I want to create a productivity app, which runs in the background, and reminds me to work on my most important tasks, when it thinks that I am not. The goal is to create a Minimal Viable Product which I, and others, find useful.
Which of the two platforms has more potential customers? In other words: What is the market share of Mac vs Windows 10 among people who happily try out new productivity apps?
My coding skills: I am an experienced backend developer, but have not done a Mac or Windows 10 app yet. I like both OS.<p>1000 thanks for any thoughts or hints.
I'm an ex-Mac user, and current Windows user. I'd say do Mac first. Mac users are accustomed to and way more likely to pay for apps.<p>Also, people are way more accustomed to buying apps on the Mac App Store than the Windows App Store, so discovery is definitely going to be an issue if you're going the App Store route.<p>On the Windows side, I pay for apps, but because prices tend to be higher for useful Windows apps, I tend to not buy as many.<p>When I was on Mac, I'd drop $10-15 on an app without blinking. For more expensive apps on the App store, it was also an easy decision because a $50 app could be installed on multiple machines.<p>In general, the useful apps on Windows aren't on the App store don't have the liberal licensing that Mac App store apps do. Because I want to run my stuff on at least two machines (desktop and laptop), and because usually there's some DRM that binds a license to one machine, I am much more hesitant about buying licenses.
I run a bootstrapped desktop productivity software business myself. I'd say the split is somewhere around 70% Windows and 30% Mac (all self-marketing, no app stores). The mobile rush created a huge vacuum in the desktop market that I think enabled people like me to succeed. Not to mention, you're not giving a 30% cut to Apple or Google and can generally charge more than a few dollars for your app.<p>It's definitely easier for me to develop on Windows. Though, this is mainly because XCode performance is atrocious on my mac mini and packaging apps for outside the app store is pretty tedious. I still use a buggy tool that Apple hides very deeply on their developer portal (it involves installing an ancient version of XCode).<p>If you require a UI that is pretty heavy, here is my "secret" trick to save time when developing for both Windows and macOS:<p>1) Buy a basic HTML template online for your app's dashboard.<p>2) Don't use Electon. Your users WILL notice and complain about performance. Instead, use the native WebBrowser control in .NET for Windows and WebView using macOS to display your UI. Disable right clicking and highlighting using HTML/JS. To the user, it'll feel like any other native app. Add this meta tag to the HTML file to ensure the WebBrowser control knows to use new versions of IE to render the UI: <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"><p>3) Use the built in script calling functions to transfer settings back and forth between the UI and main app in JSON. Do the back end stuff in native code.<p>4) You can then re-use most of the UI code you wrote to easily port over to macOS. Use the same functions and logic you wrote on Windows to make your Swift functions.<p>Good luck!
I would say whichever platform YOU use day to day. You won’t know if it’s useful unless you are constantly using and refining it.<p>Id also be careful conflating “I want to build a product” with “I want to build a tool for me”. Start with just a tool for you, decide later after it’s useful to a user population of 1 if it’s valuable to invest in finding a market for.
Let me step back a tad and comment on your use case, i.e. needing to be reminded to work and not procrastinate. I largely solved this problem by adopting the Pomodoro technique. Following it, I subdivide my work time into periods of concentrated work (20mn in my case) and relaxation (3-5mn). This increases my effective work stamina very much, helps with motivation, and has other benefits. Related literature is plentiful.
If it needs native integration, use Electron, if not use a Progressive Web App. If it's got to be native go to macOS. The App Store ecosystem makes it way easier to make sales, and there is an expectation of buying quality apps. If you go the Mac route your design needs to be excellent though.
I'd be careful about creating these types of apps because a lot of people (especially developers) value privacy.<p>What your describing is monitoring everything I do on my computer and then likely transmit it to your site. Even if it didn't transmit anything I would still be reluctant to use it unless it were open source.<p>To detect whether or not you're working on what you're supposed to be working on, you'll probably end up recording what window is focused every few seconds right? You might want to hack together an auto hotkey script (Windows) to do this. With a bit of AHK knowledge you could probably write a prototype in a day.
Windows has the most market share at ~85% total (Windows 10 is ~54%). If your target is enterprise users, then probably it's Windows but Mac users have been thought of as more willing to spend money on indie software they use.
Obvious dependencies: you need a computer of the relevant type if you're going to go native.<p>Are you going to sell it as a product? How? Mac store, Windows store, online from your own website, Steam, something else?<p>How are you going to acquire customers?<p>What apps are you competing with (hint: there's a lot, on all platforms)?<p>Which native platform are you most familiar with/want to become familiar with? (Note that Windows has several platforms within it; UWP is the obvious modern choice, but maybe you want a WinForms app)
From my own experience I'd consider a development environment that lets you cross-compile. c or c++ work and, old hat though it is, I've had good success writing cross-platform utilities in Lazarus (Object Pascal) and compiling for MacOS, Linux and Windows. The only issues in all cases has been the need for platform-specific libraries to manage GUI components like rich text editing.
You have to study your decision depending on your audience/budget/vision/tools, there is really no specific answer to that. Also remember, even cross-platform development has its own disadvantages, and worst decision is at least a "mile" ahead, rather than spending too much time on best solution.
I wouldn't rely on anecdata from HN posters, who may or may not be representative of your potential market. Try and gather some data and see what it says, e.g. spend $5 on some facebook ads for your not-yet-existant product, and see the breakdown of OS's that hit your landing page.
Who is the obvious target market in your mind? Is it programmers, artists, musicians, small business people, mega corporate conglomerate employees, millenials, boomers, rich people, North Americans, Europeans, Chinese? The answers to these questions will guide you.