Charting on the Mac App Store With a Single Sale ⇥ lapcatsoftware.com

Jeffrey Johnson recently released his new encrypted chat app Underpass on the Mac App Store, and noticed something funny — it was charting:

That’s right, 1 unit sale for $0.99, giving me $0.70 after Apple’s 30% cut. The 18th top paid social networking app sold 1 unit, and the 29th top grossing social networking app made $0.70 for the developer.

If one sale puts a developer’s app reasonably high on the Mac App Store charts, that doesn’t say a lot for the Mac App Store. Of note, most of the apps ahead of Underpass are third-party implementations of popular iOS apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. And, at number thirteen in the Top Grossing chart, Apple’s long-outdated FaceTime app. That doesn’t sound like a healthy ecosystem.