I think the 30% is a red herring. We aren't talking about 15% revenue difference being somehow transformative to the profitability of app development.
I disagree strongly that people who would use upgrades already do so, but badly. Pretty much every paid app maker would be tempted to start using paid upgrades, since it would be trivial and become a norm. The 'bad' way of doing it is a strong disincentive that stops most developers actually doing it.
Adding paid upgrades would make the whole store into a nightmarish minefield where you'd suddenly be being charged again for minimal updates to trivial apps. The examples give for paid upgrades are always solid reputable, thoughtful companies like the Omni Group, but they represent 0.000001% of the store at most.
> A nightmarish minefield where you'd suddenly be being charged again for minimal updates to trivial apps.
If this is true, we should be seeing it in non-MAS apps. Can you cite some examples of these practices in existing Mac software, outside of scams/malware/etc?
The bar to creating and distributing a paid app outside the store is far higher than creating an app for the store, so it selects for serious businesses like omni, or panic. Many of the apps in the store aren't even made by full time developers.
I'm not defending the store - as I said I agree with the identified problems. But I am asserting that the solutions are not the trivial fixes people pretend them to be.
I disagree strongly that people who would use upgrades already do so, but badly. Pretty much every paid app maker would be tempted to start using paid upgrades, since it would be trivial and become a norm. The 'bad' way of doing it is a strong disincentive that stops most developers actually doing it.
Adding paid upgrades would make the whole store into a nightmarish minefield where you'd suddenly be being charged again for minimal updates to trivial apps. The examples give for paid upgrades are always solid reputable, thoughtful companies like the Omni Group, but they represent 0.000001% of the store at most.