The CGPSConverterMBS class may help you.
Beat me to it. As a hobbyist, I switched from Mac to iOS development 6 years ago because iOS was easier (no menus, print dialogs, etc.) and I could see that iOS was more popular. My apps run just fine on Apple Silicon Macs without even doing anything.
LOL. I haven’t seen your apps, so this is not in any way a dig, but many run just fine BECAUSE they don’t do anything much.
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But it was definitely corporate.
You would be surprised. Every one of my iOS apps are business, especially Check Writer and Check Printer.
You are correct Thomas, x-plat is shorthand for cross platform.
Which is part of my point, there is a trend happening where Mac developers are giving up on native and switching to using an x-plat tool, but they’re NOT choosing Xojo. At one point Xojo’s whole thing was x-plat. This helps boost the reputation and marketing of the other tools, again NOT helping Xojo. IMHO, Xojo need to put attention on this, they need to understand why and they need to do what it takes to make sure the next company picks Xojo.
@Jeremie_L I agree with all your points, none of which helps the Mac (not even iOS apps on Mac,
“System Settings”, “Apple Music” and others).
This doesn’t help for sure, but in the past they used to a benchmark as to how good a Mac you could make. Now they’re just mediocre.
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Just because Apps aren’t in the App Store doesn’t mean apps aren’t being developed. I have an app that I will NEVER put into the App Store.
If enough developers would stop sucking from the udder of the DogCow, then maybe Apple would be forced to lighted up a little bit. But then again, everyone is scared that if their app isn’t in the App Store, no one will download it or buy it. We’ve done this to ourselves.
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I agree. As a developer of a complex and sophisticated app with so many unique features, I rank App Store a complete waste of time.
Forts of all, their search features are incredible crude, and it’s takes forever to find anything useful.
Their share if the revenues is similar to what a professional reseller would get, but where the latter is expected to be able to provide advanced knowledge of the product, support, etc. Apple provides no such things whatsoever.
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Don’t be so dogmatic. You would be surprised. Check Writer is pretty complex, and yet, it runs just fine under Ventura on my Mac Mini.
True, I don’t use declares but instead BMS plugins, which are maintained by Christian to the latest standard.
And if you ever want to have any ability to develop a relationship with customers, forget it on the App Store. Apple prevents you from knowing or seeing who purchased your product. Unlike retailers where you still may have a name and face. I do a lot of work supporting my customers directly and if I went to the store, that would be hugely obscured. Yes, the customers could reach out to you but it’s so much easier w/o having to deal with Apple’s garbage, sandbox requirements, entitlements, plists, etc. The restrictions in the OS are bad enough.
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Indeed.
True. But yet, not all customers want to develop a relationship with the developer. A typical App Store customer wants to click, get the software on his machine, and be done.
The thing is, if you don’t have your end user software on the App Store, you lose a great number of sales.
I don’t think it is an either or situation. You can perfectly well have a direct outlet, AND the MAS.
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If you find the right niche, most want. Take for example Xojo, I always download their software from their site, never thru MAS. And I am peeking the forum frequently in some sort of relationship looking for updates, news, reports, etc. Some of us do the same as vendors. There are niches even for Linux software (I always remember @Tim_Jones when talking about Linux), and once someone buy your solution they buy upgrades, addons, sign support and service contracts, etc.
Once again, this is black and white thinking. Don’t look at the market from your only perspective. You are not a typical customer. Neither am I.
There are many customers for the MAS, and it would be a waste not to be there.
It is not unlike self service checkout at the market. Some people would never use it and prefer having a cashier in front of them. Others enjoy scanning themselves and be done.
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What Jon said and more than 7 people agreed, including myself, is not black and white thinking, it’s one of the options that people pick from the gray palette of tones. Sometimes what you do for the niche that you serve simply have no significant return at MAS.
How would you know ? Have you even tried ?
Yes for both. And as I have a very specific niche of non-english speakers, I do prefer focusing serving them and having recurring income from local contracts.
The platform convergence has been long expected but, I suspect that Apple will continue to produce Macs and at the same time, lock down as much of the Mac channel that they don’t have. But eventually, convergence will happen (and the Mac will be ‘legacy’), and has been planned to happen. I imagine that could even accelerate when they reassess costs of shifting more production out of China.
I think the Big Book of Steve is still being used. The problem Apple has is that they aren’t writing any new chapters. Nobody is smart enough to do that and pay attention to quarterly earnings.
There still remains the upside that being on the Mac App Store acts as a form of advertising. You can get enough sales there to cover your overhead and, if you engineer right you can convert those customers over to being ‘direct’ customers.
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They are actively converging systems. From iOS apps running on Mac to features appearing on both platforms, we may not be that far.
However, the experience of Windows 8 trying to converge desktop and mobile resulted in a sorry nose. Let us hope Apple does not fall into the same trap.
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