You might have heard that the Mac App Store was released a couple of days ago. Here's some random things folks have been asking me, or mentioning, or even my own thoughts.

Is VoodooPad going to be in the App Store?

That is my intention, yes. It's in review right now, after having been rejected a couple of times previously for some stupid mistakes on my part (not removing Sparkle bits).

Why can't I find Acorn?

It's there, in the Photography category, listed second to last. You've got to click the "See All" link to get to the listing. See, if you manage to submit your application right away, your release date is pushed way way back. And since that's how things are ordered... well, that's your reward for being on top of things and not having any private APIs to cleanup. Humph.

And I swear the "Graphics and Design" category wasn't there when I submitted Acorn. Maybe it was added later? I've written the fine folks at Apple, and hopefully I'll be able to get it changed.

Will you be moving exclusively to the App Store?

We have no plans to.

Honestly, keeping two different builds isn't that hard for us to do. For Acorn and VoodooPad all we do is run the build script with a -s which tells it to pass in a macro to xcodebuild ("-DMAC_APP_STORE") which then does some slightly different things when compiled. And after that, the script just runs productbuild which signs and bundles it up. Tada, piece of cake.

I'll probably be dropping the bundle discounts from our own webstore, since there is nothing comparable to it on the App Store. I'm not going to treat customers differently depending on where they bought the app. It just seems fair.

"Thank you for still offering your own webshop besides the Mac App Store"

"There are many customers like me, who don't want to be forced to buy exclusively through the App Store. Please keep on your excellent work."

That's an actual quote from an email I got, which kind of surprised me. At the same time I've also got emails from folks who are very happy that I'm offering apps in the App Store, since it is easier to buy for them and it's a central place to go to. Awesome.

What about upgrades for folks who bought in the App Store?

It's my policy to never announce anything that isn't ready to go. However, if you look at Flying Meat's release history we typically allow free upgrades for folks who have purchased an app around two months of the next major version's release.

For instance, Acorn 2 was released on Sept 14th, 2009 and anyone who had bought it on or after July 2, 2009 got a free upgrade. VoodooPad 4 was released on November 18th, 2008 and if you bought it on or after August 1, 2008 you got a free upgrade. I try to do major releases every 18 months or so.

I'm not making any product announcements. I'm just saying, it'd be awful convenient if I had some major upgrades in the next 2-3 months.