The amount of people who do not want to pay upfront, but would buy after a trial, is not just substantial, but game changing.
You can also add the same pressure to test the app after installing by offering a 14 or even a 7 day trial.
Perhaps on Macs it's different, or maybe it's due to your price point, but still your approach automatically drives away a large swath of potential, but cautious buyers, or those who don't want to be bothered by the refund process. Your pitch is "here is some good stuff, and here are the hurdles if you want to test it".
I'm not affiliated with them, but I am a customer. They put a lot of effort into finding the right balance of what to unlock upfront in the trial. And their license/unlock process is pretty seamless.
I don't dispute the power of a free trial, but it can be a fair bit of work to get the details right.
When someone pays for the app, they try it most of the time immediately. He explores the app, finds issues, and, because he paid for it, will be much more involved, which will provide me with much more accurate feedback.
Also, if something is not working well for him, he writes me, and I benefit from these interactions with the users. A lot of my improvements for my apps are based on "Refund talks" Overall, the upsides outweigh the downsides.
I don't have many refunds, but when I do, it really helps me improve the app. I already had users who asked for a refund, and a few versions later, the app improved based on their feedback, and they repurchased it.
I am sure that some users don't buy without trying, And this is why I am super responsive to refund requests and handle them faster and without "playing games" with this topic.
Hope this makes sense in some way