Our new App Business section is brought to you by MacPaw, maker of proven Mac apps.

For independent Mac developers, one of the big, daunting tasks that the Mac App Store efficiently handles is app licensing. You just submit your app, then the store manages the actual app license through its user accounts. But this unquestionable convenience comes with a few critical downsides.

Our new App Business section is brought to you by MacPaw, maker of proven Mac apps.

Sometimes you’ve got to think small to hit it big. For DigiDNA, a Swiss development team that makes popular software for managing iOS devices, that means functioning more like a tight rock ‘n’ roll band than a sprawling orchestra.

Our new App Business section is brought to you by MacPaw, maker of proven Mac apps.

App developers put a lot of time and effort into preventing their apps from being cracked or pirated. But for every coder taking a step toward making an app more secure, there’s someone on the march to crack it. The integrity of any app is subject to an ongoing arms race.

The most popular and useful apps are the most likely to release the cracken (I’m so sorry), so finding out that a bunch of people have downloaded your app illegally can be worn as something of a badge of pride. But that’s cold comfort when you’re losing customers, so let’s take a look at a couple of the most likely app-cracking approaches developers should protect against.

Our new App Business section is brought to you by MacPaw, maker of proven Mac apps.

If you’re developing a Mac app, you’re faced with a major either/or decision: whether to distribute inside or outside of the Mac App Store (MAS). Sticking to the MAS means you’ve got access to tools for licensing, hosting, crash reporting and other necessary tasks. However, Apple’s tools may not be what’s best for your app.

Our new App Business section is brought to you by MacPaw, maker of proven Mac apps.

So you’re going to launch an app for Mac. Congrats! Now you’ve got to figure out an app marketing strategy that will get it to the widest audience possible.

There are many ways to approach the birth of a new product, but even in a field as fast-growing and dynamic as the world of apps, experience has yielded accepted wisdom about the best ways to start and maintain a successful campaign. Here are great rules of thumb for maximizing impact and customers for your app.

Our new App Business section is brought to you by MacPaw, maker of proven Mac apps.

Like death and taxes, distributing your new app through the Mac App Store can seem inevitable. It’s widely considered the easiest way to get the widest exposure for an app, a centralized marketplace for software with a captive audience of buyers.

But ever more developers are looking beyond the Mac App Store (MAS) for distribution options that best serve their app. MacPaw, maker of DevMate, performed an interesting survey of developers to ask if they prefer MAS or another app store alternative, and why.

Android might have more apps and a lot more users than iOS these days, but it’s still trailing far behind when it comes to making money for developers. Last quarter, the App Store made twice as much money than Google Play for app makers.