One of the big problems from a developer perspective about the Mac App Store is that it doesn’t allow developers to sell paid upgrades to their apps. Similarly to the iOS App Store, if a developer wants to make money off of a particularly juicy update, they need to sell it as an entirely new app or else… tough beans. Especially on the Mac, this is an issue, since many developers monetize on-going development of apps by selling paid upgrades. But if you sell in the Mac App Store, it’s just not an option.
Last week, the Omni Group released a little app called OmniKeyMaster. The ingenious little app essentially allowed people who had purchased versions of Omni’s apps on the Mac App Store to essentially “break out” their apps from the MAS into standalone licenses which were eligible for paid app upgrades. Guess who didn’t like that idea?
Today, the Omni Group has announced that they were forced to remove OmniKeyMaster, presumably under pressure from Apple.
My apologies: I’m afraid we will not be able to offer upgrade pricing to our Mac App Store customers after all. So long as we continue to sell our apps through the Mac App Store, we are not allowed to distribute updates through other channels to apps which were purchased from the App Store.
This sucks, but it isn’t surprising. For example, when Apple released a new version of Logic Pro, they sold it as an entirely new app, and didn’t give upgrade pricing. In Apple’s world, an app is either new, or should be supported for free.
That’s a nice black-and-white way of looking at things, but it’s just facilitating the same race-to-the-bottom pricing on the Mac App Store that we see on the iOS side of things, where developers simply can’t justify supporting an app long-term because the money they are making per customer doesn’t justify on-going support.
On the other hand, the Mac App Store brings an app to the attention of many more Mac users, so it’s definitely a trade-off. However, I think Apple is ultimately shooting itself in the foot here. The goal of the Mac App Store is to be the one-stop shop for all app Macs (and give Apple a 30% cut of every app sold on their platform), but as long as Apple’s policies prevent developers from being able to support quality apps on an on-going basis, there’s going to be fragmentation, as users figure out that the best deal is to buy from a developer directly, and not buy through the MAS.
Via: MacStories
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
6 responses to “Omni Group Forced To Stop Offer Mac App Store Customers Paid Upgrades”
Can you not offer in-app purchases for feature updates? I’m confused…
Question is, if they remove their apps from the Mac App Store and decide just to sell it directly, will they still be a “trusted developer”? (Not that there’s a workaround for that, but still).
I bought AirParrot right from the developer and was happy to do it because I knew they’d get all the revenue.
Being a trusted developer has nothing to do with selling through the app store or not. AFAIK every dev can ask for trusted developer identification for their non-MAS apps, which grans users the ability to run those apps without any warnings when the second option is selected in GateKeeper (System Preferences).
I don’t like Apple’s policy on this. It’s an application store, not a clothing store – so stop treating it like one. If a developer is not getting recurring revenue for their app (think SaaS), then the only way to keep generating revenue is either from support contracts or upgrade fees. “Installed” apps are going to die at some point – it will all be hosted and term licensed in the future. But for now, the business reality is – developers need to be able to fund their efforts and need a way to make money off the hard work they put into adding great features if they so choose.
If they are smart, they offer in-app purchases like Whatsapp is doing. Pay a certain amount per year and you’re done. But they apparently aren’t that smart ;)