14 DAY TRIAL // There's been a lot of talk about why developers of highly popular apps on the OS X platform have never even considered porting their applications on Apple's iOS store so that iPhone and iPad users can also join in.
As Bohemian Coding's Emanuel Sá said in a post on the Designer News design community, the biggest problem developers face when they have to decide if an iOS version of their app should be made available is the lack of price sustainability Apple's iOS Store offers.
Given the fact that earning back the development costs for an iOS version is a completely unexpected outcome in most cases, a large number of developers decide to continue improving their OS X app and completely avoid the iOS platform and its risks.
Moreover, when asked whether his company's Sketch 3 app might see an iPad Pro version, given its huge popularity among designers who use the OS X platform as their main OS, Emanuel Sá said that "Apps on iOS sell for unsustainably low prices due to the lack of trials. We cannot port Sketch to the iPad if we have no reasonable expectation of earning back on our investment."
Professional software availability on the iOS Store is one Apple's biggest problems
The honest answer he gave reveals one of Apple's biggest issues in increasing its iPad's user base: the lack of high quality apps to attract the professional users who would be able to make the iPad an established tool for more than playing games and browsing the web in our spare time.
Having an App Store that would also provide professional grade tools would mean that the iPad would finally be able to call itself a productivity tool, and this is exactly what the new iPad Pro wants to be.
Unfortunately, until Apple manages to find a solution to their iOS app pricing sustainability problem, the professional iOS software available in their App Store will be isolated cases instead of what you would expect from a well-established platform.