The Mac App Store
With the recent launch of the Mac App Store, customers new and old alike have a number of questions about the new App Store. Here's a few of the most common questions with answers!
I've purchased from the Mac App Store - where is my serial?
Applications purchased directly from the Mac App Store have their registration tied to your Apple account so there's no need for a serial!
The App Store Shows RapidWeaver as ‘Installed’: does this mean I can update within the App Store, even if I bought RapidWeaver from you directly?
The “Installed” bit appears to be the Mac App store identifying applications that have the same internal application identifier on both the Mac App Store and from the developer’s own store. As such, it’s more a bug on Apple’s side than a confirmation that you can update your copy of the apps from within the App Store. You’ll only be able to update RapidWeaver via the Mac App Store if it’s purchased via the Mac App Store.
I've bought RapidWeaver via the Mac App Store but it's asking me for a serial number when I launch it?
It may be that you have the demo version of RapidWeaver running on your system. Simply trash RapidWeaver from your Applications folder and re-download it from the Mac App Store.
Can I move my RMS-bought copy to the Mac App Store?
Unfortunately not. The App Store has no way to migrate existing users to the Mac App Store purchase history (and uses an entirely different, Apple-specific, way of securing purchases).
Pricing
As some of you will note, the pricing for RW on the App Store is set at $49.99 (though localised pricing is set by Apple outside the US). We’re offering this for a limited time to allow existing customers who wish to move to the App Store when buying their upgrade to do so. Of course, new customers who wish to purchase RapidWeaver would also point out the pricing discrepancy between our own site and the App Store, so we’ve also had to drop the price on our store.
I fully appreciate that some users will feel betrayed (perhaps) by this. Much as we’d love to offer a way to easily move people over to the App Store, we also can’t offer upgrade pricing on the App Store whilst charging full-price on our site (new customers would also feel angered, especially if on Mac OS X Leopard that doesn’t support the App Store). Offering a reduced cost RW is the only way that we can offer existing users a way to upgrade to the App Store.
We just want to make it easy for existing customers to get RW on the App Store. If we were charging $79.99 on the App Store, I know that users would be up in arms at the fact that we’d expect them to re-buy a full-price copy of RapidWeaver to get on the Mac App Store train - this, we felt, was a better compromise.
Some developers are sticking to their original pricing for Mac App Store releases (meaning that you’d need to re-purchase the app at the full price if you want to use the Mac App Store route. We’re taking a different approach, and just trying to offer some flexibility to our users, as we know that you’ll likely want to get on the Mac App Store if you’re running Mac OS X Snow Leopard!
The App Store has a RapidWeaver 5.0.3 Update
Before users ask “Why is this App Store only”, let me explain. After the App Store launched today, it became clear that the App Store build wasn’t being installed with all the page types that ship with RW 5. As such, we had to push out an update for the App Store to correct this issue. There are no code changes between 5.0.3 and 5.0.2, and our work to fix up the bugs that users have reported in 5.0.2 is ongoing. That update, now likely to be called 5.0.4, will be released to all users as soon as it’s ready.
When we ship a code-related update (that affects all users) it will of course be distributed via our own site as well as the Mac App Store.
How can I purchase a Realmac Application from the Mac App Store when the app is already installed?
In order to purchase, via the Mac App Store, an application you've downloaded from the Realmac Software website you'll need to remove the application in question from your Mac by moving just the .app file in your /Applications folder to the Trash. A restart of the Mac App Store should then pick up these changes.
Mac App Store System Requirements
As the Mac App Store will only run on Mac OS X 10.6.6 and greater, all Realmac apps sold via the Mac App Store require at least Mac OS X 10.6.6 in order to run. This is due to the fact that the licensing system used by the Mac App Store is not available on any previous versions of Mac OS X.