4 ms·

As a user, I'm glad it's there as an easy updating mechanism for Apple apps and a store for handy utility apps, but there's not much of a place for a centralize

As a user, I'm glad it's there as an easy updating mechanism for Apple apps and a store for handy utility apps, but there's not much of a place for a centralized app store on the desktop. Steam poaches the most lucrative category and makers of prominent professional apps don't need any help with digital distribution... what's left? I'd imagine that this hollowing out makes it advantageous for software that might benefit from an app store (say, a $50 nichey app) to avoid it, conditioning/encouraging users to use Google and letting them keep all of the profit. I could hypothesize about ways for Apple to turn the ship around... but I doubt they care. Apple's happy to have something conceptually coherent with iOS - an Apple Store employee can show a college freshman to "just update apps like on your iPhone". They decided long ago not to chase gaming. It's a pretty updating app.

vitd 11y ago
I couldn't agree less. The MacOS app store has made it so much easier for me as a user. Apple might not be perfect, but to compare them to Steam? Just last week I had a problem with a Steam app and getting it resolved was farcical. Not to mention that literally every other time I launch Steam, it fails to see the network (even though all my other network apps are working just fine), and I have to quit and restart it. And when it does restart, just as I'm about to click "Play" on a game, a huge honking ad pops up in front of it. And never once has the ad been of any interest to me. Such a horrible user experience. At this point I will avoid buying any more games from Steam if possible and just get them from the app store because it's so much easier and just works. Back when I sold my own software, getting it noticed was nearly impossible. There were about 10 different websites you could submit it to that had lists of new apps (Version Tracker, Download.com, etc.), and eventually they all got more and more spammy until the point where users just stopped using them altogether. Something like an app store would have been a godsend!
- saturdaysaint 11y ago
  I wish games would move from Steam to the App Store, but it's not gonna happen. Valve has way more skin in that game and Apple have repeatedly shown that they're not going to compete over a medium dominated by expensive exclusive hits - as we watch Sony and Microsoft fight eachother into irrelevancy, this looks like a wiser and wiser strategy. They'll take their iOS game monopoly, but that's it. The shareware spam site days are long gone. Numerous companies (including Apple) have been working to make checkout easy to implement on your own website. It's easier than ever to make and distribute a demo video/ad. It's easier than ever to target users (Google, Facebook). It's cheaper and easier than ever to make a simple product site. For a simple app, that might constitute a crippling amount of overhead, but if you anticipate making more than $10,000 in revenue (and thus risk sacrificing $3,000 to the Apple cut), it's probably worth investing a few hours in.

vitd 11y ago

I couldn't agree less. The MacOS app store has made it so much easier for me as a user. Apple might not be perfect, but to compare them to Steam? Just last week I had a problem with a Steam app and getting it resolved was farcical. Not to mention that literally every other time I launch Steam, it fails to see the network (even though all my other network apps are working just fine), and I have to quit and restart it. And when it does restart, just as I'm about to click "Play" on a game, a huge honking ad pops up in front of it. And never once has the ad been of any interest to me. Such a horrible user experience. At this point I will avoid buying any more games from Steam if possible and just get them from the app store because it's so much easier and just works. Back when I sold my own software, getting it noticed was nearly impossible. There were about 10 different websites you could submit it to that had lists of new apps (Version Tracker, Download.com, etc.), and eventually they all got more and more spammy until the point where users just stopped using them altogether. Something like an app store would have been a godsend!

saturdaysaint 11y ago
I wish games would move from Steam to the App Store, but it's not gonna happen. Valve has way more skin in that game and Apple have repeatedly shown that they're not going to compete over a medium dominated by expensive exclusive hits - as we watch Sony and Microsoft fight eachother into irrelevancy, this looks like a wiser and wiser strategy. They'll take their iOS game monopoly, but that's it. The shareware spam site days are long gone. Numerous companies (including Apple) have been working to make checkout easy to implement on your own website. It's easier than ever to make and distribute a demo video/ad. It's easier than ever to target users (Google, Facebook). It's cheaper and easier than ever to make a simple product site. For a simple app, that might constitute a crippling amount of overhead, but if you anticipate making more than $10,000 in revenue (and thus risk sacrificing $3,000 to the Apple cut), it's probably worth investing a few hours in.