>Sellable desktop software became obsolete due to piracy.
Is unfounded. Games are sellable desktop software and they're doing just fine. What people want is fair prices and easy availability, which is the business model of every digital store since itunes.
Popular ones require an internet connection, and license authentication piggybacks on that. Blizzard and the original WoW's were among the first to do this successfully and the trend continues. Prior to that, people would either crack software and/or refuse remote connections for games that didn't require internet in order to avoid paying for and licensing them.
> What people want is fair prices and easy availability
And developers and investors want to be able to securely sell software. Apple's store provides ease of use along with a secure platform that users trust.
Steam is a marketplace that gives developers and investors a place to securely sell software and is easy for consumers to use and have fair prices. And it doesn't require users to give up all control of their PC to the manufacturer. Nor do all purchases have to flow through Valve.
And Steam as a game store predates the App Store by a few years too.
Music was completely different. The RIAA was suing pirates for thousands of dollars, and Apple provided both a store and great hardware for their product. People cheered them on for finally convincing the music industry to make content digitally available. It turns out all people wanted was easy access. And now for things that could be desktop software, we have subscriptions, memberships, etc.
I don't know anyone who's bought a PC/Mac game from anywhere that isn't an App Store in the past 5 years. Steam is a juggernaut, and so is Microsoft for that matter.
On Stream, the App Store, console stores, and other similar plaforms.
I currently run a freemium software business just fine for Windows and macOS. Just sign the code for Windows, notorize it on macOS and sell it through a service I use called Paddle that handles payment, international sales tax and licensing for about 6%.
This is almost certainly not true. If anything hurt selling desktop apps, it was Apples policies encouraging dirt cheap apps on the App Store that then led to customer expectations of the cost of apps dropping dramatically.
There were recent stories about how software shops like Panic are going back to selling only desktop apps and ending their iOS apps.
If anything, the technology to prevent piracy had only gotten significantly better by the time ios came out, and companies were doing just fine even before.
I agree - but apple fails on this point.
You should be able to protect your own phone. You should be able to install a firewall or further sandboxing, functions that the app store prohibit.
This is really simple:
- You should be able to find out what an app is doing - you should know what sites an app contacts - you should be able to block this - you should be able to block apple itself
This is so common sense yet not possible using apple's app store.
I never heard them claim it but speaking as a developer it's obvious that Apple was a driving force here. Sellable desktop software became obsolete due to piracy. Everything is server-based now. Mobile apps, particularly on iOS, is the only place where the general public consistently buys client software. Most people don't want cracked apps on their devices, and they want secure, privacy-focused phones. Apple has had that focus for years.