While Apple is pushing the new iPad Pro as a tool for professionals, a number of developers are saying the same App Store policies that prevent them from offering iOS versions of their popular Mac apps will likely hinder development of “pro” apps for the iPad Pro.
One of the common complaints made by software developers who spoke to The Verge is that they can’t offer free trials of their apps as part of the App Store download process, or issue paid upgrades to long-term users. Others say that selling apps through the App Store can create a kind of wall between them and their customers if the customers have issues with their software. Broadly speaking, the iPad Pro is forcing them to rethink their monetization strategies.
“Sketch on the Mac costs $99, and we wouldn’t dare ask someone to pay $99 without having seen or tried it first,” Bohemian Coding co-founders Pieter Omvlee told The Verge, about his professional design app. “So to be sold through the App Store, we would have to dramatically lower the price, and then, since we’re a niche app, we wouldn’t have the volume to make up for it.”
Another issue is that the App Store as it stands today doesn’t support paid upgrades, a valuable income stream for developers when it comes to long time users. While the big boys, such as Microsoft, can persuade users to pay a monthly or annual subscription fee, the smaller developers will have a hard time convincing their users to pay something similar to use their apps.
Developers who already offer iOS version of their apps are taking a wait-and-see attitude before they make the move to optimize the apps for the big-screen iPad Pro:
“What we made for the smaller iPad is still going to work on the larger one,” says Animoto founder and CEO Brad Jefferson. “So there’s a little bit of, ‘Let’s see what adoption of the Pro ends up looking like.’”
