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Comment by spobo | Hacker News Reader

This is definitely a good thing. Support the developers. It takes a lot of time and effort to build an app. Surely a single dollar (usually) is not too much to pay. Im' still surprised how cheap most apps are for my phone ;o

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The price of some apps is ridiculous though. I'm not defending pirates but look how much Anki costs on the App Store whilst being free on Android.

That's the developer's choice. Pay the price on the tin, switch to Android where they've chosen to make it free, or find an alternative. The market will sort itself out if it's truly priced too high.

$25 seems pretty reasonable to me if it's the sort of thing you find useful. How is that "ridiculous"?

Relative to the Android price. It seems unfair for iOS users to pay for development of the platform across all platforms.

Funny how people get up in arms about price differences like this, yet nobody ever suggests that the price of the cheaper one should be raised to remedy the situation.

Would the iOS price suddenly not be "ridiculous" if they charged $25 for the Android version too?

No, but why not go halfway? Lower the iOS price to half and raise the Android price to the same as iOS.

Why go halfway? $25 seems like a decent price for this.

The problem on Android is that a lot of countries still don't support payments for apps. In other words, on android you still can't use paid apps. You're limited to the free apps. That's one point where Apple really shines thanks to their already existing infrastructure for iTunes. I also think that's one of the reasons why devs flocked to iOS development in the first place. Millions of active accounts with valid creditcards attached to it is a tempting thing :p

Anki is the most expensive app I've ever purchased, and it was worth every cent. Buying that app let me support the developer, the iOS app, the Mac app, and his syncing service.

When compared to $0.99 games it seems expensive, but let's be realistic. It's good quality software, and on a desktop it would be worth that price. The difference is that it's 100x more convenient on iOS since it's always with me.

Watch a youtube review or read a review on it. If possible, test it out on a friends phone?

In a perfect world Apple would allow a trial mode for apps which would enable all features for X hours or X uses. But that's just Apple. It'll never happen. I heard though that MS does something like this for its apps? Or is it only for games?

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