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0 pointsjonathanstrange7y ago0 comments

If you include all the factors like market share, cost of hardware, flat tax, ecosystem tie-in, development costs, then it becomes doubtful whether it makes sense to support MacOS anyway. I'm pretty certain that for most smaller companies MacOS support is a money sink and they just don't calculate the development costs correctly or they want to support the platform for strategical or ideological reasons.

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markonen7y ago· 1 in thread

The Mac has an installed base of 100 million. If you think about the addressable market for a "smaller company", that's plenty. Saying that the Mac is too small for smaller companies to bother with is like saying that Germany is too small to run a small business in. It's demonstrably false.

Or are you arguing that other platforms have a better developer ROI? That's intriguing. Which ones, and why?

jonathanstrangeOP7y ago

Yes, basically that's what I'm saying. Why do you think even major companies think twice before porting an application to MacOS? For many small companies who are already providing a Windows solution porting the product to MacOS is a pain in the ass that may turn out not be worth it. Only a relatively small fraction of proprietary end consumer software can long-term sustain a business anyway. That's as true for the app store on MacOS as it is for iOS and Google Play on Android.

I'm not saying that there aren't some companies who make money on the app store, of course, that would be nonsense.

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