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Isn't the wider issue that developers follow the money. What's a few million Mac users compared to 100s of millions of iOS users? I can charge a buck and sell a

Isn't the wider issue that developers follow the money. What's a few million Mac users compared to 100s of millions of iOS users? I can charge a buck and sell a few 100K iOS sales but where is the market for MacOS apps to sell? Is there one?

Turing_Machine 5y ago
Well, the main difference is that Mac users are still largely willing to actually pay for software -- they don't demand that everything be "a buck". You could write a combination of Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and AutoCAD, and put it on the iOS app store for $2.99 and people would complain about the price.
- lupire 5y ago
  The cast majority of Mac users do not buy software.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    "The majority" is not relevant, the right stats are: 1) the absolute number who might pay 2) how much they might pay 3) what sort of software will they pay for 4) how much competition is there to get that customer
fxtentacle 5y ago
Fully agree. And in general, developers won't want to spend too much money on osx-only work because other platforms have (like you said) much more users and also a lower maintenance burden. Native Mac apps tend to require recompile and updates for every minor os upgrade. Electron is slow, wastes battery time, and is usually unsafe, but it'll shield the developer from Apple's aggressive api deprecation.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  > Native Mac apps tend to require recompile and updates for every minor os upgrade. Electron is slow, wastes battery time, and is usually unsafe, but it'll shield the developer from Apple's aggressive api deprecation. In my experience this varies a lot depending on the type of app. Your typical CRUD app (which the vast majority of apps are) will probably work fine for many releases in a row without needing significant changes to source or even a recompile, but if you're doing anything fancy with hardware or lower-level APIs you're more vulnerable. Rate of change in AppKit/Cocoa is glacial relative to just about any front end or even back end web framework. Not too long ago I got an early-2000s open source Mac app compiling and running on current macOS over the course of a weekend… there were deprecation warnings all over the place but it worked fine. Meanwhile when I unearthed an early-2010s RoR project, resurrecting it was an exercise in futility.
epistasis 5y ago
When the Mac market was much smaller in decades past, there were several extremely high quality developers keeping their lights on by focusing on Mac only software. Sure, the average developer will target the bigger slice of the pie. But as a user, I don't give a damn about the average developer, I only care about the very best software I can get. And the few developers that targeted MacOS benefitted from having very loyal customers that appreciated high quality software.
- Arubis 5y ago
  Indeed; for well over a decade, I would impulse-buy anything from Panic or The Omni Studio.

Turing_Machine 5y ago

Well, the main difference is that Mac users are still largely willing to actually pay for software -- they don't demand that everything be "a buck". You could write a combination of Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and AutoCAD, and put it on the iOS app store for $2.99 and people would complain about the price.

lupire 5y ago
The cast majority of Mac users do not buy software.
- epistasis 5y ago
  "The majority" is not relevant, the right stats are: 1) the absolute number who might pay 2) how much they might pay 3) what sort of software will they pay for 4) how much competition is there to get that customer

fxtentacle 5y ago

Fully agree. And in general, developers won't want to spend too much money on osx-only work because other platforms have (like you said) much more users and also a lower maintenance burden. Native Mac apps tend to require recompile and updates for every minor os upgrade. Electron is slow, wastes battery time, and is usually unsafe, but it'll shield the developer from Apple's aggressive api deprecation.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
> Native Mac apps tend to require recompile and updates for every minor os upgrade. Electron is slow, wastes battery time, and is usually unsafe, but it'll shield the developer from Apple's aggressive api deprecation. In my experience this varies a lot depending on the type of app. Your typical CRUD app (which the vast majority of apps are) will probably work fine for many releases in a row without needing significant changes to source or even a recompile, but if you're doing anything fancy with hardware or lower-level APIs you're more vulnerable. Rate of change in AppKit/Cocoa is glacial relative to just about any front end or even back end web framework. Not too long ago I got an early-2000s open source Mac app compiling and running on current macOS over the course of a weekend… there were deprecation warnings all over the place but it worked fine. Meanwhile when I unearthed an early-2010s RoR project, resurrecting it was an exercise in futility.

epistasis 5y ago

When the Mac market was much smaller in decades past, there were several extremely high quality developers keeping their lights on by focusing on Mac only software. Sure, the average developer will target the bigger slice of the pie. But as a user, I don't give a damn about the average developer, I only care about the very best software I can get. And the few developers that targeted MacOS benefitted from having very loyal customers that appreciated high quality software.

Arubis 5y ago
Indeed; for well over a decade, I would impulse-buy anything from Panic or The Omni Studio.