The Mac App Store? Should I Try It?
Today Apple announced that there will be a Mac App Store. It will be open by mid-January. The idea is that a developer like me can submit Mac applications and Mac users can purchase them through this store. Apple will handle all payment and give me 70%.
Questions, though. Will you need to build you application through XCode? Or, can you use any current Mac software development tool? I would be using Flash, of course. I could use a Flash “wrapper” of some sort, to add extra functionality. Will these kinds of applications be allowed in the App Store? Impossible to tell yet.
So lets assume that they are. Lets assume I can make a “projector” in Flash from one of my games and submit it to the App Store. Should I bother?
I haven’t distributed Mac/PC applications since 2007, I think. Maybe 2006. For a few years I tried selling those $19.95 “downloadable” games that were popular for a while. I didn’t make enough to make it worthwhile. I didn’t belong to one of those larger publishing systems that marketed the heck out of their games. They took too much control and too much of the profit. I would have rather worked for clients, which I did.
The one interesting note is that I think I made just as much from Mac sales as I did from the much larger PC market. I figured it had to do with the fact that Mac software was found on only a few sites, the main one being Apple’s own list of software. If you were there you didn’t need to be anywhere else, really. And it was free. Compared to the PC market where you had to be on dozens of sites, most of which charged.
But anyway, I’m thinking I will stay out of the Mac App Store. I’ll just enjoy it as a consumer, not a developer.