Wondering about the App Store for the Mac
Browsing through the App Store in iTunes.
Whoa, Crash Bandicoot—what is this, the 90s? Pass. Pretty cool to be able to download it for my iPhone, though…Tetris, heh, 80s, yeah right…Enigmo, early 2000? Maybe get that one, yeah…
Click.
Air Hockey? Maybe, but ooohhh, look at Checkers Touch. Now that’s what I want my iPhone games to look like.
Click.
Oh, I’m all over Texas Hold’em. Hell, yeah.
Click.
Scrabble looks a little rough, but still. Click.
Ms. PAC-MAN! Click.
Okay, that should do me for a while. Total’s getting up there.
Pause. Looks at Tetris again.
Click.
Okay, that’s it for the iPhone. I hope it’ll hold it all. I wish they had this for the Mac—hey, why don’t they? The infrastructure’s there. iTunes already supports it.
Hmm…
You don’t know what you’re missing with Crash Bandicoot, man…
Is Snood available yet? It’s the best.
Super Money Ball is a given.
It would be useful to have but it wouldn’t work as the primary revenue channel. By doing so they could kill off maybe 5-10% of the apps on the platform that they don’t like, such as those that do some sort of tinkering with the OS.
There’s also the issue that the App Store is far from perfect. If they were to do it for the Mac they’d want to get it working fully for the iPhone first. Then you’d have the issue of Apple’s cut. 30% works on the iPhone as it’s less than what others out there take for mobile apps. However, when you can sell an app and have around 95% profit after the processor has taken their share and you’ve paid for hosting then Apple couldn’t really charge more than 10%.
Martin, the App Store does a lot more than traditional processors. Being associated with the Apple brand, even tangentially as offered by the App Store, merits a premium in addition to the usual fulfillment fees. 30% might be high, but 10% seems too low.