What's your take on the Mac App Store?

[Vero Pepperrell]

On the fateful day of the Mac App Store launch, how do you think it'll
fare? Will it be better or worse for the Mac app developers out there?

[Adam]

It has the potential to be really good for developers from an exposure
prospective but I wonder if that will last or whether the big level of
exposure will only be over few days post it launching when the world
and his mac wife are trying to look?

Saying that the iOS app store hasn't particularly slowed down.

Ignoring my initial inability to use the thing it does make it quite
easy for the end user. I don't know anything about the dev end as in
how much Apple take of the price, etc.

[Nick Charlton]

I certainly think it is a good thing.

What does concern me though is how the pricing pans out. I'm hoping it
doesn't become a race to the bottom, with apps having only a few
features and charging small amounts for it.

Though, if there is a general price drop, I do suspect that will more
than likely be able to be made up in the extra number of sales, I
think it was Ars Technica who said something along the lines of
"whilst Apple will be taking their 30% cut, 5 sales with 30% of the
revenue is better than 1 sale at 100%." So, at least with that in mind
I do suspect it will work out.

But, as the OP says, will the sales boosts last? Indeed, it has worked
for the iOS App Store, but to discover the best of the applications we
still find out through what is essentially word of mouth. These days,
that is generally high profile bloggers, from Gruber to Shawn Blanc
being good examples of that.

Of course, the very fact we're on this list makes us technically
competent users, so this isn't the market the Mac App Store is
attempting to fill. I certainly think it will overall increase app
sales, as more people discover the other great software that is out
there.

Nick.

[Simon Maddox]

This is the thing that concerns me too - have you seen what's happened to Google's Chrome Web Store?

http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/04/sales-have-slowed-to-a-trickle-on-googles-chrome-web-store/

[Adam]

Also how are refunds / disgruntled customers dealt with?

On Jan 6, 2:57 pm, Vero Pepperrell <vpepperr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Vero Pepperrell]

I can't comment on how refunds are handled since we sell the Alfred
powerpack outside of the store for now. What concerns me with regards
to disgruntled customers is that when a negative review is posted on
the App Store, there's no way to reply to the user.

With an iPhone/iPad game, there's a limit as to how complex the app is
but with a desktop app, all it might take to make a user happy again
is a small tweak to a setting or a change in preferences. Having this
one-way communication will no doubt cause some frustration but
hopefully users will be smart enough to use the company's real support
channel rather than the App Store.

This is probably one of the points that concerns me the most for the
future, as I LOVE getting our users' issues resolved completely and
the App Store structure might make that difficult.