The situation (and rating) has actually improved a lot since the company announced their pivot to a subscription model back in August, but at that time, the listing was seeing a carpet-bombing of 1-star reviews. To put the Netflix web app to your Mac’s Dock using Safari, follow our recent guide How to pin a website to the taskbar on Mac.If you want to see a prime example of angry customers, pay a visit to the iOS App Store and look at the reviews for writing app Ulysses. When you want to stream HDR content on your Mac. To stream Netflix content in Ultra HD (4K), your Mac should have macOS Big Sur 11.0 or later with the latest version of Safari browser, besides other requirements.Development Lead on Ulysses Max Seeleman visualized the unsustainable nature of the “yearly update” model for apps in his Medium post. With the race-to-the-bottom nature of App Store pricing, it’s increasingly difficult to launch a financially-successful app to the world, let alone build a sustainable business from it. Little to no effort is needed to maneuver this platform.Clicker for Netflix is a macOS app for Netflix which has extensive Touch Bar support + tons of customizable features like turning off trailer autoplaying.Yet this is the dilemma that many app developers face today when it comes to the monetisation of their product. You can easily discover and play the latest episodes of your preferred TV show or watch blockbuster hits.We’re actually losing money during development. So it’s not that we’re getting rich during the development period, and even richer after each update. In fact, Max Seeleman (Dev Lead on Ulysses) seemingly anticipated a reaction by publishing a lengthy explainer post on Medium.“In-between such big point-releases, sales will often drop to a non-sustainable level. Other high-profile apps in previous months have garnered a similar response.You sold a customer a license. The company was no stranger to selling Mac software — and doing so successfully — but it was clear that the perpetual license model wasn’t going to be sustainable for them in the long run, as Oleksandr illustrates:”You are a developer. The MacPaw team is headquartered in Kiev, Ukraine.As with many founding stories, Setapp was built out of an internal need. The catch? It puts them in direct competition with Apple…I sat down to chat with Oleksandr to understand why the company moved from selling focused Mac tools to building a “Netflix for Mac apps” — and just how deeply he believes that the Netflix model is the future for many consumer apps.
![]() To use it, users install the service on their Mac, create an account and start helping themselves to more than 100 apps available inside the Setapp store — all for a fixed monthly cost. As a business we had a huge demand to move into subscriptions.” The “all you can eat” App StoreSetapp is the first subscription service for Mac apps, developed in-house by the MacPaw team. With Setapp first of all we wanted to fix the problem of moving towards a subscription business inside our existing businesses – apps. We wanted to build something for the next generation. They save a lot of time and money with this model.”So perhaps the Netflix model is the important difference with what Setapp is doing. This is great for customers. It can be far more profitable for developers (especially those with great retention), but the end user is faced with a growing number of independent services, all billing their credit card automatically each month.“ For users, first of all, the discovery is much easier – you don’t have to waste time trying different trial versions, searching the internet or Mac App Store for apps… you have access immediately to all the software available in Setapp… If you know what you want – you have some task, or challenge – you can just start using any app on Setapp. So does this model benefit users too?There has been a lot of skepticism (and rightly so) as to whether the subscription model for consumer software really delivers any benefit to the end user. Setapp is aiming to build a personalized experience around their app store. ![]() App For Netflix Free Trial UsersIn fact, developer accounts have access to a dashboard which shows usage data and reporting on active users — both for free trial users and paid ones. On average it’s not more than 10 applications per month.”So based on this relatively minor usage per user, the platform can pay out developers based on usage — rather like the way that Spotify compensates artists for Spotify plays (although there’s much more revenue to go around in this case). They could try a lot of apps in the first trial month, but in the end they will only take the apps they really need for their lifestyle or work. How many applications do people use on average per month? What are these applications? How often do they return to these applications? We analyzed a lot of user behaviour in the market.”Through doing this exercise, the team have learned a lot about consumer behavior with regards to app usage:“Basically people do not use tons of applications immediately. We were basing our financial model on data on how people use actual software in the real market. We don’t want to have any copycats or poor quality applications on Setapp. This coupled with various break-up stories from renowned developers has only contributed to its problems.Setapp is also attempting to avoid issues with quality by taking a more curated approach:“For us a big challenge is to bring only the best apps to Setapp. In fact, since launch there hasn’t been much in the way of improvements at all. This has not been the story for the Mac App Store however. Word for mac double line spacingThis way, it’s much easier to justify the subscription model.” Competing with Apple on their home turfBuilding what is essentially an alternative to Apple’s App Store on their own platform doesn’t sound like the most solid foundation for any business. For customers I believe it’s much more acceptable when there’s some background service for your product, like for example a hosting server or continuously-updating content in the background. When the future of your business model is on the line, how do you make that call?“This is a very good and complex question. For us it was one of the key points — to find only the great apps that we’re ready to add to Setapp.” The Mac App Store hasn’t been able to emulate the roaring success of its iOS counterpart, with several high-profile developers moving off the platform in recent months.For more on Apple’s plans for subscriptions, check out our article:Welcome to the subscription economy, Apple.What makes an app a good candidate for subscription?So how should a developer go about assessing a potential move to subscription? It’s clear that not every app is going to be a good candidate. There’s so much trash, so many clones of popular applications and stuff like that.
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