[w0mbat]

The Apple app store is a disaster for making a living as an indie. People can't find the apps so sales are low, market rate prices are also low. The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions, which I won't do. I made much more money writing $20 shareware in the 90s.

That's why I write apps for a corporation now.

[czottmann]

> The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions

(Personal experience/anecdata follows.)

I don't know. I sell a macOS/iOS productivity app on the App Store[1], and while not getting rich there, I can tell you that's actually useful to people, you can put a non-peanuts price tag on it. I love that it's relatively straightforward to get an app out in front of a lot of potential customer.

That said, I wouldn't never rely on the App Store to surface my app on its own, it's ridiculous.

[1]: https://actions.work/actions-for-obsidian

[czottmann]

Apologies for the post-eggnog grammar there.

[newaccount74]

There are a bunch of people who make enough money to live on the App Store, even without subscriptions. I'm one of them. I've heard of a few others as well.

There are a lot of things that suck on the App Store, but it's definitely possible to make a living.

[qup]

Why not write shareware again?

More users than ever.

[gumballindie]

That’s by design. You are meant to work for a corporation. Capitalism is nearly dead due to this - corporation flooding the market, drowning indie enterprise, and clogging money. We need a return to capitalism and do away with guilded corporatism.

[plagiarist]

The specific case here is usually referred to as commoditizing the complement, it's probably intentional at this point if it wasn't intentional from the start.

https://gwern.net/complement