01:02 ◼   ► You might share with a couple of couple of friends or something like that and you might think okay, you know

00:01:07 ◼   ► I should release this this is useful

00:01:09 ◼   ► the difference between like the point you're at at that at that moment where like you have the app working for you and

00:01:15 ◼   ► Maybe a couple other people versus something that is releasable

00:01:18 ◼   ► That's a very very wide gap and I learned this when I did quitter

00:01:23 ◼   ► Where I had like this basic Apple script first and then I had this basic menu bar app and I thought you know

00:01:29 ◼   ► other people might find this useful I should release this and

00:01:31 ◼   ► to get from that point to

00:01:34 ◼   ► Releasable in in a responsible and and pleasant and likely to succeed way was so much work

00:01:41 ◼   ► Because what you don't realize when when you when you have the initial app, you don't realize that

00:01:47 ◼   ► There are like all the edge cases that you're not considering that cuz like you don't use them yourself edge cases

00:01:54 ◼   ► You know, we had a whole show on edge cases

00:01:56 ◼   ► There's all the education are considering and the standards for what is good enough are

00:02:00 ◼   ► Way lower when it's just you or your friends using an app like what's good enough with the UI

00:02:06 ◼   ► What's good enough with input handling with edge case handling in general?

00:02:10 ◼   ► You just need far less polish and then other stuff like that you don't even think of at first

00:02:16 ◼   ► but that is actually that could be a lot of work or or expense or just a hassle is

00:02:20 ◼   ► You know a private app for yourself doesn't need a public name. It doesn't need a decent icon. It doesn't need documentation

00:02:27 ◼   ► You don't need to worry about distribution

00:02:30 ◼   ► It doesn't need a website doesn't need like an auto updater feed stuff like that

00:02:34 ◼   ► And once you have it working for yourself

00:02:37 ◼   ► It basically doesn't need any maintenance because you know all the limitations you avoid them yourself

00:02:42 ◼   ► And it just it works for you and you consider it done if you release to the public you have to go through this massive

00:02:49 ◼   ► Polishing stage it seems like oh, you know this weekend. I'll polish it up and get it out there in practice

00:02:56 ◼   ► It usually takes a lot of time like you don't you typically underestimate that time. It's it's not easy or fast and

00:03:03 ◼   ► Once the app goes public people will have expectations for it. They will start emailing you feature requests they will

00:03:12 ◼   ► Expect improvements to all the bugs that you didn't find because you didn't hit any of the edge cases and

00:03:16 ◼   ► What started out as a as a simple idea of all, you know, I've made this app for myself

00:03:21 ◼   ► Maybe I'll release it that can quickly balloon into a much larger

00:03:26 ◼   ► Project like what happened with quitter like there was a lot of temptation that like, you know quitter as it is right now works

00:03:32 ◼   ► fine for me

00:03:34 ◼   ► But there was immediate temptation once I released it and started getting all these people saying, you know, oh man

00:03:40 ◼   ► this is great it be even better if it did this or

00:03:43 ◼   ► man, you could really make this into a bigger thing by adding this and

00:03:46 ◼   ► it quickly became very tempting to take this what you what was this very basic little utility app and

00:03:53 ◼   ► To try to make it its own bigger product

00:03:57 ◼   ► But then of course like do I have time for that bigger product?

00:04:01 ◼   ► Do I want to even be in that business?

00:04:03 ◼   ► Like, you know, I'd start competing with us with a whole other market of products that frankly I don't know anything about

00:04:08 ◼   ► I don't know what it's like to compete in that market, you know

00:04:11 ◼   ► Do I really want to be doing that like it's a whole different ballgame

00:04:14 ◼   ► Can I spare the time from my other projects that I want to be doing to turn this thing into a bigger thing?

00:04:20 ◼   ► That all the people are asking for that might be tempting, you know

00:04:23 ◼   ► It's a very hard balance to find and it can so easily get

00:04:27 ◼   ► Totally out of control before you even step back and realize wait a minute

00:04:30 ◼   ► Do I even want to be doing this as a big app?

00:04:34 ◼   ► Or do I want to just keep it as this little thing that I spend, you know a few days on once and then never touch again

00:04:39 ◼   ► and this is a lesson that I've

00:04:41 ◼   ► had to learn many many times I have the tendency to build anything I can think of and

00:04:48 ◼   ► several times I've built something and put it out into the

00:04:52 ◼   ► As I get it to that point where you're talking about where it's like it's sort of done. It's useful enough

00:04:58 ◼   ► It's kind of at that cross that functional threshold

00:05:01 ◼   ► Maybe you'd say right done is in the biggest quotation marks ever. Yeah, it's it's like it's

00:05:06 ◼   ► Sort of functional maybe is a better word than done. Yes, and

00:05:09 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, maybe I'll release this me. I'll put this out in the store

00:05:14 ◼   ► Maybe I'll like it's maybe other people would find it useful

00:05:17 ◼   ► the thing that I find that I now have maybe it's maybe a bit strong to call it the wisdom but

00:05:24 ◼   ► I've been caught up with it enough times to know that there's a

00:05:29 ◼   ► Difference in the way you approach building something if you're building it as a product

00:05:33 ◼   ► versus if you're building it just as

00:05:36 ◼   ► Like on a lark just a little hobby project a little experimentation a little prototype something like that

00:05:42 ◼   ► You have to be more thoughtful. You have to think about how it's going to be used and

00:05:48 ◼   ► What even even answering questions for you know? What is a typical user going to be and

00:05:56 ◼   ► Optimizing it for them and sometimes it's great if you are the typical user I suppose

00:06:01 ◼   ► but if you're not then

00:06:03 ◼   ► You know it gets starts to get really squishy and tricky to make sure that you're actually building a product that other people would know

00:06:10 ◼   ► how to use

00:06:11 ◼   ► And you know, I have many utilities and things that

00:06:14 ◼   ► I've never released but I use myself or at least what off perhaps moreover

00:06:19 ◼   ► What will happen is I'll build something use it for myself for a long time and then take like the lesson learned from me

00:06:26 ◼   ► Using it and turn it into an act

00:06:28 ◼   ► You know fold it into a product

00:06:30 ◼   ► but the actual product part is going to be very different like necessarily and so it's definitely a tricky thing to

00:06:37 ◼   ► Look at something and say do I actually want this to exist outside of my own use or at least you know my close friends

00:06:44 ◼   ► Or family you know like there's a couple of apps or tools that I use that you know like I put

00:06:49 ◼   ► There only only exists on my wife and my phone, and that's fine like they don't have to be products

00:06:55 ◼   ► They can just be things honestly. What is that number? I'm curious. It's probably a lot. It's only a way. It's probably a handful

00:07:00 ◼   ► Well, I mean most people that number is zero so like sure it's it's greater than zero and a lot of these things

00:07:06 ◼   ► I guess it are

00:07:08 ◼   ► It's the it's fighting the temptation to anytime you have an idea to

00:07:13 ◼   ► rush it out to market versus trying to use it yourself for a while and

00:07:18 ◼   ► Seeing if it actually is something so a lot of times when I these probably things will ultimately end up being a product that or

00:07:25 ◼   ► Will be a part of a bigger product

00:07:27 ◼   ► But they start life is just things to keep close because I used to rush things out

00:07:31 ◼   ► I mean that's part of why I ended up with the problem of having

00:07:33 ◼   ► Dozens and dozens of apps in the app store because anytime I had an idea I'd build it and put it out and

00:07:39 ◼   ► to start with I had the mindset of well if I

00:07:43 ◼   ► like you never know what's going to be a hit maybe I should just always push things out and

00:07:47 ◼   ► Let the market tell me if it's useful or cool the reality problem with that is like what if the market tells me that what?

00:07:53 ◼   ► I'm doing is

00:07:55 ◼   ► like useful and cool, but in a way different very different way or

00:07:58 ◼   ► with a very different

00:08:01 ◼   ► slant than I want to actually use or build a product for then I'm kind of like

00:08:05 ◼   ► stuck into that and also it gets this to a really weird thing of

00:08:08 ◼   ► Like is it reasonable to put something out that I don't have expectations to support for example

00:08:15 ◼   ► Or like what level of support do I expect to provide for something?

00:08:18 ◼   ► You know is this just if it's just something I built on a lark and put in put out into the world

00:08:22 ◼   ► It's you know you there's always especially if you put it into like an you know into the App Store or something like that then

00:08:28 ◼   ► There's a certain expectation

00:08:30 ◼   ► I think that people naturally have for what they should get from that and so it definitely makes sense for as you're going through this

00:08:36 ◼   ► Process of you know do I want this thing that I find useful

00:08:39 ◼   ► To actually exist in the world to make sure you have a good answer to that that do I want to support this do I want?

00:08:45 ◼   ► to

00:08:46 ◼   ► Chase down the various bugs and issues that people are having are people going to use this in a professional context for example

00:08:53 ◼   ► Where if there's a problem there's potentially?

00:08:56 ◼   ► financial implications or

00:08:59 ◼   ► More serious things that could go wrong. You know in Twitter if it doesn't quit Twitter for somebody

00:09:04 ◼   ► That's probably not a big deal

00:09:06 ◼   ► but if it if you're doing an app that could have a bigger implication if it goes wrong like

00:09:13 ◼   ► There's some weird more like liability type of questions that you have to be comfortable with before

00:09:17 ◼   ► You'd move forward into an act into into you know broader distribution

00:09:22 ◼   ► Exactly and and all those you know all the problems of are you willing to support this and are you ready to support it?

00:09:29 ◼   ► All those things really do apply whether it's free or paid

00:09:33 ◼   ► Although I will say though whether you charge money at all

00:09:37 ◼   ► Makes a big difference in the type of expectations and entitlement that your customers will feel to things like you know

00:09:44 ◼   ► Quality like if somebody pays for an app. They're certainly going to expect you know it better be good

00:09:50 ◼   ► You know it better work and have good features it also better not crash or have bugs that they can notice

00:09:55 ◼   ► you know they expect you to support it ongoing you know with updates with maintenance and

00:10:02 ◼   ► Also as you mentioned support you know if people paid for an app even if they only paid a dollar

00:10:07 ◼   ► They expect a certain level of support

00:10:11 ◼   ► I mean heck people expect support for free apps, but they they expect a lot more for paid apps

00:10:15 ◼   ► It's not proportional to the different like you know they don't if they paid a dollar versus paying nothing

00:10:21 ◼   ► They don't expect like a dollar more support. They expect a lot more support psychologically. They people are very

00:10:27 ◼   ► protective of having spent money on something and they really get angry if it doesn't matter to their expectations if they paid even just

00:10:34 ◼   ► $1 for it and the good thing is you know on the Mac you can charge more but

00:10:39 ◼   ► charging more brings on even higher

00:10:42 ◼   ► Expectations, so you know if you if you are what I would consider like a cheap app so on iOS

00:10:48 ◼   ► This would probably be like less than three dollars. Maybe on the Mac. I'd say under ten dollars probably

00:10:53 ◼   ► That is like one level of expectations of you know quality updates support

00:10:58 ◼   ► If you charge you know what I would call real money

00:11:02 ◼   ► And and that the perception of what real money is will vary by your market

00:11:06 ◼   ► But you know I'd say on iOS maybe ten dollars on the Mac

00:11:09 ◼   ► Maybe fifty dollars if you're charging that you know that kind of like what people think of as real money

00:11:14 ◼   ► You will be held to much higher expectations

00:11:17 ◼   ► Like you know if people just paid you ten dollars for your iOS app

00:11:23 ◼   ► And it doesn't work on the phone they buy next month

00:11:26 ◼   ► They're gonna be mad like they're gonna be real and understandably so because they pay what they believe is a premium price

00:11:32 ◼   ► And you better be supporting that if they spend

00:11:35 ◼   ► $50 in your Mac app and they email you with a question you don't answer that email

00:11:39 ◼   ► That's that's gonna look really bad for you in their eyes

00:11:42 ◼   ► And they're gonna get very angry about that and so you have to really consider all this and then and you know this goes back

00:11:47 ◼   ► To trying to estimate your market if you talked about within the ideas episode trying to estimate your market of like

00:11:54 ◼   ► Given all these all the overhead of making a paid app and selling a paid app am I likely to actually get

00:12:01 ◼   ► enough copies sold

00:12:03 ◼   ► To make enough money from this that it will be worth all that overhead in my business and in my life

00:12:09 ◼   ► And is that really worth it or not and it might be easy to rationalize

00:12:13 ◼   ► Oh, you know I made this app it's kind of used for charge. You know ten bucks forward or whatever or on iOS

00:12:18 ◼   ► I should charge two bucks for it or whatever by the way that multiple makes me sad, but that's the reality but anyway

00:12:23 ◼   ► You know there there's a temptation

00:12:24 ◼   ► Oh, you know I could charge a few bucks for it and make a little bit of money, but the reality is

00:12:28 ◼   ► Making that money charging that price will have costs to you

00:12:32 ◼   ► And you need to make sure that you are being realistic about your expectations of like how many copies

00:12:37 ◼   ► I'm really going to sell and is that going to be worth?

00:12:40 ◼   ► Making that you know a few hundred dollars that I make from this or whatever it might be

00:12:44 ◼   ► And if you end up with saying that it's not like then you have the weird question

00:12:48 ◼   ► It's like well if I make it free then why am I even releasing it?

00:12:53 ◼   ► Like fair enough there's a certain like altruism or like you know being or maybe like exposure or

00:13:00 ◼   ► Marketing angles that you could see like long-term reputation marketing kind of things yeah

00:13:05 ◼   ► Or like those types of or like bigger you know in broader sort of play

00:13:09 ◼   ► I mean sort of in the way that overcast is a free app

00:13:11 ◼   ► With in-app purchases in it to support its development

00:13:15 ◼   ► But you know you've said many times that you made it free to try and

00:13:20 ◼   ► you know establish it as a

00:13:22 ◼   ► Big player in the in the space because you had other motivations for that that you wanted the platform to

00:13:27 ◼   ► You know stay competitive and open and so that can be worthwhile even though

00:13:32 ◼   ► It's not financially the the directly of the financial incentive is there

00:13:36 ◼   ► But like there is a weird thing or you'll end up with people be like well then why don't you just open source it?

00:13:40 ◼   ► It's like well

00:13:41 ◼   ► Then you kind of have two problems like you have

00:13:43 ◼   ► Like you have the source code and developer problem as well as the the customer facing problem

00:13:48 ◼   ► And you have to manage and deal with those types of things that

00:13:52 ◼   ► It gets really

00:13:54 ◼   ► Complicated to a point that you have to decide like why am I doing this and you have to have a good answer like a good

00:14:00 ◼   ► Concise answer for like why would I want this to exist in the world and if you have a good answer awesome if you don't

00:14:05 ◼   ► Maybe it's not worth doing

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00:16:10 ◼   ► assuming that you have decided that you want to release your app and that you want to charge money for it and

00:16:15 ◼   ► And that it's a Mac app. So, you know iOS that's a whole other point. We'll talk about that in other shows

00:16:20 ◼   ► Suppose you want to charge money for a Mac app

00:16:23 ◼   ► How do you do that? And where do you do that? The most obvious first choice is the Mac App Store

00:16:28 ◼   ► The Mac App Store though, you know as as we know by now the Mac App Store is a mixed bag

00:16:34 ◼   ► You know like like the iOS App Store it builds a big wall between you and your customers and this has some benefits and some downsides

00:16:42 ◼   ► The obvious benefits are that you don't need to deal with things like basic distribution of versions updates

00:16:48 ◼   ► And the big thing you don't deal with payment and those are those are all

00:16:52 ◼   ► Substantial gains that you don't have to deal with because those are all complicated to different degrees

00:16:57 ◼   ► I think payment being probably the most complicated not having to deal with that is is a huge win

00:17:02 ◼   ► It also kind of acts as a support wall between you and your customers like your customers might not contact you directly

00:17:10 ◼   ► They might like go to the Mac App Store for that contact thing or they might just blame Apple or blame the App Store or whatever

00:17:15 ◼   ► else if people have problems and that's

00:17:17 ◼   ► probably

00:17:19 ◼   ► It's probably a good thing in the immediate term if you don't think about it too much, but in the long term

00:17:22 ◼   ► It's probably a bad thing

00:17:24 ◼   ► Buying from the store though. A lot of people prefer it it reduces

00:17:28 ◼   ► Issues around things like trust, you know, if people don't really trust you or you don't seem

00:17:33 ◼   ► Legitimate or large they might have trouble giving you money

00:17:36 ◼   ► Whereas they tend to not have those problems in the App Stores

00:17:39 ◼   ► And of course, it's easier for people to install stuff from the App Store. Usually when it works

00:17:43 ◼   ► They don't have to fish out their license key or anything like that

00:17:46 ◼   ► So like many customers do prefer buying from the App Store and that is not to be underestimated

00:17:51 ◼   ► but

00:17:53 ◼   ► For those benefits with the Mac App Store you pay major costs

00:17:57 ◼   ► It is incredibly inflexible on

00:18:00 ◼   ► Pricing models distribution updates stuff like that. You know, there's no trials no paid upgrades

00:18:04 ◼   ► There's a lot of rules

00:18:06 ◼   ► You also have to go through app review and to enforce a lot of these rules and you have to be sandboxed and these are

00:18:12 ◼   ► all pretty major restrictions for a lot of Mac app businesses

00:18:16 ◼   ► a lot of apps just can't be sold through the App Store for some of those requirements and a lot of them maybe could be but

00:18:22 ◼   ► It would be unwise for them to be sold through the store and it would be bad business for them

00:18:26 ◼   ► The biggest thing to me is is well the two biggest things to me

00:18:30 ◼   ► You you definitely have less access and knowledge about your customers

00:18:35 ◼   ► So it's harder to do things like build an email

00:18:38 ◼   ► list for you know new releases and stuff like that and it's harder to like offer certain people discounts things like that and

00:18:44 ◼   ► mostly to me they take a 30% cut and 30% is

00:18:49 ◼   ► A lot like it's it's easy if we're you know, for those of us who were accustomed to iOS

00:18:55 ◼   ► It's easy to forget or to or to not really ever think through like how much is 30% exactly

00:19:00 ◼   ► So just to give you an example of how much 30% is in practice

00:19:04 ◼   ► Suppose you make you suppose you have a really good app. It makes $50,000. Well, you made $50,000

00:19:10 ◼   ► What did the app actually make? So if you got $50,000 from Apple the app made about

00:19:15 ◼   ► $71,000 so you got 50 and Apple got about 21,000. So Apple got almost half of what you got

00:19:23 ◼   ► If you sell outside of an App Store, but you can't do an iOS really but if you do it on the Mac

00:19:28 ◼   ► That 30% cut that is taken by your parent processor goes down to maybe you know

00:19:34 ◼   ► Three to six percent depending on how you're doing it depending on international support payment provider stuff like that

00:19:40 ◼   ► But it's it goes down, you know almost order of magnitude from from Apple's cut

00:19:45 ◼   ► So in that example just to give you some numbers

00:19:49 ◼   ► For your app that you made $50,000 from in the App Store you would have made about

00:19:53 ◼   ► $66,000 from Fatspring or

00:19:56 ◼   ► $69,000 from stripe. So these are not small differences 30% is a lot and

00:20:03 ◼   ► If you know if Apple brings that 15% cut to a lot more places that will help a lot

00:20:08 ◼   ► 15% is also a lot but it's way more competitive than 30 compared to selling it yourself

00:20:13 ◼   ► so the App Store really is

00:20:18 ◼   ► You you really you get a lot of benefits for it, but you do pay dearly for those benefits in a lot of different ways and

00:20:24 ◼   ► For a lot of people it's just not worth it. Sure and the App Store too is this

00:20:30 ◼   ► Like it is it's a weird thing to have the choice in some ways coming from an iOS background

00:20:35 ◼   ► Where like I just because I have no choice in the matter

00:20:38 ◼   ► Like if I want to make iOS software and give it to someone else beyond unless I'm within a big company and I do an enterprise

00:20:45 ◼   ► Distribution thing like the only option is the iOS App Store. So like whatever I can lobby and

00:20:51 ◼   ► Encourage Apple to change policies or to make things happen, but by and large it's their store their rules

00:20:57 ◼   ► I do the best I can because you have the choice on the Mac App Store

00:21:01 ◼   ► You really start to see that like the the hurdles and the challenges that that situation

00:21:07 ◼   ► Creates. Oh, yeah. I mean like, you know the App Store it's always kind of been like this carrot and stick balance

00:21:14 ◼   ► On iOS, they don't really need to offer much carrot because the stick is so big like iOS

00:21:18 ◼   ► You have to use the App Store period like there's no you there. I mean, yes, I guess like Cydia exists or Cydia

00:21:24 ◼   ► However, it's pronounced but that's you know, not really easy to build businesses there

00:21:28 ◼   ► You know, you're basically stuck with the App Store or nothing on iOS on the Mac, you know

00:21:32 ◼   ► and even Apple like they used they used to tie major features to the App Store like like iCloud and and they just announced

00:21:38 ◼   ► WBC this year these features are coming to other apps. You don't have to be in the App Store anymore

00:21:43 ◼   ► So it seems like on the Mac

00:21:45 ◼   ► Apple has recently kind of shifted away from

00:21:48 ◼   ► Keeping much of a stick around there

00:21:50 ◼   ► So now they're relying only on the carrot of like, you know, what are the benefits of being in the Mac App Store?

00:21:55 ◼   ► So now you kind of look at it purely on business terms

00:21:58 ◼   ► And I don't think the Mac App Store is a very appealing place for for new businesses to go these days

00:22:03 ◼   ► Even the the promotional value I think has proven to be fairly minimal in actual installation numbers from featured apps

00:22:11 ◼   ► So it's unfortunate because it would have been nice if it would have worked better

00:22:13 ◼   ► but it does seem like it has both failed in a way that it's most likely to be neglected forever and

00:22:20 ◼   ► And that most developers shouldn't go there anymore

00:22:23 ◼   ► Sure, because I think the thing that I think of we're like why why would I use the Mac App Store?

00:22:28 ◼   ► Like if I since I now have this choice

00:22:30 ◼   ► like I can decide if I want to go this like a or B or both like which obviously you can also do you can

00:22:35 ◼   ► Sell in both places but say I'm go am going to be in the App Store like in my mind the main reason on the Mac

00:22:42 ◼   ► App Store that I would want to be there and this is speaking mostly just as a customer for like why do I when do I?

00:22:47 ◼   ► launch the App Store app on my Mac is

00:22:51 ◼   ► Usually it's like if I have a very specific utility or tool in mind

00:22:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I will go and search in the Mac App Store first and I do that mostly just because I have it

00:23:02 ◼   ► Anyway, it has that sense of being curated that

00:23:05 ◼   ► Somebody else a like a impartial, you know to some definition of impartial

00:23:09 ◼   ► Third-party has looked at this application and said it meets a basic set of criteria

00:23:14 ◼   ► Don't worry. It's not going you're not installing malware. You're not installing

00:23:19 ◼   ► Sort of something that doesn't actually do what it says. It's

00:23:24 ◼   ► Has this basic level of criteria?

00:23:26 ◼   ► So if I can find a tool, you know

00:23:28 ◼   ► I'm just trying to do something to do some random operation that I need a utility for

00:23:33 ◼   ► I'll go to the Mac App Store and if I find it great, I'll get it from there

00:23:36 ◼   ► if not, you know, then I just go to Google search around in there and

00:23:40 ◼   ► Find it that way and so the main benefit from being in the Mac App Store from my perspective based on my own experience is

00:23:47 ◼   ► Just as a marketing tool just as being in the place that

00:23:51 ◼   ► You know, there's a non insignificant number of people who may go there and look and so it's like being on that shelf is useful

00:24:00 ◼   ► but

00:24:02 ◼   ► If you're trying to build a business that you know, you're making your living from something

00:24:05 ◼   ► Mac App Store on its own is unlikely to be the right answer

00:24:11 ◼   ► my guess is you're gonna want to be at least in both if not go your go your own and

00:24:16 ◼   ► because once you've

00:24:18 ◼   ► gone down the road of doing it your own you can start to realize a lot of benefits and both in terms of like you're

00:24:23 ◼   ► saying in terms of the costs and the money you can make as well as just

00:24:27 ◼   ► having

00:24:29 ◼   ► So much more flexibility about how things work

00:24:32 ◼   ► You're never you're never stuck in the situation of like oh I need to get this

00:24:36 ◼   ► You know this update this both fix update through app review

00:24:38 ◼   ► Even though a preview is great and down to like, you know a day or so now it's still a day is the longer than

00:24:45 ◼   ► you know one minute from now, it'll be available on my CDN and

00:24:49 ◼   ► That's kind of nice. Oh, yeah, and and just the flexibility you gotta doing yourself

00:24:55 ◼   ► I mean, you know

00:24:55 ◼   ► The downside is you have to build it yourself and and there are different degrees of building yourself

00:25:00 ◼   ► like if you use something like fast bring or digital river formerly accelerate or kagi like the these things

00:25:07 ◼   ► They they charge, you know

00:25:10 ◼   ► A little bit more percentage like a few more percentage points than like direct credit card processing from stripe or something like that

00:25:14 ◼   ► but they take care of a lot of the just payment complexity for you and you basically just provide serial numbers and

00:25:22 ◼   ► You will have some support costs from these things. You'll have some issues but probably fewer, you know from developers

00:25:28 ◼   ► I talked to there's probably fewer of those than from from most places

00:25:31 ◼   ► and

00:25:31 ◼   ► so it seems like a very good balance to use a service like this versus like Mac App Store or totally doing yourself because

00:25:37 ◼   ► You only pay a little bit more and and you know than doing it yourself and you get a lot

00:25:42 ◼   ► So that's probably I'm going to try first

00:25:44 ◼   ► You know something maybe I was looking at fast bring earlier probably them and then you know

00:25:48 ◼   ► Because you can always change later with these things like what it's it's very it's harder to move in or out of the Mac App Store

00:25:54 ◼   ► If you change your mind later if your needs change later

00:25:56 ◼   ► But these kind of services it's pretty easy to move between so that the costs of trying one out are pretty low

00:26:01 ◼   ► So I want to talk briefly about

00:26:03 ◼   ► Piracy concerns because this is something like you don't really have to think about an iOS much because an iOS like I mean there is

00:26:11 ◼   ► iOS piracy certainly but it's limited almost completely to the jailbreak community and and you don't really

00:26:16 ◼   ► It's kind of like a losing battle. Like you can't really fight the jailbreak community on piracy. So you're usually better off not even trying

00:26:23 ◼   ► and

00:26:25 ◼   ► That is largely true of Mac piracy as well, but not completely

00:26:28 ◼   ► on the Mac

00:26:30 ◼   ► You know with with people using the Mac like you don't have to be like a special class of user the way like, you know

00:26:35 ◼   ► You like you kind of have to like devote a lifestyle to be a jailbreaker

00:26:38 ◼   ► like on the Mac you can pirate Mac apps if you really want to and a lot of people do and

00:26:43 ◼   ► it's it's easier to do it and and so

00:26:46 ◼   ► you do have to worry about that as a Mac software author of you have to worry about piracy and and how this will affect your

00:26:52 ◼   ► app how it will affect your customers and

00:26:54 ◼   ► generally, I've talked to a lot of developers about those recently trying to figure out what I need to do here and

00:26:58 ◼   ► the

00:27:00 ◼   ► number one is stay out of the Mac App Store because

00:27:02 ◼   ► Mac App Store piracy is rampant because they all use the same wrapper that everyone has cracked a million times and

00:27:07 ◼   ► You kind of can't do much about it as a Mac App Store app

00:27:11 ◼   ► Also Mac App Store even without piracy the Mac App Store license allows for the same Apple ID to install your app on like hundreds of

00:27:19 ◼   ► Macs

00:27:19 ◼   ► So that's a big problem

00:27:20 ◼   ► If you have a business app where like a whole office full of computers might have your app installed off of one purchase

00:27:25 ◼   ► Which is not great

00:27:28 ◼   ► So generally with piracy like a little goes a long way

00:27:31 ◼   ► You need to do some piracy prevention you need to have some kind of like license or serial number checking or something like that

00:27:40 ◼   ► Just to prevent casual piracy you need to put up some kind of barrier to make paying you easier for most people

00:27:47 ◼   ► Than pirating the app to a large extent your app will be pirated anyway

00:27:52 ◼   ► And you know you can do things like you can scan the internet occasionally trying to like look for

00:27:56 ◼   ► Pirated serial numbers of your own app and then ban them in a future build of your app

00:28:00 ◼   ► This is all examples of like low-hanging fruit like a little goes a long way here

00:28:04 ◼   ► You should have some kind of piracy avoidance mechanism in your app

00:28:08 ◼   ► And this is something you have to worry about with direct distribution

00:28:10 ◼   ► But you know that's just a cost of doing business, and that's that's part of

00:28:14 ◼   ► It's part of you know just the reality of a software business on on a computer these days

00:28:21 ◼   ► You know it's less so on mobile, but on a computer. That's that's still part of why you get paid the big bucks. I guess

00:28:27 ◼   ► And you know you have to always balance versus legitimate customers versus hurting them

00:28:32 ◼   ► you know with every any kind of piracy prevention system you pick but

00:28:36 ◼   ► Generally you know in summary. I don't know much about this yet

00:28:39 ◼   ► But it does seem like the common wisdom among people is a little goes a long way you need to do something

00:28:44 ◼   ► But you don't need to you don't need to go crazy with it sure and I think that's probably the best path is

00:28:48 ◼   ► It's a you know build build something yourself do something basic, and then just don't worry about it exactly

00:28:54 ◼   ► All right, well we're out of time this week. Thank you very much for listening everybody

00:28:59 ◼   ► I know this is officially an iOS show, but we will occasionally talk about the Mac because it's related

00:29:03 ◼   ► Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week. Bye

00:29:05 ◼   ► Bye.

00:29:06 ◼   ► [