Comments on: Why haven’t we seen a desktop App Store?

By: Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:59:05 +0000

I’m not clear on where you see the great distinction between Shareware which you pay for voluntarily after trying it for a while and the small operators who would sell through the desktop App Store. I’m genuinely surprised that you would say you’d not want any Shareware on any of your machines.

As for the feasibility of doing it for the desktop that is heavily influenced by the design of the OS and the relationship between the client machine and the service it is dependent on. With the app store, you’ve a client machine which has originated as a device locked into the outside world (and also locked in the more local mundane sense) while the PC/Mac is a device that originated as a standalone that has been opened up to being networked. The premise from an OS viewpoint is still that you should be able to use those machine without being connected at all times. So delivering an app via the app store is linked directly to the specific device. While for PC/Mac, the same link isn’t possible. It’s not impossible to do but it would require considerable changes on the OS side.

In my tale of prior experience I was replying to Niall who was the one who said “It is one of those ideas that once you hear it you wonder why the hell nobody had thought of it before!” not yourself. I didn’t suggest you had claimed no one had ever thought of it before.

By: Damien Mulley » Blog Archive » Fluffy Links - Wednesday November 12th 2008

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:07:47 +0000

[...] post from Alexia on the idea of a desktop app store. Adobe should be creating one of them for Air developers and Photoshop plugin [...]

By: Alexia

Alexia — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:16:02 +0000

I’m not talking about Shareware, Dan. Rather, well-thought through pay-per-scenario marketplace. Where the apps we know and love reside, in scenario chunks that we can download. Of course, you can imagine the opportunity for small one-man operations competing in the same marketplace too. Opportunities all around.

You see, I don’t want Shareware on any of my computers. I’m willing to pay for apps in the App Store.

And I’m not saying the idea hasn’t been thought of before, just that there are no examples of this working successfully. The iTunes App Store proved a market exists. And in the best economic sense, financial rewards go those who have executed and created the best apps.

By: Dan Sullivan

Dan Sullivan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:52:26 +0000

A lot of shareware gives you the basic functionality you would require to do many things without the massive cost. It is a real pity the major players in software prefer (yes Alexia, I’m looking at your employer but not exclusively mind) to sell us behemoths that cost 100s of yo-yos when we just want the rudimentary functionality that has existed in the product over a decade.

Truth is the idea of separating out functionality has been thought of before. I worked on a project over a decade ago that was in part trying to do this for the desktop productivity area i.e. Office. Breaking the product down in discrete functionalities as components and then build the overall product back up again from there. Pricing would have mapped to what functionality was actually used. Sadly, there were major problems in doing so, and expectations in terms of performance weren’t met. Frankly as it was big iron organisation I’m not sure that the senior management were able to be as nibble as they need to be in responding to the rapidly changing marketplace. That said a lot of the ideas and even code survived and resurfaced in later products.

By: Niall Harbison

Niall Harbison — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:33:44 +0000

Excellent business model and one that I had not thought of before. It is one of those ideas that once you hear it you wonder why the hell nobody had thought of it before! Really good thinking! You would have to think that this could only ever be an Apple play?