DropSwitch Blog

Time to DropSwitch?

We had heard rumblings in 2010 that it was coming. It was the first thought I had when I saw iTunes for the very first time, ‘How about an iTunes for content?’. It was always going to happen and Apple Stores had started to become overcrowded as it was. Being the most productive retail space on the planet it was inevitable that physical software was going to get pushed off the shelves by the umpteenth iPad case first and so it came to pass...

Of course Apple had a solution in place already. The Mac App Store looked set to ape the success of iTunes but that hasn’t followed despite it undoubtably being very slick. It’s flawed in so many ways. Copy-protection, no user info passed on to developers, presentation of products, no demo versions or paid upgrades, rules for entry and of course the 30% (for now) cut they take for this. However perhaps the main thing is really it’s all a bit boring. Apple’s idea is that you visit their App Store and find all you want there. There’s no doubt it’s fun for the first few times but after that you forget to visit because there are no real world prompts and you’re not quite sure what you’re doing there when you get there sometimes. It’s a bit like the internet itself. When it first arrived everyone had a long list of things they wanted to explore on-line but as the net has taken over our lives there’s no enough ‘real life’ left for the net to enhance. The parasite has effectively eaten the host.

Finally the 99 cent culture has driven the value of all software in general downward rapidly and severely undermined the the ability for developers to continue to invest in product development. Apple had a great thing going there for a while. The whole World dazzled by the promise of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but far too many set out on that journey and have returned empty handed for that myth to still carry the weight it once did. For years people have been developing software for Apple for free. Any that have made any money have also had to give Apple 30% of that - possibly, effectively, the entire profit margin for the project. Nice work if you can get it, but it can’t carry on like that. People need alternatives, even the PC. They need a way to be creative and find ingenious ways to promote and sell their work. Ways in which the globalization of digital distribution only exclude.

We wanted to do our own thing, we needed to be able to do our own thing rather than ‘fit in’ and accept whatever criteria was foisted upon us. That’s why we had to create DropSwitch and that’s why we want to share the system we’ve come up with because of our need. The World as a whole needs to use systems like DropSwitch to give creative people the option to be creative and still compete effectively. The chance to truly think different.