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by toddmorey·15y ago·view on hn ↗
I realized something that I think is even bigger than uninstalling: There's no software trial mechanism in the App Store. That's always been the spirit of shareware (and a lot of hosted services, too). You install it, kick the tires, and then decide on purchasing before the trial is done. But here, even programs available for trial on the actual developer sites seem only to be available for instant purchase. (The equivalent to a trial period on the iphone I guess is the lite version of an app. I wonder if that will start to be the dominant approach for Mac software, too.)
3 comments
I feel like developers will, an addition to building "Lite" versions, will start adding text to the production description that link users back to the website where they can download a full-featured trial version.
Apple has specifically mentioned that no trialware or Lite version of app is allowed on Mac App Store, and advise developer to host such version on their own. Good move by Apple.
Care to elaborate on why that is good?
It removes the unusable rubbish from the store. The last thing Apple (or I as a customer) want is a vast quantity of demo or crippleware on my computer and cluttering up the store.
Demo and full version of the app could easily be combined into one entry and that would solve the clutter problem.

I don't know about you, but even 50€ is a lot of money for me, and I'd like to try the app first and buy it only if I find it useful. And I suspect that the average Joe will not know how to find the demo version on the internet.

Steam does this, and it's great. Games have 3 buttons: watch trailer, play demo, buy game.
I don't mean the crippleware. I was intrigued by an interesting-looking code editor, but I couldn't test to see if it would really work the way I thought it would, and it was too expensive to buy on a lark. Without sharp eyes, you may not see the developer's site link or know to check for a trial version.
That's odd - while browsing it just now I noticed Autodesk's Sketchbook has both "Pro" (paid-for) and "Express" (free) versions on there. Seems like they're not applying that rule consistently, if at all.
There's no software trial mechanism in the App Store.

If your code isn't proprietary, you don't need that :D