So basically you're renting software from the AppStore. I think I paid 100 EUR for Abby FineReader and now I can't access it any more.
For many apps where I wouldn't mind spending $10 to $20 in the App Store, I am probably not going to deal with all of the above to buy it directly from the developer.
However, I have no data to back up that claim, so I could very well be wrong.
I personally don't feel like you do because I use burner cards and emails to solve the hacking and spamming problems, and apps still have to be sandboxed unless you turn off that safeguard explicitly for the app.
Pretty much everyone takes PayPal which shields you from this
It's not necessarily a dealmaker or breaker; but if someone really cares about that and the market has many substitutes, it could be enough to sway them towards App Store purchase.
Example: Steam
I just don't think any implementation has really been that great yet. However as I think about Steam, it's rare I even consider a game I can't install via it - mostly due to it being an easy way to "back up" my games for later availability. That and they keep things up to date so it more or less Just Works.
Mobile app stores post-iPhone just took off. There was no 'slowly at first' phase, in the sense that they had an uncertain future. They went gang busters from the start. But we're past theorising about how the first 5 years of the Mac App Store might go. They've gone. It really doesn't look good and I don't see any signs it might improve any time soon. A few people appreciate the convenience, but as this case study shows it's not enough to make an economic difference to developers. Steam killed it, but the Mac App Store is completely stalled.
That could explain why someone chooses to buy it in the store if it is available both on and off the app store, but it's unlikely that there is many (any?) people out there who refuse to install an app that isn't in the app store.
Plus, most laptops don't come with a recovery USB (neither do Macs) and IMO having a recovery partition is silly when installing it from scratch is cleaner/easier.
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
If you browse from linux, it shows links to directly download the ISO files.
I'm not sure what it does if you browse from MacOS.
Maybe try changing your browser's useragent? Frankly, it is a bit annoying that Microsoft tries to push their download tool.
ISO
>Sign in to the Volume Licensing Service Center to download Enterprise editions.
>Sign in to your subscription on the MSDN Portal for MSDN downloads.
> Visit the Windows Insider site to download Insider Preview builds
> Visit the Download Academic Products page for Education editions (product key required).
Sure, Apple wants a cut of sales but they’re already listing totally-free apps so they’ve shown that money isn’t everything.
If they made it dead-simple to list apps (e.g. free listing pages to all developers, where software storage/downloading/sales are clearly another tier), they’d soon have all Mac software in their list. They could then build on that repository to become the Google of software search. Search could be truly powerful.
Instead, search is not only pointless on the Mac App Store but it’s the opposite of that. I now EXPECT crap, I don’t even EXPECT a reasonable match. For every search for “software that does X”, I KNOW that the results will probably not include any well-known programs and will certainly contain cheap crap and clearly-misleading scam-ware. The rest of the list will be software that was last updated 3 years ago.
Also, what would listing software that hasn't been through the submissions process actually mean? That the app is verified by Apple? That going to the site and putting your credit card number into the shopping cart is guaranteed to be secure? That other things that haven't been listed yet are not as favoured in some way?
I'm not saying I like the app store model, or that they can't have a second tier of lower-scrutiny apps. I do think it would need a lot of thought and care, however.
They don’t need much of a warning for outside software sites. The page could have a banner at the top, or display one when you click the outside link.
For me this is the number one reason for not buying via the Mac AppStore.
At this point almost every mac app uses the tried and tested Sparkle update mechanism [0], which is very fast and rather unobtrusive. I'm mostly done updating through sparkle before I even see the list of available updates in the App Store. It's slow as hell, requires my AppleID more often than I like and is overall simply a very cumbersome experience, that leads me to postpone updates endlessly.
Its a total momentum killer. Like, imagine if randomly (every month or so) instead of loading immediately hackernews took 1 minute to load instead, and it required that you babysit it the whole time while you hit "next".
Personally I wish all apps used Chrome's update mechanism. Its unobtrusive, the patches are tiny compared to the size of Chrome and it works great. Most users don't even know the updates are happening.
Thats how I want all apps (and, frankly, my OS) to update. Just, silently and reliably. No annoying popups. No decisions to make when I'm trying to get work done. No waiting for the update to happen. Update yourself quickly in the background, and do it without bothering me.
Given how long chrome's updater has been out I'm surprised there's no embeddable Sparkle-like version for 3rd party apps to use.
You can accomplish by checking the "Automatically download updates like this in the future" box in Sparkle. The problem, though, is that you have to trust the software to handle these updates perfectly if you want them to happen in the background for critical software. Chrome can do that, because Google has some of the best developers around working on the project, and because they have absurdly good development practices. (Not perfect, but far better than any independent developer or small shop working on the majority of apps that we're talking about).
Automatic updating is hard. About a year ago, there was an update to iTerm2 that broke the software completely. The fix was to temporarily downgrade while waiting for the next point release - but for people who allowed automatic updates, they simply discovered one morning that they couldn't open their terminal[0].
Slack had an issue as well about a year ago as well, though that issue was with their auto-updater itself being broken, and preventing them from upgrading. In that case, they had to request that affected users uninstall and reinstall the application, just to get the new version of the automatic updater installed[1].
[0] I think this was the one: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues/4699
[1] It's hard to push an update to your software automatically if your automatic updater is what's broken.
The only one I can think of that makes a copy is the one from Omni Group, which seems to leave an old version in the Trash. Plus, it renames the application so it has an exact “version” for clarity.
I've never used the mac version, but Squirrel for windows works great and is unobtrusive. The Mac version promises the same: "Squirrel is an OS X framework focused on making application updates as safe and transparent as updates to a website.".
With the appstore on the other hand, besides being horribly slow, it will always present you everything that is updateable, even if you only need that tool only 3-4 times a year. So I will always have to make that call per every app in the list, every time I open the updates panel.
Not having to enter payment information again.
Not having to trust a new third party with your payment information.
Trusted refund support.
Apple makes it seem scary to install software outside the app store.
I didn't have a backup of ABBY and the Patterns backup doesn't work because when run it complains that it doesn't work with the latest macOS and that I should update for 15+ EUR.
Unfortunately it's a piece of garbage.
Can I use apps from the Mac App Store on more than one computer?
Apps from the Mac App Store may be used on any Macs that you own or control for your personal use.
I have never once hit it on apps.
If you use iTerm, you know what I'm talking about.
There are only three reasons people might buy something from the mac store vs. from the developer directly:
1. To keep it getting updates through the app store vs. having to download from the developer when a new update comes out. 2. They found it in the mac store, and thus purchased it in the mac store. 3. They trust apple to reduce the risk of malware when using the mac store vs. a developers web page.
The mac store is getting really hard to navigate, and it doesn't give any useful search functionality, so #2 is disappearing as a reason people are buying from the apple store. #1 is nice, but with auto updates, it is disappearing as well. #3 isn't generally an issue for developers or "power users", so it is gone as well.
Honestly, I can't think of a reasonable reason to put something in the mac store that is oriented towards developers or power users. The hit in revenue just isn't worth the benefits. Though I would love to hear from someone who came to a different conclusion.