MacHeist has zero moral obligation to pay anybody more than that developer is willing to accept. I sure as hell wouldn't put my app in that bundle, but I have no bones with people who do, because everyone can run their Excel spreadsheet themselves to see if it makes sense economically given all their variables. Did any of the developers see the final numbers and think they got screwed? If they did, they completely bombed their market size calculation and now they have better data for next time (actually, we all got some good numbers out of this). I happily bought the bundle because I got some apps I really wanted at ridiculous bargain basement prices, which is my prerogative as a rational economic actor. Wil Shipley's not my charity cause.
But this whole debate is shortsighted and silly. I am a nascent Mac developer coming very much from the Windows world, and the whole community here is really oddly insular right now. It's very much like the PC software industry in, say, 1988. A whole bunch of small shops putting out utilities and such either as shareware or for small fees. But this is real modern software, and no parallel community exists in the PC world. Shareware (I know most "indie Mac devs" don't call it this, but it's a convenient term) can actually be profitable on this platform. Who knew?!
MacHeist highlights both the problems and opportunities of this market. It is SO silly to be bickering over what is essentially a minor happy-go-lucky marketing experiment.
And this market is small. It is TINY. There is a lot we need to do to overcome this problem. Apple is doing better than ever by getting new users in droves. We have a base of a professional development community putting out professional software for the Mac. Now we need to up the ante.
How do we get the attention of all the kids who got MacBooks for high school and college this year? How do we get the attention of all the older established people who don't frequent the "mac web" (or read MacWorld) like we do? How can we leverage, say, online services in a more viral way to get new customers by hook, crook, and word of mouth?
by Ben — Dec 19
But this whole debate is shortsighted and silly. I am a nascent Mac developer coming very much from the Windows world, and the whole community here is really oddly insular right now. It's very much like the PC software industry in, say, 1988. A whole bunch of small shops putting out utilities and such either as shareware or for small fees. But this is real modern software, and no parallel community exists in the PC world. Shareware (I know most "indie Mac devs" don't call it this, but it's a convenient term) can actually be profitable on this platform. Who knew?!
MacHeist highlights both the problems and opportunities of this market. It is SO silly to be bickering over what is essentially a minor happy-go-lucky marketing experiment.
And this market is small. It is TINY. There is a lot we need to do to overcome this problem. Apple is doing better than ever by getting new users in droves. We have a base of a professional development community putting out professional software for the Mac. Now we need to up the ante.
How do we get the attention of all the kids who got MacBooks for high school and college this year? How do we get the attention of all the older established people who don't frequent the "mac web" (or read MacWorld) like we do? How can we leverage, say, online services in a more viral way to get new customers by hook, crook, and word of mouth?