I have no illusions that I can talk any iOS developers into Mac development. I will say that it’s fun, though, for a bunch of reasons. Your apps run on the same machine as your development environment. You have the freedom to distribute outside the app store. You have a chance to write something that all your peers — many of whom are also programmers — will run all day long on their Macs. (And you have a decent chance of making better money. Mac users tend to be loyal and supportive and awesome.)
I’m not kidding myself, Edovia wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Apple and its respective App Stores. However, I’ve had this urge lately to try to make it on my own, without Apple’s help. Of course, there’s no way out of the App Store for iOS apps but you can still hold the reins of your destiny on the Mac side.
Just a few weeks ago, Screens for Mac made more than 90% of its revenues on the Mac App Store. My goal is to increase the percentage of copies sold directly drastically by the year’s end.
It’s not only about the money. Of course, having FastSpring taking roughly 9% off every sale compared to the hefty 30% taken by Apple on each sale is nothing to sneeze at.
For me, the real gain is to be able to push bug fix releases in the matter of minutes, not days, and taking care of my users in a much less frustrating way. Direct customers also tend to be less of a pain compared to App Store customers and easier to work with.
As for UXKit, I don’t understand all the fuss. Yes, AppKit is sometimes frustrating compared to UIKit but seriously, just learn the damn thing.
I don’t know why but for me, shipping a Mac app has always been something special over an iOS app.