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Mac App Store Nets Evernote 40,000 New Users
The Mac App Store saw over 1 million downloads in its first day of availability. That’s a terrific number, but pinning down the effect it’s had for individual developers is a little trickier. Virtual notebook and productivity software Evernote ‘s experience sheds a little light on what that success has meant for some apps.

A graph of new Evernote users since New Year’s Day tells a much better story than words ever could. In the chart below (from Evernote’s blog), each column represents the number of new users per hour, beginning at midnight on Jan. 1. The red portion shows new users coming from the Evernote Mac client. The massive spike is where the Mac App Store launched.

Since the App Store launch, more than half of new users are coming from the Mac client. And that’s only new users. Evernote says it’s seen 90,000 client downloads between store launch and midnight Jan. 7, but many of those users already had an existing Evernote registration. Evernote CEO Phil Libin had this to say about his product’s success in the Mac App Store:

“It’s a very big deal [...] We initially thought that since so much of our user base was coming from mobile, that was the key distribution platform. But maybe it isn’t mobile that’s important, maybe it’s the well-designed app store.”

In the future, as adoption increases and the App Store trickles out beyond early adopters to the general public, Libin sees the Mac App Store as easily becoming the default way to get software onto the Mac. He predicts that we could eventually see 95 percent of all Mac software distributed this way in near future, and that eventually there might be no longer be any reason to offer direct downloads via the web at all. Overall, this is very promising news for developers eager to reach broader audiences.

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Developer Roundtable: The Mac App Store
I had a chance this week to talk with a few developers about the Mac App Store and what the launch yesterday means for their business. The general feeling is one of optimism, and even excitement, at the opportunities the store presents as a new way to distribute software on the desktop.

Below are a series of comments and insights from several top developers in the Mac community: Rich Siegel, founder and CEO of Bare Bones Software (Yojimbo, Textwrangler, and BBEdit), Gedeon Maheux, principal at Iconfactory (Twitterrific, Frenzic, etc.), Alykhan “AJ” Jetha, CEO of Marketcircle (Billings, Daylite, etc.), David Frampton, founder of Majic Jungle (Chopper 2) and Ken Case, CEO of The Omni Group (OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, OmniPlan, etc.).

Surprisingly United

These developers represent a pretty broad cross-section of solutions including developer tools like BBEdit, utilities like Twitterrific, business software like Billings, games like Chopper 2, and serious productivity tools like OmniGraffle Pro. What’s perhaps most interesting is how each one sees enormous opportunity for both “mass market” and “niche” solutions on the Mac App Store.

Why release through the Mac App Store?

When asked about why they chose to release their products on the Mac App Store, a general theme emerged. Most everyone was excited about getting in front of customers on the 20 million Snow Leopard Macs out there with a low-friction sales channel.

Rich Siegel, Bare Bones: “Folks who learn about our products through the Mac App Store are a welcome addition to our existing audience, particularly if they wouldn’t have become aware of our work otherwise.”

Gedeon Maheux, Iconfactory: “The sheer number of people who will be able to find your creations is exciting.”

AJ Jetha, Marketcircle: “The Mac App Store removes two friction points: downloading/installing and purchasing. That’s HUGE!”

David Frampton, Majic Jungle: “I was always planning to do a Mac version of Chopper 2 anyway, but the Mac App Store came along at just the right time, and being part of the launch was too big an opportunity to miss.”

Ken Case, The Omni Group: “The Mac App Store is the most convenient way to buy our software. Period.”

What are the advantages of the Mac App Store?

There are a number of advantages that these developers saw in distributing software through the App Store, like simpler licensing, management of serial numbers, and the ability to trust Apple to notify users of updates. The advantages are probably a little bigger for a small shop like Majic Jungle that had been using the shareware distribution model prior to the App Store’s launch.

Frampton: “I think historically many users have been scared of shareware and unsure of where to find and download apps. These users will now have the trust of Apple’s approval process and the single location to find apps, and so more users will be downloading more apps. It’s a perfect fit for Majic Jungle Software, which mostly focuses on games and entertainment apps with a broad appeal.”

What’s most exciting about the store?

When I asked what was most exciting about the App Store, many of the developers were optimistic about the convenience for customers. Apple has already developed a lot of trust with customers in running a software marketplace, which will make it easier for customers to buy at the new store. Gedeon Maheux captured a lot of my feelings about the App Store as a user.

Maheux: “For myself, I think the most exciting thing is there is now a place I can go to search specifically for Mac-based software. Before you had to a Google search, sort through the results, ask on Twitter, etc. The whole one-stop-shop approach is very appealing.”

Is the App Store a revolution in software distribution?

As to whether or not the Mac App Store was truly “revolutionary,” reaction was mixed:

Frampton: “Absolutely. It introduces a previously unviable business model, that of distributing ‘snack’ cheap apps with very specific tasks.”

AJ: “The iOS App Store was a revolution. The Mac App Store is just following in its footsteps, but it will be disruptive.”

Siegel: “So, it’s hard to give it full-fledged “revolution” status, but pretty easy to give it solid “evolution” status.”

How does the App Store compare to your existing sales process?

Maheux: “We really tried to make our sales process frictionless, but compared to Apple, it might as well be sandpaper. There really is no equal among online shopping experiences except maybe Amazon’s One-click checkout. Even Android can’t compete in this way with the App Store. It can’t be overstated.”

Case: “I view the Mac App Store as a replacement for the retail sales channel: It’s a place for consumers to go when they want to buy software. And there couldn’t be less friction in their one-click purchasing process. Our own online store has a lot of flexibility the Mac App Store doesn’t offer, such as upgrade pricing and discounts for volume, bundle, and educational purchases. But those options do lead to some extra complexity and friction.”

Siegel: “Products purchased using the Mac App Store interface are instantly downloaded, installed, and kept up to date for you. It’s hard to be lower friction than that.”

Will you market your products any differently to generate demand and push people towards the App Store?

Frampton: “I’ll be taking the same approach as I do on iOS. It basically comes down to managing your prices, updates and portfolio of apps, and taking any opportunities to cross-promote with other developers or announce new features to the press. It is a very different approach, but one that I am familiar with, and prefer.”

AJ: “We will still have to do marketing to drive awareness (especially after the buzz wears off), so this portion of the equation stays the same.”

Gedeon: “We won’t shy away from the fact that it’s also available on the App Store, but neither will we shift our entire focus there.”

Are you worried about a race to $0.99 with Mac App Store pricing?

Frampton: “The increase in customer numbers will make up for the lower price point in lower price games and apps with broad appeal. But on the flip side, niche apps with a focused markets can still price high or continue to distribute outside of the store.”

AJ: “People will eventually learn that you get what you pay for, but in the meantime …”

Maheux: “Naturally we are, but the iPad has demonstrated the ability to hold off price points above $0.99 so we’re encouraged that the Mac may be able to do this as well.”

Case: “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were another race to $0.99 — in fact, I fully expect one since some vendors clearly want the visibility that comes with being on their top 10 lists. But our iOS apps have done well without changing any prices, and I’m confident that our Mac apps will also”

Siegel: “Further erosion of pricing, we think, would be unsustainable for quality software. Quality erosion would be a very, very sad thing for the Mac eco-system generally. So, we hope companies are smart enough to charge a fair price, not exorbitant, but fair.”

Is the App Store only for impulse shopping?

Frampton: “Chopper 2 is very definitely targeted at the browsers, and Fluid Noise Generator is targeted at the hunters, and they are priced and marketed accordingly. I think there will be plenty of room for everyone to get along!”

AJ: “Our products are not for the impulse purchaser — we cater to people who want to build a successful business — so this type of thinking has not really entered our thought process.”

Maheux: “No, not really. All of our apps fill specific needs, mainly because we created them for us to fill our own needs as users.”

Siegel: “[Our customers] are more likely to do their homework before purchasing, and so we expect them to seek out curated reviews from journalists and domain experts, as well as anecdotes from multiple sources before buying.”

Bottom Line

While the Mac App Store represents a large shift in the landscape for Mac developers, the general consensus is that this is a good thing for everyone. It will be very interesting to see how developers choose to manage their products and promote themselves both within, and outside of, the App Store itself.

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Verizon iPhone Finally Arriving Jan. 11?
A new press invite from Verizon Wireless is making the rounds, announcing a special media event on Jan. 11 at 11 AM Eastern in New York City at Lincoln Center. The event could be the long-awaited announcement of the iPhone’s arrival on the Verizon network.

The date has already been put forward by CNET’s Rick Broida, citing an anonymous tipster, as the day of a possible event from Apple about the eagerly anticipated Verizon iPhone. While the event apparently won’t be Apple’s to host, this new press invite suggests that the date will indeed see major news coming from Verizon, and the official launch of the iPhone on its network is the best candidate for such an announcement.

Plenty of evidence has suggested that a Verizon iPhone is imminent. Supply chain checks suggest that a CDMA-compatible iPhone has been gearing up for or has already entered production. If the rest of Broida’s information also proves true, the Verizon iPhone will be in the hands of consumers by February. Whenever it does arrive, it can’t come soon enough for Verizon.

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Hunter-Gatherer Societies and the App Store Economy
Watching the launch of the Mac App Store, I am struck by the magnitude of the change in the way people buy software. Much like primitive societies evolved from the hunter-gatherer model of resource collection to an agrarian civilization of cultivated farming, so has shopping for software changed.

Stalking the Wild Web

It used to be that computer users had to go and search for software for their machines. The computer was something arcane and impossible, but we were hunters, tracking our elusive prey, stalking it through computer magazines, specialized stores, and word of mouth. We didn’t always know what was out there to be found, but we followed the tracks in the ground, looked for bent blades of grass, anything to help hunt down the solutions we wanted.

We used tools that were dangerous and sharp and could hurt you if you didn’t know how to use them — FTP, SSH, VPN, DMGs, Applescript, installers, uninstallers, braving the mysterious depths of the Application Support folder, and even delving into the darkest regions of the registry. High prices were accepted as the cost of reaching your goal, and there were prizes waiting for the patient and skilled hunters, like Photoshop and Filemaker Pro.

Eventually, the gatherers in the tribe could venture out on the open web and pick up tasty software morsels at their leisure. It didn’t require the same tools and training, but you still had to know what you were doing — which berries were ripe and which mushrooms were poisonous, if you will.

Pick-Your-Own From Neatly Ordered Rows

The App Store model changed that. The iPhone itself is simple, accessible, easy to use. Hunting wasn’t necessary, or possible, and even browsing the open web yielded fewer results than simply visiting Apple’s storefront. Apple had localized and cultivated all the software the average user could ever need, much like a farmer might tend to their fields. The Mac App Store represents the arrival of that agrarian model of software distribution on the desktop platform.

Just as civilization sprang up because agriculture produced a surplus of food that allowed people to specialize in important developments like pottery, construction, and writing, the App Store economy will allow people to spend less time messing about with finding, installing, and managing desktop applications so they can be more productive in their actual work. Or free up more time to waste, if that’s their inclination.

Who Benefits?

Now the question is, will the Mac App Store appeal to both hunter-gatherers and to those consumers content to enjoy the fruits of farmed labor? And if so, how?

Hunters-gatherers are looking for specific solutions to specific problems. They don’t want to stroll around the Top Sellers list in each category. I would guess that the search capabilities in the Mac App Store, much like the iPhone App Store, will not work well for this group. They’re still going to rely on outside review sites, word of mouth, detailed shootouts in magazines and other familiar sources of information. Marketing to this group will look very similar to the way software is marketed today. I don’t think the Mac App Store by itself will convince anyone that they need to spend $80 on Aperture 3, but once convinced, they’ll be able to get it that much more easily.

Our “agrarian” consumers are looking at the Top 10 lists, maybe the Top 100. They are looking for ready-made solutions that help them have fun or get some stuff done with no muss, no fuss. The Apple safeguards found in the App Store approval process are enough to ensure that this software meal is not going to kill you. Marketing to this group consists of explaining your product well enough and pricing for impulse shopping. Chopper 2 at 99¢ seems designed to appeal to this group, and by all accounts this approach is working quite well.

Both groups will benefit enormously from the streamlined sales process available in the App Store. Apple already has our accounts, credit cards on file, and offers fast downloads (and re-downloads should we need them), and quick installation. There are limitations, to be sure, but the overall experience is simplicity itself. As soon as a Hunter finds the app that they need, they can buy it — no waiting to drive to the store or (horrors!) waiting days to have a box shipped and no tedious checkout process at some random web store with license keys lost in your email spam filter either. And the others? Well, they’re going to buy a lot of software this way and a few people are going to become fabulously rich, AAPL stockholders likely included.

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Tasting the Forbidden Fruit: Blu-ray on the Mac
Despite lack of official support, you can use Blu-ray on the Mac. It just takes a few more steps than on a Windows machine, and it depends on your hardware. For internal solutions, you’ll have to have a Mac Pro, but external drives will let you add Blu-ray abilities to any OS X computer. Along with some help from third-party software.

For the hardware side of things, Other World Computing has a variety of Blu-ray solutions for all Macs, as well as instructional videos on how to upgrade your Mac Pro with a new Blu-ray burner. Once you’ve got that part taken care of, you’ll need special software to make use of your new drive.

Burn High Definition Blu-ray Content

With more cameras supporting HD video, the desire to burn that content on a format that supports HD playback is increasingly important. Toast Titanium has had the ability to burn to Blu-ray discs since Toast 7. Version 10 supports Blu-ray through a $20 plugin. It works especially well with high-def videos created on your iPhone, Flip or other HD video cameras. Just drag and drop your raw video files into a new Blu-ray video project and click the big red burn button. Be warned, the process can take quite some time to complete depending on your source format. If you opt to purchase Toast with your Blu-ray burner from OWC, you may want to check out its step-by-step account of how to burn your high-def video. Toast developer Roxio also has a video tutorial of the process on its site.

Rip Blu-ray Content to Your Hard Drive

When it comes to getting the raw content of a Blu-ray disc onto your hard drive, Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper is about as good as it gets. Using the “Full Disc Copy” feature, you can preserve the Blu-ray’s original file structure. The process is straightforward. Insert the Blu-ray disc, click on the “Full Disc Copy” button, and select a folder to copy to. While Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper also supports conversion to popular device formats, I find that getting the raw Blu-ray files onto my hard drive, then using another tool like Handbrake to convert the file to the format I want is easier. Using the latest release of Handbrake which can now read Blu-ray file structures, and has an updated template that supports the latest Apple TV yields noticeably better results. Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper is on sale at the company’s site through Jan. 10, 2011 if you choose this option.

Play Blu-ray Movies on Your Mac

This is where it all starts to fall apart. Direct playback of Blu-ray content from the disc directly to a player is the real forbidden fruit. Leaving aside that Steve Jobs has changed Apple’s status regarding Blu-ray support from “Bag of Hurt” to “Mafia,” one would think that an independent developer would have stepped up sometime in the last two years to fill the gap.

You can work around this limitation by streaming a movie from a Blu-ray disc using MakeMKV and then open the networked stream in VL C. This trick may come in handy if you want to watch a Blu-ray movie on your MacBook Air using your Blu-ray drive in your Mac Pro. The interesting part is that VLC can play the raw MPEG-2 Transport Stream files (.m2ts extension) after they have been ripped to the hard drive as outlined above, but can’t find the files on the disc itself.

Actually watching Blu-ray movies is my last priority when using the format on my Mac. Backing up or archiving content, or transferring my digital memories into a format I can easily share with friends and relatives are much more relevant. If I want to watch a movie, I’ll use Netflix or iTunes, which is probably why Blu-ray never officially made it to the Mac to begin with.

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Mac App Store Sees More Than 1M Downloads in First Day
The just-launched Mac App Store experienced more than 1 million downloads in its first active day, according to Apple. No word on how many of those were paid or how many were free. TUAW’s breakdown of apps available yesterday reveals that the vast majority are paid, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what users were downloading most.

Apple did not respond to an inquiry about the breakdown of paid vs. free downloads as of this writing. It’s worth noting that at this time, 7 of the 12 top grossing apps available on the Mac App Store are Apple’s own offerings, including the iWork and iLife suites, Aperture and Apple Remote Desktop. No wonder, then, that CEO Steve Jobs had this to say about the store’s initial success:

We're amazed at the incredible response the Mac App Store is getting. Developers have done a great job bringing apps to the store and users are loving how easy and fun the Mac App Store is.

Apple also took the opportunity to talk up its developer terms for offering software in the Mac App Store, wherein developers keep 70 percent of the revenue, and 30 percent goes to Apple, but Apple covers hosting, marketing and payment processing fees. That it foregrounded this information suggests the press release might be intended more to attract further developer interest than to impress the general public.

Whatever the reasoning behind the announcement, 1 million downloads in one day is a solid start for any software distribution platform. Let’s see if the Mac App Store can keep the momentum going.

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