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ExtraBITS for 22 August 2016

We have just two ExtraBITS for you this week: famed New York City Apple shop Tekserve is auctioning off its Mac collection and a developer survey paints a dark picture of the Mac App Store.

Tekserve Auctioning Historic Mac Collection — Legendary New York City Apple shop Tekserve has closed its doors for retail business and will be auctioning off items from the store on 23 August 2016. The jewel of the auction will be Tekserve’s Macintosh collection, which is valued at between $12,000 and $14,000. The collection of 35 computers includes a first-generation Macintosh signed by Steve Wozniak, a NeXTcube, a 20th Anniversary Macintosh, an original iMac, a G4 Cube, and more. The collection also includes miscellaneous other bits of technology, like cameras, radios, and
typewriters.

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Developer Survey Dings Mac App Store — DevMate, a development and distribution platform for Mac developers, conducted a survey of 679 Mac developers to get their thoughts on the Mac App Store. Interestingly, 42 percent of respondents sell both in the Mac App Store and outside of it; however, those who sell both ways see roughly equivalent revenue from both channels. Overall, developers were overwhelmingly negative in their appraisal of the Mac App Store, leading to astonishingly low Net Promoter Score ratings. What ticks developers off the most? The Mac App Store’s unclear and unwieldy review process, the 30 percent
transaction fees, the lack of upgrades and trials, and no two-way communication with customers. DevMate isn’t exactly unbiased in this area since it competes with the Mac App Store, but the results do map to what we’ve heard from developers as well. If only an interviewer would ask Tim Cook about these findings!

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