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Comment by warcher | Hacker News Reader

Android has that fifteen minute return policy, where you can test out literally anything, and their dollars per user is about half iOS.

I've also personally received more reviews than I can count where people talk about how much they love my free version, but I should really include (PREMIUM_PAID_FEATURE).

I honestly think people are in the process of a psychological transition into paying what apps are worth. Much of the App Store economy is a result of this. Won't pay for games? Freemium spammy junk. Won't pay for anything? Junky ad supported android apps. Making apps costs money, and the market is gonna produce what people are willing to buy. I honestly think people are starting to come around, but its still very much in a state of flux.

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I think you underestimate the power of narcissism. People will develop and distribute free apps of relatively good quality just to get recognition for it. Consequently there is, and will be for some time I think, less of the pressure you indicate, simply because there will be a higher ratio of (relative) quality free apps to paid.

On the other point, I'd argue there will be "freemium spammy junk" no matter what the market conditions were in the mobile app space. Compare it with, e.g. the e-publication market for books, "shareware" or even the desktop or web-app space. There is plenty of "freemium junk" there.

I think you underestimate the level of effort required to develop and maintain a quality app. Every year around this time my life gets real hectic. I would not do it for no money. I think the app store gold rush days are just about over. A couple people on a wing and a prayer who got in very early on have gone on to do pretty well. But an indie dev with no distribution is going to find a pretty cold welcome in the app store. And a pro is going to figure out a way to make the books balance, either via exploiting engagement however they need to, or freemium, or cutting effort expended.

I think you both overestimate the level of effort required to maintain an app that "just works" (kinda, for the kind of people who'd take a mostly-working free app over the paid one with lots of polish and working 99.999% of the time) and underestimate the "like me" effect. I've developed software for 15 years, including mobile apps. I know what's involved in creating and maintaining a high-quality, professional application. I also know that our society doesn't value that as much as a software developer might.

In particular, our culture, especially those in the "younger" (borderline Gen-X/millennial and younger) cohorts have effectively grown up in a world where "the self" has been commoditized in the form of "karma", "likes", and so forth in social media.

There are a lot of developers for whom the "skinner box" treat is another tenth of a star on the ratings bar or the next big "times downloaded" milestone. They're just as happy to "earn" 50,000 downloads in a few days and a 4-star rating as any amount of money for an app.

I agree to a large degree. I just think that the thrill of strangers' adulation is going to wear off after a while, what was new and novel becomes a grind, and people start to ask why, if you're so smart, you're not rich? And so the guy in his garage either gives up and goes back to his day job, sells out, or tries to monetize. You can do mobile apps for the love of the game in your early twenties, but I think there's a definite expiration date on that kind of thing. Maybe the next generation of young suckers will take the place of the old generation, but I think it's more likely that in a few years some other thing will be red hot and the gold rush will have moved on. (And mobile is very much a gold rush mentality, which is, at the root of it, centered around striking it rich.)

15 minutes is a worthless trial period for all but the most trivial apps. The standard trial period for any serious software (IDEs etc) seems to be 30 days.

It used to be 24 hours on Android, but too many people got refunds on games after they were done with them in a day.

It could make more sense to leave the period up to the developer to decide (with a few options to choose from).

I have the TPB return policy.

Download it when I'm interested what it's like. And delete it when/if I'm done.

A 24 hour/15 minute return policy is just an insult.

I notice that at no point in this process is actually paying for anything mentioned...

I also wouldn't trust any app on my phone which I have downloaded from TPB. I barely trust any app I download from Play Store!

It'd probably be helpful if the store let the developer set the trial period. An appropriately set period is going to vary by what the software does and the devs/publisher are the most likely to have (a) the necessary insight involved and (b) the highest incentive to get it right.

I heard people would buy an app, "backed it up" with Titanium backup, get a refund and restore. Not sure if they put something into Android/Play now to counter that though...

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