1. Jettison From Mac App Store
2. Jettison Mac App Store Settings
3. Jettison Mac App Store Apps
4. Jettison Mac App Store Windows 10

With the announcement of the App Store Small Business Program, I’ve stopped selling Unbound directly via the web site. I thought it would be worth explaining how I came to that decision.

Search & Install any app on Mac. Skip to content. Install Jiggler on Mac OSX. June 23, 2017 Amber. Install Jettison on Mac OSX. Alternatives to Jettison for Windows, Mac, Linux, Software as a Service (SaaS), Web and more. Filter by license to discover only free or Open Source alternatives. This list contains a total of 8 apps similar to Jettison. List updated: 11:09:00 AM. Download apps and games. Browse, purchase, and download apps for your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Apple Watch, or Apple TV in the App Store.

The original motivation for selling the app directly was simple: Apple took a 30% cut of sales, whereas Paddle, the payment processor & authentication tool I was using to sell directly only took [not-publicly-disclosed-but-substantially-less-than–30]%. With the drop in Mac App Store fees, that gap has shrunk considerably… to the point that it’s no longer worth keeping Paddle around.

1. Direct sales are a worse experience for customers.

Jettison From Mac App Store

From a customer’s perspective, every direct sale is its own little special snowflake, and you have to figure out how to get your license key, where in the app to enter it, etc.

For the most tech-savvy users, this is pretty much a non-issue (until, of course, you migrate to a new computer and have to dig through your email to find your product key—good luck!). But a substantial percentage of users had trouble with this, and it was the #1 source of support requests for me.

In contrast, virtually every Mac user is familiar with the Mac App Store. (And even if they aren’t, it can’t be a worse experience than trying to figure out a third-party platform!) Moving installs between machines is a non-issue, and there’s no such thing as an activation problem.

2. Direct sales increase the overhead of each release.

Jettison Mac App Store Settings

Unbound is not my day job, and revenue-wise, it probably doesn’t have any conceivable path to become my full-time income. (I’m measuring my income here in lattes per month!) That means I can only work on it during nights & weekends—a rather limited amount of time.

For that reason, I want to maximize the time I actually spend shipping new features. Selling directly meant that I had to cut two builds, and go through two release processes, every time I wanted to ship an update. (And of course I’ve already mentioned the support burden of direct sales—support takes time directly away from development!)

3. Direct sales are a security and privacy liability.

If Paddle suffered a data breach, suddenly I would be on the hook for exposing people’s emails or (God forbid) credit card data. While this has not happened, and I have no reason whatsoever to think Paddle is anything but competent, I’m still much happier trusting Apple’s security practices than any third party. (And if Apple has a security breach, I feel like I’m unlikely to take the blame from customers—the vast majority of them have done business with Apple directly in the past, whether for their computers, phones, or even just iTunes purchases.)

Even apart from a data breach, removing all third parties from the equation is a privacy win for customers—I can proudly tell people the app collects no data whatsoever, whereas Paddle had to “phone home” to validate product keys.

It’s just not worth it any more.

Given all that, the math just doesn’t work out in support of doing direct sales any more. Even if I moved sales to accepting credit cards directly, a 3.5% fee with all those downsides is substantially worse for both me and my customers than a flat 15%.

Onward and upward!

– Tyler

Let me know what you think—find me on Twitter @TylerAYoung or email me at my first name at unboundapp.com.

Unbound for Mac

Learn how the Mac App Store beautifully showcases your apps and makes them even easier to find, and how Developer ID and notarization make it safer for users to install apps that you distribute yourself.

Mac App Store

The Mac App Store makes it simple for customers to discover, purchase, and download your apps, and easily keep them updated. Organized around the specific things customers love to do on Mac, along with insightful stories, curated collections, and videos, the Mac App Store beautifully showcases your apps and makes them even easier to find.

iPhone and iPad apps on Apple silicon Macs

The Mac App Store brings iPhone and iPad apps to Apple silicon Macs — so your apps can reach even more users worldwide. By default, your apps will be published automatically on the Mac App Store. Confirm that your apps gracefully handle cases where iPhone and iPad features are not available on Mac.

iPad apps that support modern technologies like keyboard input, multitasking, size classes, and SwiftUI will automatically inherit great macOS features like resizability and full screen mode.

Web Extensions

Safari Web Extensions can add custom functionality to Safari 14 using the same WebExtensions API used in other browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. And with a new conversion tool in Xcode 12, you can quickly bring your existing extensions to Safari and make them available on the Mac App Store.

Outside the Mac App Store

While the Mac App Store is the safest place for users to get software for their Mac, you may choose to distribute your Mac apps in other ways. Gatekeeper on macOS helps protect users from downloading and installing malicious software by checking for a Developer ID certificate. Make sure to test your apps with the latest version of macOS and sign your apps, plug-ins, or installer packages to let Gatekeeper know they’re safe to install.

You can also give users even more confidence in your apps by submitting them to Apple to be notarized.

Mac Logo

Jettison Mac App Store Apps

The Mac logo is designed to easily identify software products and hardware peripherals developed to run on macOS and take advantage of its advanced features.

Jettison Mac App Store Windows 10