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Comment by slantyyz | Hacker News Reader

I would go a little further if you're an app store seller that the higher the price you charge, the more reasonable your customers are. Case in point - Sparrow ($2 on iOS and $10 on Mac -- inexpensive for each category) generated a huge uproar when Google bought them.

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I disagree with your Sparrow example. People were upset that Sparrow was ceasing development after having a sale one week before it was announced that they were bought by Google. That is just bad practice on Sparrow's part.

For myself, if I pay for an app I expect a lot more from that app. I expect a quality apps with updates and support. There was an article I read (can't find it now) that a developer said he doesn't do payware due to the fact that he doesn't want to give support.

I have no problems with free apps ceasing development - they were free! It would be nice if they released the source code though so someone else could take charge of the app.

That seems like an unreasonable expectation for 2$.

More volume, cheaper per unit pricing, same support overall, more or less. Cheap app prices are certainly setting the bar higher.

The scales could be tipped in the case of Sparrow because paid email clients / services tend not to be default. Nearly every OS seems to come with its own client.

If $2 for an update is unreasonable, maybe they should have charged more?

"For myself, if I pay for an app I expect a lot more from that app. I expect a quality apps with updates and support"

So pay 2$ and get updates for free.

Oh, you are one of those "Well, actually" people. Gotcha. I can do this.

> So pay 2$ and get updates for free.

No, that's not what he said. He said he expects update and support. He didn't say that those updates and support should be free. Merely that updates and support is available. It's akin to paying for anything, really. I expect if I pay for a computer, for example, that they make available to me updates and support.

So let's not play the "Well, actually..." game, and discuss things like an intelligent adult.

And, even if he did mean that he expects updates and support for free for the rest of his life, does that really warrant a response or consideration?

Feel free to release You App #2 and charge me another $2.

"ceasing development" - no, they are still in maintenance mode for the app. I just downloaded an update a couple of days ago. Sparrow still works fine and does the job.

A $10 Mac app pays for itself within a couple of days of use. People have no issue buying two lattes for $10 and pissing it out, but when it comes to a cheap app, they feel entitled to so much more.

> For myself, if I pay for an app I expect a lot more from that app. I expect a quality apps with updates and support.

A quality app, sure, but why do you expect updates and support for the few dollars you spent?

I worked in enterprise software for a while, and I've seen people react more reasonably for a $20K app going EOL/Maintenance mode than for Sparrow.

I gotta say, Apple's App store model turned consumer software into a race to the bottom, and developers who want to price their software less than $10 had better be aware of what they're getting into from a customer expectations perspective.

Agreed. I actually think the App Store is Apple's biggest problem for future growth, because they're losing developers. I certainly don't want to write an app just to make $0.70 for a couple sales. Or if you're lucky, maybe charge $2.99. Seriously, what ever happened to software selling at $29.95? I'm hoping Windows 8 can bring some of that back.

Exactly, do you want to sell a hundred $1 apps to people who are a support nightmare or a single $100 app to someone who is potentially much more reasonable to deal with? I'll take the latter any day.

Because it's a tool, and people generally expect tools to last a while. No one was asking for free updates for life, but knowing that updates would come, fixes, and features they were talking about during the sale, even if you had to pay for it, is nice.

After all, isn't that the benefit of being the customer, and not the product? Isn't this what App.net is building itself on?

App.net is a subscription. What you describe makes a lot more sense in that context; A subscription automatically implies updates and support. Many consumers associate all purchases with support, but it really shouldn't be implied that spending money on something now implies commitments by its producer in the future. This isn't true because I'm pushing some notion of what rights user have or do don't have--its just not prudent to make assumptions about these kinds of things.

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