Keyboard Maestro 6 was never allowed in the Mac App Store due to sandboxing restrictions, so version 5 languished there with a stern warning not to purchase from Apple, but buy direct instead.
But given Apple’s continued stance on refusing apps which cannot be sandboxed (which includes any app that tried to provide better functionality for Apple apps like: Finder, AppleScript Editor, Automator, Xcode, Terminal, Activity Monitor, Dock or Time Machine!), and given their continued stance against paid upgrades (which breaks the feedback loop so that the developer is never working for existing customers, only for other users not currently using a version of the application), it was clearly time to for Keyboard Maestro to exit the Mac App Store, and the latest message from Apple to Omni has confirmed that.
So Keyboard Maestro 5 is no longer available from the Mac App Store, but Keyboard Maestro (all versions) continues to be available direct, and it was always better to buy direct from us.
The Mac App Store was never a big deal for Keyboard Maestro, only accounting for about 10% of our revenue since it was released on the Mac App Store in 2011, and only 5% in the last 12 months (and much less since 6.0 was released and not available on the Mac App Store, obviously). People tend to be introduced to Keyboard Maestro by folks already using and loving Keyboard Maestro, rather than finding it for themselves, and we already had a strong and growing customer base before the Mac App Store.
Hopefully folks who already own the Mac App Store version of Keyboard Maestro can still download it from Apple, but I strongly encourage everyone with the Mac App Store version to option click the "Mac App Store Version" text in Keyboard Maestro’s About box and transfer your license to us, so that at least you can download a version of 5 directly from us at any later time.
It really is a shame that Apple has chosen this course, excluding or limiting some very powerful applications, and perhaps they will eventually change their minds, but until them we will do our best to continue developing and enhancing Keyboard Maestro outside the Mac App Store, and probably be joined by an ever growing number of quality applications,
Posted Thursday, September 5, 2013. Permalink. Post a Comment.
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