I have a different view of this than most in this topic. I am disappointed, though not surprised, that Panic is abandoning yet another of their iOS apps. They’ve done it several times before and while I am grateful they’ve continued to provide some bug fixes, feature work stopped years ago.
In my view, the biggest hurdle does not seem to have been technical, but ideological/business. These old school Mac developers like Panic and Omni have had a very difficult time adapting to (or failing to) the iOS/mobile era.
I know we all hate subscriptions, but continued app development and management requires continued labor so subscriptions seem like the only business option that makes any sense to me. Panic and Omni want paid upgrades but Apple has never, ever even hinted at providing that as an option. The option is subscriptions. Even on desktop Sketch, Adobe, and Microsoft are going with subscriptions. (We’ll see how Affinity does. They charge a lot more for their apps and seem to be in a growth phase so I imagine their sales at the moment are fast enough to make up for the fact that each sale is only a one time source of revenue).
Honestly, Panic and Omni and other old school Mac developers really, really need to adapt to the modern era. They’ve had years and it feels like the runway is about to end (see Omni’s recent layoffs.) Wishing for paid upgrades and writing “only AppKit apps are real Mac apps” blog posts isn’t going to change anything.
In my view, the biggest hurdle does not seem to have been technical, but ideological/business. These old school Mac developers like Panic and Omni have had a very difficult time adapting to (or failing to) the iOS/mobile era. I know we all hate subscriptions, but continued app development and management requires continued labor so subscriptions seem like the only business option that makes any sense to me. Panic and Omni want paid upgrades but Apple has never, ever even hinted at providing that as an option. The option is subscriptions. Even on desktop Sketch, Adobe, and Microsoft are going with subscriptions. (We’ll see how Affinity does. They charge a lot more for their apps and seem to be in a growth phase so I imagine their sales at the moment are fast enough to make up for the fact that each sale is only a one time source of revenue).
Honestly, Panic and Omni and other old school Mac developers really, really need to adapt to the modern era. They’ve had years and it feels like the runway is about to end (see Omni’s recent layoffs.) Wishing for paid upgrades and writing “only AppKit apps are real Mac apps” blog posts isn’t going to change anything.