License keys can be really useful for institution-wide software licensing. Imagine an advertising agency trying to buy 30 instances of Photoshop. How are they going to do that with the App Store? Without some support for bundle purchases, the Mac App Store won't be very useful for developers of software for a professional audience.
I don't think Apple is aiming to provide a means of covering every possible kind of licensing deal a developer might potentially want to strike. They're aiming this at average, small developer to lone buyer sales.
If the bulk of your sales are site-licenses to labs and universities, this app store probably isn't the correct venue for your product.
"Without some support for bundle purchases, the Mac App Store won't be very useful for developers of software for a professional audience."
They generally don't need it. They don't need the infrastructure, they don't need the exposure, they don't want to give up 30% on each sale, they don't want to be limited to Apple's low-end app licensing approach.
Adobe, Matlab, Autodesk, Mathematica, these sorts of companies will continue selling the way they have been. No harm, no foul.
The App Store is for apps akin to what's on iOS. It's possible Adobe could throw a mini-Photoshop Elements on there, but they aren't going to put CS5 on the App Store.
The App Store has always had this "problem". Just like an IT desk can't easily manage, say, 500 iPads. That's really what Windows is built for. Apple is really targeting consumers not enterprise customers.
I'm not talking about large enterprises, I'm talking about small-to-medium creative workshops, a sector where Apple is traditionally very strong in. At my day job, we got a bunch of composers with high-end Mac Pros with Logic Pro installed on them, and believe me, we're very far from being "enterprise". We got producers, graphic designers and so on. These people would rather quit than ever use a PC. My point is, it looks like that the Mac App Store is not intended for this kind of audience, which is a shame because creatives and media people are a very core user group of the Mac, the kind of customers that were loyal to Apple even during its darkest hours in the mid-90's.
Comments
License keys can be really useful for institution-wide software licensing. Imagine an advertising agency trying to buy 30 instances of Photoshop. How are they going to do that with the App Store? Without some support for bundle purchases, the Mac App Store won't be very useful for developers of software for a professional audience.
I don't think Apple is aiming to provide a means of covering every possible kind of licensing deal a developer might potentially want to strike. They're aiming this at average, small developer to lone buyer sales.
If the bulk of your sales are site-licenses to labs and universities, this app store probably isn't the correct venue for your product.
"Without some support for bundle purchases, the Mac App Store won't be very useful for developers of software for a professional audience."
They generally don't need it. They don't need the infrastructure, they don't need the exposure, they don't want to give up 30% on each sale, they don't want to be limited to Apple's low-end app licensing approach.
Adobe, Matlab, Autodesk, Mathematica, these sorts of companies will continue selling the way they have been. No harm, no foul.
The App Store is for apps akin to what's on iOS. It's possible Adobe could throw a mini-Photoshop Elements on there, but they aren't going to put CS5 on the App Store.
The App Store has always had this "problem". Just like an IT desk can't easily manage, say, 500 iPads. That's really what Windows is built for. Apple is really targeting consumers not enterprise customers.
I'm not talking about large enterprises, I'm talking about small-to-medium creative workshops, a sector where Apple is traditionally very strong in. At my day job, we got a bunch of composers with high-end Mac Pros with Logic Pro installed on them, and believe me, we're very far from being "enterprise". We got producers, graphic designers and so on. These people would rather quit than ever use a PC. My point is, it looks like that the Mac App Store is not intended for this kind of audience, which is a shame because creatives and media people are a very core user group of the Mac, the kind of customers that were loyal to Apple even during its darkest hours in the mid-90's.