Piracy destroys developers! Here's a new way of giving you our apps for (nearly) free!
In the beginning, there were people copying software from their friends and any public computer they came across.
Then there were more elaborate serial number schemes, must-have-floppy/CD-in-drive, bit copy apps, dongles, outcries, putting so much extra stuff on the CD that it was worth buying the app for the extras alone, even more outcries about how piracy kills software development, giving away 'lite' versions on cover CDs, online activation with draconian detection mechanisms, software bundles where for a few dollars you can grab a whole bunch of apps (both pay-what-you-want and otherwise)...
... and now there's another new way of getting your app in front of people: a service called 'Setapp'. It seems to work a little like the Humble Bundle Monthly: you pay $10 a month, and you get an as yet unspecified amount of apps.
This is not a scheme to rent software (looking at you Adobe, whose products I will never again buy because you cannot buy them anymore and which I shall not rent because I like my software to work offline), but more of an auto-subscription to a bundle.
Right now, it's in beta, and the app is a bit rough but perfectly usable. (I've just filed a lengthy report.)
On the positive side, it's in open beta, and you can - as long as you have a Mac - sign up on https://setapp.com, and see whether this is a service you'd be interested in. Personally, I find that I own about half of the apps already (bundles), but there are some interesting ones in the lot. They seem to be a mixture of productivity (Aeon timeline), Utilities, special interest, and simply odd things. There's two mindmaps, for instance, and several markdown editors and snippet managers.
For me, the effort has been worth it: I discovered Sip, which lets you sample any pixel and gives you not just the CSS value, but any number of ways to translate a colour into Swift.
Given how busy Apple's Appstore is, and how bad the interface and search facilities are, I am not surprised that developers are looking for new ways of reaching customers. One of my decluttering tasks at the moment is logging all of the software I have acquired from bundles. Most of it I have not used; sometimes I find a gem that becomes surprisingly useful, but mainly, they're just sitting on a backup drive (because there are too many to keep them on my smallish drive).
There's not a single developer that has lost out through the bundles - I would not have bought any of those apps at full price if I hadn't managed to snag them in a bundle - but there are some developers that have gained, because I am now upgrading or buying other apps from them, and recommending their apps to my friends.
I suspect that my experience is far from unique. The existence of this new service seems to support that.
Also posted at http://green-knight.dreamwidth.org/1079123.html where it has gathered
comments. If you're reading at both sites, I'd prefer comments at DW.
Then there were more elaborate serial number schemes, must-have-floppy/CD-in-drive, bit copy apps, dongles, outcries, putting so much extra stuff on the CD that it was worth buying the app for the extras alone, even more outcries about how piracy kills software development, giving away 'lite' versions on cover CDs, online activation with draconian detection mechanisms, software bundles where for a few dollars you can grab a whole bunch of apps (both pay-what-you-want and otherwise)...
... and now there's another new way of getting your app in front of people: a service called 'Setapp'. It seems to work a little like the Humble Bundle Monthly: you pay $10 a month, and you get an as yet unspecified amount of apps.
This is not a scheme to rent software (looking at you Adobe, whose products I will never again buy because you cannot buy them anymore and which I shall not rent because I like my software to work offline), but more of an auto-subscription to a bundle.
Right now, it's in beta, and the app is a bit rough but perfectly usable. (I've just filed a lengthy report.)
On the positive side, it's in open beta, and you can - as long as you have a Mac - sign up on https://setapp.com, and see whether this is a service you'd be interested in. Personally, I find that I own about half of the apps already (bundles), but there are some interesting ones in the lot. They seem to be a mixture of productivity (Aeon timeline), Utilities, special interest, and simply odd things. There's two mindmaps, for instance, and several markdown editors and snippet managers.
For me, the effort has been worth it: I discovered Sip, which lets you sample any pixel and gives you not just the CSS value, but any number of ways to translate a colour into Swift.
Given how busy Apple's Appstore is, and how bad the interface and search facilities are, I am not surprised that developers are looking for new ways of reaching customers. One of my decluttering tasks at the moment is logging all of the software I have acquired from bundles. Most of it I have not used; sometimes I find a gem that becomes surprisingly useful, but mainly, they're just sitting on a backup drive (because there are too many to keep them on my smallish drive).
There's not a single developer that has lost out through the bundles - I would not have bought any of those apps at full price if I hadn't managed to snag them in a bundle - but there are some developers that have gained, because I am now upgrading or buying other apps from them, and recommending their apps to my friends.
I suspect that my experience is far from unique. The existence of this new service seems to support that.
Also posted at http://green-knight.dreamwidth.org/1079123.html where it has gathered
comments. If you're reading at both sites, I'd prefer comments at DW.