Apple’s decision to close the Downloads section on its website will make life much harder for developers locked out of the Mac App Store.
Jon Gotow, president of St. Clair Software, says that Downloads has been a key driver of traffic to his company’s website and thereby of application sales.
“It’s been a popular place for users to browse and sample the wealth of Mac software available from both large and small developers, including St. Clair Software,” Gotow said. “We get a significant amount of web traffic from Apple Downloads.”
In a letter sent to developers over the weekend, Ron Okamoto, Apple’s vice president of worldwide developer relations, revealed that the company will close Downloads when the Mac App Store opens on 6 January.
While that may be all well and good for developers whose applications meet Apple’s strict store rules, but what off software, such as St Clair’s Default Folder X and AppTamer that don’t?
“Shutting down a primary traffic source for our website is going to make things quite a bit more difficult,” Gotow says in a reply to Okamoto.
“I’m left to reinvent my products and company (again) as they don’t fit Apple’s vision of what a Mac application should be. There are numerous developers in my position. We make useful — some would say essential — products that users will now have a more difficult time finding as Apple drives customers and market focus to the Mac App Store.”
Gotow isn’t opposed to the App Store; he just wants a fair playing field.
“For small developers with applications that don’t fit the guidelines, is there some avenue that we can pursue for getting exposure on the new Mac App Store? Some kind of advertising / comarketing that we can participate in to get into an ‘other great apps’ section where users can at least see that our products are available?”
Until there is, Gotow says that St Clair will have to put more resources into marketing, which means less time for development.
“Default Folder X and App Tamer aren’t going away — this affects how much time we spend developing vs. marketing. The more we have to work at getting users to see our products the less time we have to develop them.”
