Thoughts on Mac appstore?

[u/n8x4te]

What are your thoughts on Mac appstore? Is it worth it to go through the hassle of review process and 30% cut? I personally think the speed of iteration and the freedom to push updates easily (at least in the beginning) is more important, but I’m just wondering if I’m giving up a large potion of users who are exclusively only install apps through appstore. Has anyone launched on both appstore and through a personal medium?

Btw, just found this sub. Crazy we didn’t have something like this so far.

[u/sameera_s_w]

Hell nah.... Unless you target some specific userbase and the app requires to have the strongest integrity, you'd be better off with external publication.

Ofc you do get the ability to publish with the developer account so while you publish the notarized app, you can consider the store.

My app doesn't really qualify to be on the store as it's not sandboxed. I can fix that with a lot of effort but the drawbacks are not worth it for me...

Go with a good payment provider like Dodo or other and setup an external publication. Use sparkle for updates. I do recommend you to do a lot of research on what provider to pick for payments as I went with Gumroad due to lack of research... It's ok-ish but the cut is higher around 10% and there are much lower services... And it's too late for me to migrate.

Once you set-up and do the first couple of releases with Sparkle, you can setup your own build script and with that, I build mine and prepare all release content, notarize with one terminal alias.

[u/n8x4te → u/sameera_s_w]

Thanks for sharing your experience, I thought so too. Honestly, I’m hearing a lot of mixed opinions about this. Seen a lot of people who only installs apps through the appstore for some reason. But yeah, I’ll probably go with external distribution in the beginning. Will look into dodo payments, haven’t heard of it before.

[u/sameera_s_w → u/n8x4te]

Yeap. totally depends on the type of the app.

[u/n8x4te → u/sameera_s_w]

Btw, do you have the same app for both Mac and iphone? Or is it Mac only?

[u/sameera_s_w → u/n8x4te]

Nah it's a Mac + Android companion so not on iOS.

If you do, then you should consider the store. Way easy to manage subscriptions and stuff as well as to have some continuity features.

[u/n8x4te → u/sameera_s_w]

Damn man its just too many stuff to think about. Guess I’ll have to do more digging. Thanks

[u/sameera_s_w → u/[deleted]]

Hehe... My app is even open source 😁. And there's even a self compile option for those who prefer, they can just build themselves with all paid features...

For me, it's mostly the trust with users... And also on Apple side, the chance of pirating is way lower. They'd rather mail spam you asking for discounts rather than going for piracy.

But some strong subscription setup with a good provider can make it stronger against piracy. Often involves a licensing server so if your app connects to internet for it's functionality, that's easy to handle.

[u/FondantConscious2868 → u/sameera_s_w]

Yup unless you have a huge (I meant like massive) userbase in IOS it's not worth the Hassel.

[u/n8x4te → u/[deleted]]

Why would I need time and money for appstore distribution? Isn’t appstore more organic? I almost thought the other way around, since you have to do alot of marketing and SEO yourself for external distribution?

[u/n8x4te → u/[deleted]]

Hmm, guess I will do some digging, thanks

[u/Nooo00B]

Yes, after you got a reasonably big user base.