Way back in 2001, we bought our first iMac to embark on developing apps for the Mac platform adding to what we have been doing for Windows. At that time, we sold our app MacImage Resizer from our website. That was during the time of the transition between Mac OS 9 and the Mac OS X and also the PowerPC to Intel transitions.

It was a little rough at that time as the Mac was still lagging behind Windows in terms of the software development tools. The program was slowly abandoned.

Then in 2010, we reentered the Mac market when Apple announced the setting up of the Mac App Store. At that time, the Mac OS X has gone through several iterations and has gone better over time to what it is today.

At the offset, the Mac App Store offered an opportunity to bring our apps to a ready audience but at a steep cost. Not only does Apple charges 30% commission for each sale, they do not support the options for the potential customers to try out the app before buying, slow review and listing and we do not have the ability to respond to our customers unless they happened to drop us an email.

In 2012, Apple introduced sandboxing which in theory is good but it means that we are restricted to working with the particular file or folder which the user selects. There was no reliable option to save previously selected folders and we cannot even perform simple task such as renaming files. We accepted the policy and started removing features or trying to find ways to workaround the restrictions without breaking them.

Lately, Apple has been rejecting several of our existing apps and suggested that we create a container app (ie mini app store) and sell the various apps we have as in-app purchases. This could be viable if the apps have not already had any customers as this means that existing customers would have to download the container app and repurchase the their apps over again. I believe Apple wants to cut down on the number of apps a developer can have to reduce the clutter in the store. They have been favoring the bigger players in the store and our apps just do not get the same visibility as before.

We are going to still host our apps on the Apple AppStore and will slowly reduce the number of apps on the store if they complain again. We are working on the ability to host and market our apps in-house which means that you will be able to download a trial copy to evaluate the app before purchasing. And not to neglect the App Store customers, we are working on a way to detect and convert the App Store purchased app to non App Store version with the minimum of inconvenience.