Hacker News Reader

Comment by archildress | Hacker News Reader

Well, it's a start?

I know I'm not the first to stay it, but I'm still so shocked how limited the Mac App Store is. No trial versions, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions, etc. This has led to companies like Bohemian (makers of Sketch) [1] leaving the Mac App Store.

I'm not being facetious when I ask people more knowledgeable than me: why does Apple put so little effort into the store? Is it just too small to warrant their attention? It just seems to me like they don't even try.

http://bohemiancoding.tumblr.com/post/134322691555/leaving-t...

View on HN

The Mac App Store already supports both in-app purchases and subscriptions, and we currently leverage that to offer free trials of two of our apps (OmniGraffle and OmniPlan) and will soon extend that to the rest of our product line (OmniFocus and OmniOutliner).

I shared more details about this on our blog a few months ago:

https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/providing-the-best-possible-a...

I thought time-limited trials were not permitted in the Mac App Store? How did this get through the review process?

The app itself cannot expire, but functionality unlocked within the app can expire so long as the app remains useful--or the app is based on subscriptions, in which case you can make the expired app do nothing at all.

In the case of OmniGraffle 7 the free functionality that it retains after the trial expires is that the app can continue to be used as a free viewer for OmniGraffle documents (in much the same way as people use free PDF viewer apps).

When we first shipped OmniGraffle 7, some people thought that perhaps we'd just managed to slip its free trials past some Apple's reviewer's radar. But we were very careful and intentional about designing the app to follow their guidelines, and we've shipped several updates that have passed review since then--and at the end of the year Apple awarded the app a "Best of 2016" App Store award.

So now that we know for certain that Apple is OK with this approach, we're in the process of bringing this model to the rest of our apps on both Mac and iOS.

Ah, that's very interesting. I did not realize that reverting the expired trial version to "view-only" mode was considered within the guidelines. Thanks for the clarification, I may have to consider this model for my own apps.

I assume Apple did not have a problem with your use of the "Free Trial" wording in the app? After the trial period expires, does the app display a launch screen directing you to purchase the full version?

No, Apple didn't have a problem with that term: we just had to make sure the description was clear about the functionality which was retained after the trial ended.

After the trial period expires, all documents are read-only with a small badge in the title bar that you can click on to bring up the in-app purchase choices.

Was there any recent Apple announcement or change in policy that suddenly allowed for this type of "free trial" in the Mac App Store?

Are you aware of any other Mac apps that use this model, or any rejections for the same?

What's your plan when you release the next major version of OmniGraffle? You will create a whole new App Store listing for it? Or you'll somehow have a single listing for OmniGraffle on the App Store, and people who have purchased v7 but not v8 will be able to unlock v7 but not v8 within the app?

The latter sounds like an unholy mess, the former is very annoying as a developer, since you lose all of your reviews and history, and customers generally don't really understand how to download apps they've purchased which are no longer listed on the App Store, and presumably you'd pull OmniGraffle v7 from the App Store.

Also, right now in the U.S. Mac App Store, you have 3 reviews on the current version of OmniGraffle, and 2 out of 3 are 1 star reviews complaining about the way your free trial is presented.

The Mac App Store is a broken mess.

Yes, we'll create a whole new App Store listing for it, just as OmniGraffle 5, 6, and 7 have each had their own listing.

I agree that it's sad to lose all our previous reviews, especially as our earlier apps had very high average ratings. But the bigger issue is combating confusion, which leads to bad ratings when people miss a feature that the app actually has, or are confused when a "free" app actually costs money. I'm hopeful that being able to reply to confused customers will help to clear some of that up!

The problem with this approach is that it's impossible to provide discounts to users who had the previous version, which is a long standarding practice (and a valuable one).

I agree that's a valuable, long-standing practice, but that problem has been solved: by offering discounted in-app purchases, we've been offering upgrade discounts to upgrading Mac App Store customers since we shipped OmniGraffle 6 in 2013.

If you read my latest blog post on the subject (linked in my first comment in this thread), you can see full details on how we're offering upgrade discounts to all existing customers, free upgrades for recent purchases, and free trials so new customers can check out the app before they pay—all in the App Store.

Don't forget that Apple's draconian sandboxing limitations restrict entire categories of desktop applications from being sold on the Mac App Store.

When you've got an application like Coda from Panic that can't even manage to exist on the Store, that should be a sign that the thing needs to change.

What I find pretty awful is all of the apps I bought aren't being upgraded even though they were really great when I bought them. I'd even pay money to upgrade them. So sad to see all that wasted effort.

Maybe you can try Setapp.com - service released today. They provide access to more than 60+ apps without paid upgrades and in-app purchased.

Limited from a developer perspective but fantastic from a consumer one (except maybe the trial version stuff).

Not so fantastic, because it resets the ratings every update, which translates in developers constantly begging for stars...

I do agree resetting the ratings at every update is a big hassle. I wonder why Apple doesn't have the reviewer determine whether or not the rating should be reset. Perhaps that would introduce too much power to the reviewer(s?).

Every update may be a bit excessive, but it's better than never. A review is made at a point in time and a product can get better or worse over time. If I ever get begged for stars though the app gets one star.

Do you think it's a fantastic experience because it's simple?

I know that most people that post on HN are early adopters and trend toward power users, but they also use a lot more apps in total than my casual computer-using friends.

> Do you think it's a fantastic experience because it's simple?

I thinks it's fantastic because the don't allow nickle and dimeing customers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com