I have written a small number of programs with Xojo. They are offered for free on my website. The number of potential customers is small. I am not a registered Apple Developer. I am not trying to put apps on the App Store.
Currently, I store zipped versions of my applications on Amazon S3. I have my own personal website. These apps are linked on this website so when the user clicks on the link the zipped file from AWS downloads to their Download folder. It seems to automatically “unzip” within the Download folder. The user is instructed to manually move the app to the Application folder and then launch it. These are 64 bit apps.
Because I am not a registered developer, the potential user has to jump through a lot of hoops to launch the application for the first time. You cannot jump double-click on the app. If you do, it will simply tell you that it is unauthorized and cannot be opened.
It seems to still be possible to to right-click on the app and choose Open and then read some more warnings, and if you insist that you still want to open the app, you can. After you have opened it for the first time, it will subsequently open without difficulty. This general process has become more complicated and more “out there” with the new MacOS versions.
I have tested this on an Intel Mac running Big Sur and this still seems to work. I do not know if this works on an Apple Silicon Mac running Big Sur because I do not own one.
In any case, I would like to make life a little easier for the handful of people who might want to use one of my apps. At the very least, I would like to make them less anxious.
I understand that it will cost me $100 dollars a year to become registered with Apple. I am willing to pay that tax. But I do not know how to move forward from here. What else do I have to do?
I read about App Wrapper 4. That is $200 dollars and then I guess $50.00 dollars a year as best as I can understand the website. Is this what I should be doing? If I spent all this money, would I be able to achieve my basic goal of distributing free software without having my customers getting anxious and having to navigate complex “weird” instructions. Would it be simple for me or do I still have lots of complexity to deal with? Is there a cheaper more sensible way to go?
Spending all this money to give away free software is a painful. But more painful still would be spending money and then not be able to really figure out how to simply distribute the software on my website. I am scared that I will be entering into some complicated process for myself.
Any advice?