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Comment by paulryanrogers | Hacker News Reader

This decrease in capability seems to be a weakness with Mac App Store as well, that and the ramp up from 0% to 30% of purchase price.

As a user I personally prefer more powerful software and a more financially motivated developer; even when it makes buying more bespoke.

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What are some alternatives to Mac App Store that give the developer the same services, like handling payment, including subscriptions, downloads, some DRM to prevent casual copying and updates, for less than 30%?

Last I checked, I had to assemble the above from disparate services, investigating each, integrating them, and paying for each, which doesn't seem like a productive use of my time or money.

That's not an answerable question in any universal way. 30% of what?

Assembling from disparate sources will have more of an upfront cost but cost less per purchase. So it depends entirely on your sales volume.

30% of the sale price, obviously.

Regarding your second point, interesting, seems like MAS is good to get started until the app reaches a certain volume.

The "buy once update forever" business model of the Mac App Store is the real financial burden, not the ~30% tariff. Dev houses need some residual income, esp in the relatively small Mac market.

My guess is this could be driving the divide between semantic and vanity versions. If a developer has a big new update that's fully backward compatible they'll still be tempted to bump the major version of it means they can justify selling it separately. (Assuming stores allow names with a numeric bump.)

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