Between App Store rocks and a hard place

No matter how good your application is, no matter how novel, how brilliant, how special — none of it matters if you don’t have anyone to use it.

This is Erica Sadun from TUAW’s argument as to why the app store rocks. This may be true for her, because she has had success with the iOS App Store and sees the Mac App Store as a similar opportunity. The problem is that unlike when the App Store was launched on iOS (or iPhone OS as it was then known, many applications on Mac already have plenty of users and a healthy bottom line.

What’s harder to see right now is why it rocks for people who already have profitable apps for Mac. From their point of view this is more likely to be seen as a competing distribution channel than a helping hand. That doesn’t rock so much.

note: Although I work for Ableton (which may colour my opinion here), these are my views, not theirs.