What's the market for Mac software like?

May 28, 2008 6:47 AM

What does the market for Mac software look like?

I'm researching Mac software development opportunities, and I'm looking for info on the current state of the market (including general articles/statistics and sites of successful indie Mac developers). Also, I'm curious about what others think about how the iPhone, the growth in Mac market share, and the fact/possibility of businesses switching to Mac will drive growth.

I'm especially interested in anecdotes along the lines of "Here's what's happening in my company/university/industry."

Thanks!

posted by mpls2 to work & money (12 comments total)

Unfortunately, it's not possible for me to attend this year's WWDC.
posted by mpls2 at 6:48 AM on May 28, 2008

My university is getting a lot more Macs, not at an official level as in mass purchases, but they are certainly a lot more popular with employees who are replacing computers or adding computers.

There's also a noticeable demand for open source programs, there's a lot of really great free software available that makes purchasing a package unnecessary. We have to pay so much for proprietary software (that often still doesn't have as many features as the Windows versions) to drive our instruments that we don't want to pay more for simple software used later in our projects. We obtain the data using the stuff we had to buy, but analyze it with free or legacy software we already have.

I switched back to a mac after using Ubuntu for almost a year and my mentality is that if the software didn't come with OS X or isn't open source I'm not interested in it. It's not as easy to find open stuff for OS X as it was for Ubuntu but more and more stuff is becoming available.
posted by Science! at 7:07 AM on May 28, 2008

Anecdotally, the mac market is small, but conditioned to pay $10-30 for small programs so it's narrow, but can be lucrative.
posted by Oktober at 7:46 AM on May 28, 2008

As a Mac user, I've often felt that were I a Mac software developer, the course I would take is to generate a lot of community goodwill by releasing one or two small-scale but extremely useful applications to the public as freeware.¹ This essentially serves as ongoing community publicity. Afterwards, I'd go for the serious "real" app I was trying to sell, probably pricing it in the $24.95 range unless it was a very hardcore program.

Things that are really mistakes, IMO: releasing a great freeware app that becomes extremely beloved, and then all of a sudden charging money for later versions (cf. Peter Mauer). Or trying to charge >$7 for an app that does an extremely simple functionality. ("Pay $12 for my app that will empty the trash for you!")
posted by WCityMike at 8:00 AM on May 28, 2008

Er, forget the footnote mark.
posted by WCityMike at 8:00 AM on May 28, 2008

I work in a school district and the machines we buy are almost universally Macs. Ease of use, ease of administration, they last alot longer and don't suck (at one school they are actually still using an Apple IIe from the early 80's).

I was listening to Leo Laporte's TWIT yesterday and he said, if he was going to develop a mobile app, he'd go for the iPhone for a couple of reasons. One, the market isn't already saturated. Two, the iPhone store will vet all submissions so the quality of software will be higher. Three, the iPhone is selling like hotcakes with crack on top. Four, the new iPhone is about to be released which will cause an even bigger flurry of buying and interest.

And, IMHO, the future is mobility and anyone who can extend applications and capabilities to the mobile user should do just fine.
posted by fenriq at 8:14 AM on May 28, 2008

The market for $24.95 utilities has certainly lasted a lot longer for Macs than it did for PCs. "Conditioning" has got to be part of it, but PC users were conditioned to buy utilities in 1989, too -- it just became unsustainable when freeware started happening.

I wonder what professional market research makes of this behavior. Rationally, I should think that replacing $24.95 utilities with free utilities would be the growth side of this market -- but it's clear that other factors are at play, too.
posted by gum at 8:28 AM on May 28, 2008

I guess what I'm saying is that if there are one or two freebie simple apps on my machine that have made my life better — something like I Like Stars which puts iTunes ratings in my menu bar, or Insomnia or Caffeine which let me prevent computer sleep, or etc., etc., etc. — and then the application's author puts out a cost-based product, I'm far more likely to give his pay product much more serious consideration than Average Developer From Across the Street.
posted by WCityMike at 9:15 AM on May 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I work in Higher Education and worked with our Helpdesk to transition the entire team to iMacs (for the obvious reason of full cross-platform support). Not a single one is unhappy with their machine. We are also ramping up our support on the student side for purchasing with at least 2 departments (music and art) recommending their students buy mac as opposed to Dell (our current major laptop partner). So there's the anecdote for you.

Now hypothetically, I see Apple putting a big stress on iPhone development already at WWDC and I think this is going to be the "hotspot" for Mac developers in the coming months. With the streamlined App Store and Apple expecting to sell several million iPhones this year the market will be ripe for low-cost functional apps on that device. Keep in mind that in the past year the iPhone was only available in a handful of countries with 5 million in sales. This year they've secured partnerships for the coming 3G phone with over 45 countries, increasing the potential market to over 600 million cell users. Some speculation on this here.

So yeah, I'd say iPhone dev will be where it's at. And as far as current success stories for dev companies, my list would be Panic, Ambrosia, and IconFactory.
posted by genial at 9:26 AM on May 28, 2008

I'm curious about what others think about how the iPhone, the growth in Mac market share, and the fact/possibility of businesses switching to Mac will drive growth.

I've been attending the SV iPhone Dev Meetups. We've had two good speakers so far with encouraging words about the ISV iPhone market.

I don't know how old you are (to remember the import of the Apple ][ market share), but Apple has sold more Macs in the past 6 months than all of the Apple IIs it ever sold.

Here's an interesting graph of HW sales trends.
posted by tachikaze at 9:53 AM on May 28, 2008

The best place to ask about this is on the Macintosh Software Business Yahoo! Group. A lot of top-grade independent Mac developers use it to discuss running microISVs, pricing, marketing, the market, and so on. Off the first two pages of Y!G messages, I see Daniel Jalkut, Allan Odgaard, Tom Harrington, Paul Kafasis, and Gus Mueller.
posted by gentilknight at 9:52 PM on May 28, 2008

You need to listen to the people actually selling mac software, not mac talking heads (leo laporte). If you don't already know that applications are going mobile and the iPhone is going to drive demand for them, you're over your head.

Behind almost every mac application you'll find the developer has a blog. There's a ton of useful information on those sites. Here's an entry by Gus Mueller of Flying Meat fame on how he made a living developing mac software in 1068 days.

There's also a lot of information out there on pricing, what's too little, what's too much. Here's one such article.

There's a lot of quality independent mac software being developed today, one reason I switched to the mac.

Lots of competition, good luck.
posted by justgary at 11:01 PM on May 29, 2008