Apple’s beleaguered Mac App Store continues to lose developers

“Apple thoroughly revamped the look and feel of the Mac App Store this year, debuting ‘editorial’ recommendations and an iOS-inspired interface for its macOS software storefront,” Jeremy Horwitz writes for VentureBeat. “But a new survey from CleanMyMac developer MacPaw suggests developers remain unimpressed by the App Store due to a series of well-established problems that haven’t been addressed, and that Apple is ‘slowly losing devs to the great unknown’ — other distribution options — as a result.”
“MacPaw’s survey is in its third year and with 814 responses has a pretty robust collection of participating developers,” Horwitz writes. “Forty percent of MAS-using developers are “detractors,” with 37 percent “passives,” and 22 percent “promoters,” numbers that only look good compared with even worse scores in the prior year. In three survey years, the store’s promoters number peaked at 23 percent, which is to say that three out of four developers participating in the store aren’t enthusiastic about it.”
‘Unsurprisingly, Apple’s numbers are even worse amongst developers who aren’t selling through the Mac App Store,” Horwitz writes. “As of 2018, 84 percent of that group are detractors, versus 9 percent passives and 7 percent promoters. Those numbers are modestly improved from prior years’ results, but the takeaway is fairly clear: Most developers who participate don’t love the store, and those who don’t participate seem to hate it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: See all of the details in the “Annual Setapp Mac Market Survey 2018” here.