7 ms·

Completely true. Kind of makes me want to look more seriously into making apps for Microsoft platforms. That said, Mac owners are generally far more likely to

Completely true. Kind of makes me want to look more seriously into making apps for Microsoft platforms. That said, Mac owners are generally far more likely to go out and look for new apps to buy. Whereas Windows users will find an app that does the job, and keep using that app forever (and recommend it to friends/family). So even though there are way more Windows users, it seems more likely to make a living as an indie Mac dev than an indie Windows dev.

linguafranca 12y ago
(Disclaimer: that last part was told to me as advice by a lone indie dev who makes about $189,000 per year off his lone Mac app and puts nearly all of the revenue in savings. So I have a bit of trust in that advice.)
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  Wowsers, what app is that?
  - jawngee 12y ago
    My one sole app in MAS pays my rent and some bills every month with absolutely zero marketing or advertising on my part.
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      May I ask which app it is? It is good to know that MAS does indeed produce such success.
      - jawngee 12y ago
        Shave, a video editor for OS X. http://shave.rocks/ http://shave.rocks/
zyxley 12y ago
That seems anecdotally accurate to me. It's not hard to find "spiritual sequel" Mac and iOS apps that do quite well as people switch to them from older apps that are lacking in development or aren't as "cool" anymore, such as Cyberduck -> Transmit, iSSH -> vSSH, BBEdit -> TextMate -> Sublime Text -> Atom, and so on.
swartkrans 12y ago
> making apps for Microsoft platforms. They're both not great, so you would just be trading one set of problems for another. You might want to look at building web applications, which also has problems. There is no perfect platform. You just have to figure out which set of problems hurts your business the least.
- monstermonster 12y ago
  Disagree. Been building "apps" since when they were called programs for windows, Unix and Mac. Windows is the great constant, has the greatest overall power and flexibility. Unix is a mess of portability and build problems, mac has incredibly high framework churn and low longevity but as I've said already, stuff I wrote for NT4 in 1996 works today absolutely fine and I reckon it will in another 20 years. Not only that, the market for well paying customers is huge if you ignore the volatile and unprofitable "store" model and sell bespoke and specialised stuff. Don't solve popular problems, solve well paying ones :) As for the web it's getting there but a lot of bigger clients won't touch it yet.
  - millstone 12y ago
    I'm primarily a Mac developer. From my outside perspective, the Windows framework churn looks enormous. The "best way" to write a Windows app went from Win32/MFC, to WinForms, to Silverlight and WPF, to WinRT, and still seems to be evolving. The preferred language has gone from C++ to C# to C++/C#/JavaScript(?), and now MS is pushing a UI framework that seems terribly ill-suited to what traditional desktop apps have done. On the Mac side, the story has been constant since OS X first shipped: the best way to write a Mac app is to use the Cocoa frameworks, with Objective-C. There was some churn around garbage collection, and now Swift, but overall the developer story has been much more stable than with Windows.
    - monstermonster 12y ago
      Err we still use win32 and MFC. Plus some winforms which is a wrapper around win32 via the CLR. Not much has changed. Hell even WinRT is just a win32 wrapper. Office is a ball of win32 and MFC too. Absolutely no one is touching WinRT or WPF apart from a few trading dashboard outfits and for win phone which is fine. It'll hang around but will still sit on top of the win32 subsystem. Bear in mind there is very little difference between windows 1.0 code (1985) windows 8.1 code now. There's some 16 bit scum on the API but that's it. Mac... You forgot carbon...
WorldWideWayne 12y ago
That's if you are trying to sell to consumers. Try making some business software. Every business on the planet runs Windows and they all need new software all the time.

linguafranca 12y ago

(Disclaimer: that last part was told to me as advice by a lone indie dev who makes about $189,000 per year off his lone Mac app and puts nearly all of the revenue in savings. So I have a bit of trust in that advice.)

72deluxe 12y ago
Wowsers, what app is that?
- jawngee 12y ago
  My one sole app in MAS pays my rent and some bills every month with absolutely zero marketing or advertising on my part.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    May I ask which app it is? It is good to know that MAS does indeed produce such success.
    - jawngee 12y ago
      Shave, a video editor for OS X. http://shave.rocks/ http://shave.rocks/

zyxley 12y ago

That seems anecdotally accurate to me. It's not hard to find "spiritual sequel" Mac and iOS apps that do quite well as people switch to them from older apps that are lacking in development or aren't as "cool" anymore, such as Cyberduck -> Transmit, iSSH -> vSSH, BBEdit -> TextMate -> Sublime Text -> Atom, and so on.

swartkrans 12y ago

> making apps for Microsoft platforms. They're both not great, so you would just be trading one set of problems for another. You might want to look at building web applications, which also has problems. There is no perfect platform. You just have to figure out which set of problems hurts your business the least.

monstermonster 12y ago
Disagree. Been building "apps" since when they were called programs for windows, Unix and Mac. Windows is the great constant, has the greatest overall power and flexibility. Unix is a mess of portability and build problems, mac has incredibly high framework churn and low longevity but as I've said already, stuff I wrote for NT4 in 1996 works today absolutely fine and I reckon it will in another 20 years. Not only that, the market for well paying customers is huge if you ignore the volatile and unprofitable "store" model and sell bespoke and specialised stuff. Don't solve popular problems, solve well paying ones :) As for the web it's getting there but a lot of bigger clients won't touch it yet.
- millstone 12y ago
  I'm primarily a Mac developer. From my outside perspective, the Windows framework churn looks enormous. The "best way" to write a Windows app went from Win32/MFC, to WinForms, to Silverlight and WPF, to WinRT, and still seems to be evolving. The preferred language has gone from C++ to C# to C++/C#/JavaScript(?), and now MS is pushing a UI framework that seems terribly ill-suited to what traditional desktop apps have done. On the Mac side, the story has been constant since OS X first shipped: the best way to write a Mac app is to use the Cocoa frameworks, with Objective-C. There was some churn around garbage collection, and now Swift, but overall the developer story has been much more stable than with Windows.
  - monstermonster 12y ago
    Err we still use win32 and MFC. Plus some winforms which is a wrapper around win32 via the CLR. Not much has changed. Hell even WinRT is just a win32 wrapper. Office is a ball of win32 and MFC too. Absolutely no one is touching WinRT or WPF apart from a few trading dashboard outfits and for win phone which is fine. It'll hang around but will still sit on top of the win32 subsystem. Bear in mind there is very little difference between windows 1.0 code (1985) windows 8.1 code now. There's some 16 bit scum on the API but that's it. Mac... You forgot carbon...

WorldWideWayne 12y ago

That's if you are trying to sell to consumers. Try making some business software. Every business on the planet runs Windows and they all need new software all the time.