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Is the Apple App Store a Casino?
An anonymous reader writes "Fast Company takes a look at the Apple App Store and concludes that it's a casino where most developers are making tragic losses and a tiny few are striking it filthy rich. The article discusses a new book exposing the App Store millionaires, called 'Appillionaires,' which compares the psychological effects of a hit app on a programmer to a gambler's high. One millionaire programmer explains the intense feeling of being in the top-ten: 'The App Store had established some kind of intravenous connection to my body and was pumping me full of Apple-branded heroin.' But, the piece warns, the majority of developers fail to make any return on their app."
This is how it works. Tiny few become really rich, most barely make a living. Some better, some worse. It's not a casino, and it's not limited to app store.
If John Q. Wallet invents some must-have widget which is easy to manufacture, cheap, and available everywhere; and suddenly sells millions of them, I'll bet he's feeling pretty good about that too. However, if he invents something that is a piece of crap that no one buys, he's going to have just as much of a loss.
This phenomenon is hardly new, and certainly not localized to the iTunes App Store.
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If you develop yet another puzzle game, you're up to compete with the Zingas of the world, and chances are you'll hit the wall. On the other hand, if you focus on solving real problems and using the advantages of the platform to improve your customer's life, you might be onto something. Case in point, Appfluence (disclaimer: I co-founded it). We make Priority Matrix, a productivity app for a niche market that highly values time savings and clarity of mind. We're nowhere near top 10 (although we've been close at times), but it's consistent income with a lot of potential.
To do list for Windows
I'm reliably making money from the App Store, $75000 (on the side, in addition to my day job) in the last year and half actually. How? By writing apps for all those people that think they're going to get rich from App Store. I'd say probably 10% of my clients have made any money from their apps. Personally I don't try to feed their notions, I just produce the best product I can for them, and they can worry about making money from it, I'll take my money upfront for the coding thank you very much. I always turn down the projects where they want to do "profit sharing".
I do laugh at the guys that make me sign an NDA before they show me their super secret idea. Dude, ideas are a time a dozen, somebody's probably already thought of whatever idea it is you have.
1) 2007 (2006) is about the switch from PowerPC to X86 processor. That's a one off switch, not one that will happen "every 4 or 5 years".
2) That being said, eventually all developers will want to move on to a new computer because their old one is too slow for recent tools. Whether their development environment is Mac or PC. It's pretty dumb to single Mac out as anything different.
Combine this with a new iPod touch every two years (to depreciate at $150 per year), and we can estimate the total cost of hardware plus certificate at $400 to $500 per year.
Whatever mobile development you develop for you're going to have to buy devices to test on. You're going to have to buy more of them if you're developing for Android as there are far more variants, and the turnover of models is more rapid.