![]() Our software can break or change behavior because of this dependency on external data. Music doesn’t depend on the network while its playing.Software, on the other hand, usually gets a new version every few months. Yes, there are remixes and other adaptations, but these are labeled, marketed and sold (via SKU) as unique products. There are never new versions of a song.Anyone who’s done customer support can tell you that’s not true for software. People don’t have to learn how to listen to music. iTunes customers do not have functional problems with songs.People like Walt Mossberg don’t talk about the importance of music when reviewing the competition. As developers, we may be small fish in this sea of titles, but we’re more important to the health of the iPhone platform than musicians are to the health of iTunes.While an impressive number in this nascent category, it pales in comparison to 10 million songs. Apple is currently touting 50,000 applications in the App Store. ![]() Music and software differ greatly in the number of titles.I believe this is the basic issue that both parties are coming to grips with: Look at it this way: would you rather have lost the first 6 months of revenue while waiting for Apple to perfect the system used to deliver our applications?īut now iTunes presents problems for both Apple and third party developers because of this simple fact: software is not music. It allowed them to sell software to millions of users with a minimal amount of development. Reviews only from people who have purchased the app.īuilding the App Store using the iTunes infrastructure was a brilliant move on Apple’s part.Here are things that have helped us sell more product: It’s also important to look at what’s been improved in the past year: it gives me hope that we’ll eventually see some of the suggestions I make in this essay. There is hopeĪs developers, we have a tendency to look at things that are “wrong” and complain. Saying that there was a lot of discussion about the App Store in the bars around WWDC would be the understatement of the century. Note: These words may be mine, but their origin is from conversations with hundreds of iPhone developers. A lot of good things have happened since last July 11th, but there’s still much room for improvement. As we approach the first anniversary of selling things on the iTunes App Store, I’d like to take the opportunity to look at where we’ve been and where we’d like to go.
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