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Comment by Codhisattva | Hacker News Reader

Shareware was a great increment from the publisher model. And then of course, AppStore is the real game changer.

I'd argue that the AppStore model is several steps backward from shareware, websites, etc. Yes, you get cheap updates, but you're once again beholden to the retailer in order to get your product noticed, it's harder to create apps that deal with social commentary, you've once again got to calculate in retailer overhead in determining a product price, etc. Hell, the bad old days let you include a catalog in with your product so customers could purchase stuff directly from you without the retailers demanding their pound of flesh. So no, the AppStore is not a game changer by any means.

The game has changed fundamentally for both producer and consumer, and the AppStore (powered by mobile device success) is the biggest winner in exploiting the change. The level of its success puts it in a position of influencing/controlling the underlying economics and has forced big changes to the business models of anyone seeking access to the market it provides. I can't really agree that it is worse than other market channels, since the market landscape is fundamentally different from a few years ago, but having been a producer and consumer of software products over a long period, I feel like it is a net loss for competitive (and quality) software development, and a soft win for consumers in some ways, but as you point out, the control and opportunity trade-offs on the production side relative to the bad old days are a pain, and may result in compromises for the consumer.

I sold a shareware title in the mid 90's. My distribution model was pretty darn simple: There was a place somewhere in Indiana with a printed catalog of shareware titles. I sent them a disk, and they added me to their catalog.

I decided not to charge for updates, as I figured that I was lucky enough to get any money at all.

I think internet was the real game changer. Once bandwidth got good enough for downloading software, it got easier to sell and patch anything. I can't imagine living 7-8 months without patches.

AppStore is definitely a step up, but it may be too crowded.

I agree. Before any "AppStore", there were countless avenues to getting software. Plus, software finally got online "profiles" so to speak that allowed people to learn more about it before purchasing/downloading.

Just prior to doing my first internet project for BT back in 94 I spent a year working on a Oracle forms project to manage the UK's SMDS network.

When it came to delivery you had to install in the correct order 15-16 separate 3.5 inch floppy disks - before you could install our forms application :-) took me and the other developer 3 day to install the 6 or so pilot users -

We also had to take up a spare server at the last minute as they had neglected to order the hardware - luckily they did have a network so the network hardware we also brought as insurance wasn't needed.

Back in the 80's I also ran the production side of our apple and pet software biz - I recall having to stay late to ring up Microsoft (in new mexico) about a very strange bug in USD pascal on apple hardware.

> I can't imagine living 7-8 months without patches.

For actually important systems (I'm thinking of things like Banyan VINES), patches would be shipped as soon as possible - but this was reasonable, we were _paying_ for that level of support.

What do you want the patches for? I wish I had fewer patches and fewer nagging notification items (Adobe, Java).

The internet drives the need for patches, because suddenly bugs are a security risk rather than a rare inconvenience.

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