The all-new developer tool Xcode 11.4 by Apple has allowed developers to sell their apps on all platforms by selling it on anyone. It begins with Universal Purchases, which enables customers to use the app across the platforms i.e., iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, macOS, and tvOS, by purchasing it only once.
This update will allow developers to sync customers’ in-app purchases and subscriptions across the platforms more easily. In other words, you can bundle and sell your iOS, macOS, tvOS, and iPadOS apps as one.
With this big and bold update, which is still in beta, Apple forced its developers to think about all the big decisions to grow their business when developing the app. The Cupertino giant wants you to unify the concept of the app and does not consider it something different depending on the platform. Apple aspires the developers now to provide similar functionality and features across because it is going to cost the same on each platform now with the new universal purchases feature.
Furthermore, Apple gives its developer an option to recreate the apps and distribute, which will help them sync their apps with all the platforms, or for the existing apps, they have the privilege to add platforms to their app and take advantage of the universal purchases. App Store’s will start supporting Universal Purchases from March 2020.
A techie, Steve Troughton-Smith, took twitter to express his views about this update, which let buyers have to pay once and then use the app on any platform powered by Apple.
One thing to consider, this ‘universal purchases’ update can be a problem for developers or business strategists as a macOS app may costs different compared to iOS.
Clearing it out that this option was already there for the developers to distribute their apps across the platforms, but the new update functionality has been added to Mac apps for the first time while it already existed for iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch app. With this step, Apple wants more development on all platforms equally in the near future.
Developers can check through all platforms if the app runs perfectly fine, or they still need to work on it. For this, public beta versions of iOS 13.4, macOS 10.15.4, watchOS 3.2, and tvOS 13.4 are available now for app developers. The stable releases of these operations systems, featuring universal purchases, will be available in a few weeks.
Categories are unified too on the stores, thanks to Universal Purchases
With Universal Purchases, Apple will be unifying the Categories on the App Store and Mac App Store.
Now developers will be able to categorize their apps in “Developer Tools” and “Graphic & Design” on iOS.
In the Mac App Store available categories will be “Books”, “Food & Drink”, “Magazines & Newspapers”, “Navigation”, “Shopping”, “Photography”, and “Video”.
The update clears that “Photography” and “Video” in the Mac App Store will be combined with “Photo & Video” to better sync with iOS, and “Games” on the Mac App Store will not be subcategorized into “Kids” anymore.
With universal purchasing, it will become more natural for developers to rank their apps higher on the list of Top Apps, regardless of the platform.
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