Just like app developers have the ability to sell subscriptions as in-app purchases in iOS apps and Newsstand, they will soon be able to offer the same auto-renewable content through in-app purchases in Mac App Store apps.
Mac apps on the latest releases of OS X already support non-subscription based in-app purchases. For example, items that are purchased once and automatically applied to a user’s account. Up until now, developers offering an auto-renewable or non-renewing subscription in their iOS apps couldn’t do the same in the Mac App Store equivalents.
Apps like Evernote and Wunderlist already provide ‘Pro’ versions of their apps as in-app purchases that can be purchased once and accessed on any platform (Mac or iOS) through a single username. However the auto-renewable subscriptions were only available in the iOS apps. Evernote tells us it’s “looking forward to the Mavericks OS update so we can offer recurring subscriptions through the Mac App Store as well.”
With new auto-renewable and non-renewing subscriptions, Apple will make it easy for any Mac app developer to offer subscriptions that automatically renew after a certain period of time and charge a user’s Apple’s ID. The lesser used non-renewing subscriptions, also coming to Mavericks, are used for other types of subscriptions with the terms of the content managed directly by the app.
Apple will be providing a new place to manage subscriptions in Mavericks under the Settings panel on the Mac App Store (pictured above).
Yesterday we reported on other new APIs for background downloads and free hosted in-app purchases making it easier for developers to deliver in-app content in iOS 7 this fall.
