07-31-2011, 04:03 PM
48584F46462A0 wrote: Hmm. We have different opinions on this but granted, you have more experience of the App store than I do. I think it was better to be able to download the trial and then pay the developer if I wanted to keep the app.Well, no matter how I hard I try to look for positives, there's no getting around one undeniable fact: it's a way for Apple to insert themselves between software developers and end users, in order to profit from those sales where they couldn't before - at least not directly. I hope that those who sell their hard work through the App store feel that the exposure and the e-commerce capabilities Apple provides are worth the costs.
This is something that I'm highly interested in as a possibility for the future. At the moment, and probably for the foreseeable future, my livelihood as a software developer doesn't depend on internet app stores, but who knows? Maybe it can provide a decent supplemental income at the very least, and possibly more. So perhaps this perspective influences my comments somewhat.
Seeing your comments, and others gives me more to think about. You might consider submitting feedback to Apple to see if there was an easier way to associate trials with full-blown versions. I'm not sure how much financial sense it makes for them to host free software and not host the full versions and for the actually unlocking/payment to happen outside of the App store.
I do know as an App store consumer, there are some pain points: software packages that are very large (xcode and lion, I'm looking at you!) with crappy patch mechanisms (again, xcode...). Still, there are some things I like. I'm hoping the App store user experience improves with time. I appreciate the dialogue even (especially) if we don't agree on everything.