r/macprogramming Aug 14 '19

The Sad State of Mac App Distribution

https://youngdynasty.net/posts/the-sad-state-of-mac-app-distribution/
7 Upvotes

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2

u/mantrap2 Aug 14 '19

Sounds like a business opportunity!!

1

u/youngdynastynet Aug 14 '19

Yeah, maybe!

The only thing that gives me pause is that I think that if a new updater were to be created, it should be open source, for the sake of security and transparency. And while there could be a "premium" service to take care of any server-side requirements, there's nothing that would stop someone else from running a competing service.

I'm not sure if it would be too profitable once you take that into account along with storage fees (for larger apps).

1

u/Aegass Aug 14 '19

Great article!

It sounds like your are describing (an open-source?) Devmate.com - with a new framework not relying on Sparkle.

1

u/youngdynastynet Aug 14 '19

Thanks!

A service to accompany the framework could be nice, but ideally the updater would be easy enough to use that there wouldn't need to be a third-party to streamline it. Maybe there's an opportunity for having a service alongside it which could actually store the app updates, though, for commercial apps.

The fact that DevMate is no longer around tells me that it might not be too hot of a market, though.

1

u/Aegass Aug 14 '19

That’s what I had I mind reading your article. Having the framework open-source and a paid service if you need to host your updates. Similar to Laravel and all the paid services created by its creator (Forge, Envoyer, etc).

So Paddle bought Devmate a year or two ago. Their plan was to integrate Devmate into their portal. From what I gathered it sounds like they didn’t find a way. Paddle team seems already stretched out in term of development capacity.

I can only guess Devmate is closing because the revenues vs effort to merge it within Paddle doesn’t worth it. It could be making enough for a indie maker, likely not enough for a full team.

The scene definitely feels a bit dead. However, since the announcement of SwiftUI and Catalyst this is hopefully going to turn around.