Thursday, April 4, 2019

BBEdit Returns to the Mac App Store With Subscription

Bare Bones Software (tweet, Phil Schiller, 9to5Mac, MacRumors):

In the spring of 2018, Bare Bones and Apple announced that, subsequent to the release of macOS Mojave (10.14) and the accompanying refresh of the Mac App Store, BBEdit would be returning to the store.

This was made possible by changes to the OS itself which allow Mac App Store versions of BBEdit to function to their fullest extent while complying with Mac App Store rules; as well as changes to the Mac App Store business mechanics which make it possible for us to distribute our software through the Mac App Store as part of a sustainable business model.

[…]

There are two levels of paid subscription:

  • Annual: US$39.99 per year (may vary in other locales)
  • Monthly: US$3.99 per month (may vary in other locales)

You may install BBEdit at no charge via the Mac App Store, and use it either with a paid subscription or in Free Mode.

They are still offering “perpetual” licenses for $50. There’s been a paid upgrade every three years. BBEdit 12 was a $40 upgrade, BBEdit 11 was a $30 upgrade, BBEdit 10 was a $40 upgrade, and BBEdit 9 was a $30 upgrade (with a full price of $125).

Steve Troughton-Smith:

If you’re curious about BBEdit’s MAS entitlements, as I was, you can see them here; it says a lot that everybody is still relying on ‘temporary’ sandbox exceptions just to make life in the MAS possible

Jeff Johnson:

There’s a kind of dilemma with having both MAS subscriptions and non-MAS 1-time licenses:

If you ever want to have a non-MAS paid upgrade again, you’ve got to hold back new features. But then subscribers get nothing new for their continued payments.

Paulo Andrade:

I always thought the argument that subscriptions allow developers to not bundle features in major versions a bit moot. Having a big update makes it a lot easier to do marketing around it and that’s kind of a big deal. Having a subscription doesn’t change that.

Previously:

Update (2019-04-05): John Gruber:

The App Store has welcomed BBEdit back warmly, with a nice top-of-the-front-page feature on developer Rich Siegel and BBEdit’s incredibly long history as a Mac stalwart, along with two other features: “BBEdit: A Writer’s Secret Weapon” and “Tame Your Text Files” — both good guides to BBEdit’s rich feature set. (Those App Store articles will open in the App Store apps on Mojave or iOS.)

Wojtek Pietrusiewicz:

I can’t read the @bbedit @AppStore features on my iPad. First of all I found the links to the stories on @gruber’s @daringfireball. Clicking the links does nothing on my iPad however. One tried to open iTunes and failed, the other just silently failed.

Previously: App Store Covers RSS Readers.

2 Comments RSS · Twitter

>Having a big update makes it a lot easier to do marketing around it

That doesn't seem to be an issue for most web apps, which typically update continuously, instead of doing larger, more spread-out updates. Users, as far as I can tell, appreciate this, they're usually not fans of the large updates where suddenly everything they've learned is now different all at once. And for marketing, it gives them the opportunity to announce new things more often, so I also don't see them complaining about it.

Does this mean that the MAS version of BBEdit can actually "unlock" system-owned files again (such as those in /etc) and get Root permissions to write them? As a sandboxed app? Wow.

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