Negative -1? Really? Voting system is broken. I recommend for the Nth time that only trusted admins be allowed to take any piece of content down below 1 point. Right now, if any particular user simply disagrees with a given comment, they have the power to penalize and reduce another user's karma. Not because the user said something rude, trollish, juvenile or "evil", but merely because they might disagree. That to me is a broken mechanism. Please let's change this. Think HN will be the better for it.
I missed you being in negative land, but it may have been a simple result of your remark being both silly and flip at the same time. Silly in that you don't address the substance of the point and flip in that you felt the need to invoke the T-Shirt cliche.
Obviously getting software onto desktop computers has happened before. You're ignoring the power of Apple's approach.
I mean, what, should we stick with distributing everything on 3.5" floppy disks because that, once upon a time, worked? Cardboard boxes? Advocating to maintain a 30 year status quo on anything is... questionable, but doubly so on something as crucially important and evolving as digital distribution.
Similarly, I think you'd be downvoted for saying something like "Already do styling in HTML, works fine, t-shirt, blurgh" in a thread about the power of CSS3. Sure one works. But the new method works better.
The amount of work you simply do not have to do with Apple as your App Store distribution partner is incredible. Instead of giving away a piece of software because it wouldn't bring in enough money to offset the trouble and cost of a licensing mechanism and merchant account, you can throw it onto the App Store for $5 and make a bit of cash in a few clicks.
> "The problem of distribution and monetization for desktop software is significant and largely unsolved."
This is a factually untrue statement. Folks have been distributing and monetizing software quite successfully at least as far back as the 80's. I personally bought software, and sold software, in the 80's. Shocking, right? In the pre-App Store era. It's not difficult actually. Has Apple made it a little bit easier, given certain assumptions and constraints? Of course. But only if in exchange for that you put up with a whole extra set of problems and Big Brother rules you have to deal with, and hurdles to jump through, and restrictions to deal with, and uncertainty around what they will or will not allow you to do. I've been creating and shipping iPhone software for about 2 years now. I've distributed and monetized software both without and before the App Store, and in the App Store. I know whereof I speak.
I find your comment rude and full of hyperbole. Statements like these are just as easily reversible and would still hold true:
> "The amount of work you simply do not have to do with Apple as your App Store distribution partner is incredible."
For example, could be reversed as: The amount of extra work and bullshit you have to put up with simply by distributing through the App Store is just incredible.
Here's another one:
> " (...) Instead of giving away a piece of software because it wouldn't bring in enough money to offset the trouble and cost of a licensing mechanism and merchant account, you can throw it onto the App Store for $5 and make a bit of cash in a few clicks."
PayPal makes it pretty darn easy to let people buy your software on the web. And however "easy" you think it is to just "throw something" in the App Store, I guarantee you it's easier to just throw something up on a web server. I can write a shell script, then with a few keystrokes push it up to a live site and my customers can get it, instantly, with no complex submission process, no rules, no fear of either the content or functionality being proactively or retroactively rejected, at any time.
I have an additive view of the world in that I think having more options is always a good thing. Does the App Store have good points? Sure, so it's great to have as an option. Are there bad things about it, and the iOS development model, and Apple's behavior/control in general? Of course. But to simply dismiss other ways of distributing software, and describe it as an unsolved problem, is clearly factually false and hyperbole. It looks at it through rose-tinted glasses, at a minimum, and arguably also with a great lack of awareness of both modern and past alternatives.
I'm smarter having read this post – I wish you'd led with it, instead of the other one. :)
Thanks for talking it out with me – I definitely see your point.
Especially with regard to my being hyperbolic. I should have said it's unsolved to the degree of my preference – in that there's no one-click purchase that lubricates things as there is on iOS. I mean, I'm biased because the App Store's market power really, really worked for me, so I want to believe it can work for many others.
PayPal, in the end, isn't bad, but it is frictiony by comparison. And while it solves the monetization problem, it does nothing for distribution, which is even harder.
For me, I view Steam as the finest digital distribution mechanism yet devised. I've been eager for it to go beyond games, and Apple's App Store is doing that, so I'm excited. Everything else looks like ass by comparison, regardless of the tradeoffs in Apple's devil's agreement.
Your comment was ignorant, arrogant and used one of the stupider (old) clichés around. It's a shame that it's up to +3.
You claim that people have been releasing desktop software just fine. Utter nonsense. If you're Microsoft, Adobe, etc. then it's been ok but if you're a sole developer making indie software the normal distribution routes weren't available. That meant going on some shareware site, freshmeat, make your own site or something else and hope people can find you.
The App store changes all this for the mainstream desktop [1] and it's going to be a big deal for indie developers. I'm surprised to see so many people on this site poo pooing it as this has to be one of the most startup-relevant things to happen to the desktop in decades.
[1] Linux has had this for a long time and it was one of its few advantages as a desktop system.
Thanks for your feedback! Do you live in Colorado by any chance? Or stopping through soon? If so I'd love to meet and discuss further over a coffee or something. You made a great point.
