Welcome to 2012! If you're a consumer, you're likely getting ready for another year full of new products, drama, and intrigue from the tech world. If you're a journalist, you're cowering in fear of the upcoming CES trade show. And if you're a Mac or iOS developer—well, as always, you're wishing for bigger and better things out of Apple and its community.
While the iOS and Mac App Stores exploded in popularity in 2011, there's still plenty of room for improvement on the developer side. When we spoke with a number of iOS and Mac developers about their wish list for 2012, they didn't hesitate to let us know about changes they would like to see.
Flexible pricing, upgrades, and discounts
Just in case anyone at the Apple mothership forgot, the developers we spoke to are still wishing that the company would let them offer variable pricing. Whether it's because customers are upgrading from previous versions or because they are buying bulk licenses, developers certainly feel the limits of the Mac App Store.
"That hit home more than ever with the launch of the Mac App Store this year, since many of our customers wanted to be able to 'upgrade' to the Mac App Store versions of our apps," The Omni Group CEO Ken Case told Ars. "Many of our customers have told us they'd be willing to pay to transfer their apps, similar to when iTunes Plus let them upgrade their music—they just don't want to have to pay full list price again, especially for a $200 app like OmniGraffle Pro."
Case argued that, if Apple introduced a way to offer flexible pricing or custom discount codes, Apple could still take its full 30 percent cut from the original price and the discount would merely come out of the developer's cut. "The only people losing money in this deal would be us, the software vendors," Case said, "but we gain happy customers."
Firms are hiring iOS developers more eagerly than kids looking for Willy Wonka's golden ticket
Daniel Jalkut, founder of Red Sweater Software, agreed that a unification policy in the Mac App Store would be nice to have.
"For many low-priced applications, it's not a big deal to ask a customer to just pay again to get into the App Store ecosystem. But the higher the price of the software, the less likely customers are going to be willing to pay again just for the privileges of the app store," Jalkut told us. "Imagine customers of Photoshop agreeing to pay another $500 just to get an App Store version? It's not an easy problem to solve but could be addressed if Apple introduced a mechanism similar to promo codes that could be used to legally and officially migrate existing customers from a direct-sale relationship to an app-store managed relationship."
A more flexible discount policy wouldn't necessarily be limited to upgraders, either—it would apply to business users who want to install Mac App Store selections on computers provided to employees, or to those buying multiple apps at once in a bundle.
"Discount codes like these would not only help with Mac App Store migration, they would also let us offer our customers the same sort of flexible upgrade pricing on the App Store as we offer through our own online store," Case said. "Customers could come to us to request an appropriate discount code for their upgrade, then take that code to the App Store to get their discount."
Better communication channels
Seasoned developers also run up against limited communication options for dealing with the iOS or Mac App Store. Apple's own App Store staff is already swimming in thousands of submissions per day and faces the daunting task of attempting to determine what's appropriate for the store. The result: communication can feel a bit lacking when a developer or user ends up having problems.
"I'm hoping to see the Mac App Store developer experience evolve to encompass the needs of established Mac developers when it comes to providing the best possible service to our customers," Bare Bones Software CEO Rich Siegel told Ars. "Having official channels so that developers can contact empowered App Store staff for customer-service issue escalation and resolution would be a great step."
Help wanted: more developers
iOS design and development houses face a problem that some feel is coming to a head this year: the desperate need for more developers. Everywhere you look, firms are hiring up iOS developers more eagerly than kids looking for Willy Wonka's golden ticket; demand for skilled developers far outstrips supply.
What to do? Apple already holds its regularly sold-out Worldwide Developers Conference every year and goes on global tours to give Tech Talks. But according to iOS Consultant Benjamin Jackson (who most recently worked for the New York Times on its iPad and iPhone apps), it's not enough.
"There is a gaping hole in the hiring market for iOS at the moment, and the number of new app developers each year is nowhere near enough to service the increasing demand for apps," Jackson told Ars. "I'd like to see Apple reaching out to more high schools and universities to help direct their efforts as they attempt to turn out more iOS developers, doing anything they can to help create more qualified instructors, and ramping up their tech talks even further this year (the 2011 World Tour was a good start, but tough to get tickets for)."
Although there are plenty of ways for budding developers to learn on their own, Jackson believes a more organized and formal training program would do wonders to accelerate the number of qualified developers entering the market.
"It's not easy at the moment for an interested but inexperienced programmer to find a solid program of instruction unless they live near a large city or a hub for iOS developers, and even then (New York comes to mind) options are limited," he said.
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