Dear reader, honored customer.

I’m sure you’ve noticed – the Mac App Store is upon us. Finally.

What a great idea, a great, comfortable way to purchase software (and to sell, for developers). I’m excited. I hope you are, too.

Now, you might have noticed that flickery, well, really none of my software, is on it, yet.

There is a good reason for it:
There’s this whole dilemma about not being able to transfer existing customers over to the Mac App Store. That is a big deal. And it’s confusing as well, because some apps show as “Installed” even though they were not purchased on the App Store. So people naturally assume they are able to update that version through the Mac App Store. That is, sadly, not the case.

Here’s what I’d like to do:
flickery is “close” to version 2.0. “Close” because it’s only close in version numbers (the current version is 1.9.2), not in execution/development.
I’m planning to go Mac App Store exclusive with flickery with version 2.0! 
Now there’s a caveat for existing customers. On my website, I currently promise that users who purchase flickery get a discount on version 2.0. With the Mac App Store, I can not keep that promise, because it doesn’t have an “upgrade” model.

So I’d like to put it in my customers hands:
Would you be offended if I moved to the Mac App Store exclusively and you and didn’t get that discount for version 2.0 of flickery? Please leave a message in the comments, mail me, tweet me or write me on facebook to let me know what you think. I will decide by majority of votes.

New software by me will be exclusive to the Mac App Store as well (new software as in the upcoming rewrite of GimmeSomeTune, ProjectX and ProjectiX.)

What’s the difference for the user?

• Keep informed on updates
• A centralized place for your software
• Easy updating and installing
• They have to have OS X 10.6.6 at least to run software
• The security that they get quality software
• A ton of other things I’m probably not thinking of right now

What’s the difference for the developer?

• Having to maintain only one version of their software
• This is a very big deal, because time is precious and better spent on new features / new software.
• Centralized updates – yes, it’s also a plus for the developer
• Higher visibility to the user

To summarize:
I’d like to go Mac App Store exclusive with all my software. Starting with flickery 2.0 when it is available (quite a couple of months off – and there surely will be other updates before that which will not appear on the Mac App Store but through the current updating mechanism). To do that, I’d have to break my promise to give the existing customers a discount on the upgrade.

Future software not yet released will appear on the Mac App Store exclusively, as well. That means that all my software will require Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.6 at the least. So, please let me know what you think about that in the comments, by mail, twitter or facebook.

I hope I’ve covered about all of what’s important in this regard.

Thank you for your time,

Sincerely,
Matthias

[twitter-follow screen_name=’eternalstorms’ show_count=’yes’]