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Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

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Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#111

Post by dijit »

mrtksn wrote: post #110
dijit wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you have to work on the program for forty hours a week or four?

How much do you think is my fair price? I will leave it here because it's weird to higgle on it. If I'm going to be "on call" I expect to get paid and I don't think this is greedy or unreasonable.

the going rate for a freelancer is $100/hr in my part of the world, but you can check your going rate.

You can calculate your expected baseline yearly sales from this, based on how many hours you expect to work bugfixing and improving things on average per year.

You can timebox the work- having a half-dozen services like this is exactly how Panic Inc. came to mass prominence.

Everything depends on the actual amount of time you have to spend on the app, nobody is asking for minimum wage work, that's totally not fair; but perhaps expecting this single project to support you full time is unlikely.

The upshot is that if you're more successful than your baseline, that's "profit", and it's unbounded.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#112

Post by ZekeSulastin »

Vegenoid wrote: post #107
olliej wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really feel this isn't the devs fault, it's a product of the accursed App Store payment model. The issues I see: * Devs can't make paid upgrades: to make a paid upgrade the options are a new app, except the security model for the apple app stores ties a lot of things to the app id, so a new app disconnects the user data from the old app. To keep the information tied together the "solution" is subscription or in app…

I do the same - if an app is "free" but has In-app purchases, I'll simply avoid it, even if I'd be willing to pay some price for it if it works. I don't have time to download every app, open it, and navigate to its pricing page to see how much it costs. You should be able to see the name, description, and price of all the in-app purchases from the App Store.

I’m not sure about the Mac OS side, but at least on iOS there’s a specific entry in the information section for in-app purchases that can be expanded into exactly that pricing list.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#113

Post by olliej »

Flowsion wrote: post #102
mrtksn wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Much appreciated. Unfortunately I don't see how 20$ one time fee will works for such a niche app. After commissions and taxes $20 becomes $10. Anywhere in the developed world the money required only to survive is at least 2000$, which means I will need to be selling 200 copies every month as long as the app exist only to get basic level of income and accumulating customers that I will have to support the year…

I can understand this logic, but does every app generate enough revenue to sustain a developer full-time? I would think that some niche apps are able to bring in solid revenue for the amount of work put in. I'm unsure how much time would go into general upkeep and management. Could some of the others suggestions here work, asking users to pay for future updates? I'm in the same camp as most of these users. I have thi…

I think the issue these days is that so many VC funded companies give away products for free to essentially capture the entire market so no non-VC funded can compete with that, or numerous "free" (ad supported) or in-app-purchases funded competition (the ad supported ones frequently being just direct clones of other peoples work) force the purchase price down below the actual development cost.

People now believe apps should be free, or cheap enough that they don't cover the actual costs for people who are doing the actual development costs.

I'm not sure what the real path forward for developers in this environment - if you charge the necessary amount you're undercut by separately funded products or ad supported apps, if you charge a "competitive" amount you can't live off it, if you have a subscription that supports ongoing dev people say "I only want to pay a single time".

None of this helped when you then have asshole game devs that sell games for $100+, but then throw in constant in app purchases and DLC for basic functionality that used to be part of the game.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#114

Post by mrtksn »

dijit wrote: post #111
mrtksn wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you think is my fair price? I will leave it here because it's weird to higgle on it. If I'm going to be "on call" I expect to get paid and I don't think this is greedy or unreasonable.

the going rate for a freelancer is $100/hr in my part of the world, but you can check your going rate. You can calculate your expected baseline yearly sales from this, based on how many hours you expect to work bugfixing and improving things on average per year. You can timebox the work- having a half-dozen services like this is exactly how Panic Inc. came to mass prominence. Everything depends on the actual amount o…

I think you should just release an app that does just that at your rates.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#116

Post by jshier »

viraptor wrote: post #87
Osiris wrote: post #75

This is really a Bluetooth issue. The same happens with any headphones that have a mic on any OS. When Bluetooth mode is switched from Headphones to Headset (with mic), only much lower quality audio codes are used. Does anyone know if Bluetooth 6 adds support for higher quality codes for Headset? It's a big issue, in my opinion.

It was a Bluetooth issue years ago. Now it's only an Apple issue where it can't use a more decent codec. On Linux you can choose the mSBC codec and get decent two-way quality on a modern headset.

Regardless of codecs, don't all Bluetooth headsets switch to mono I/O when the microphone connects? I find that to be a much bigger quality hit than the encoding.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#117

Post by dijit »

mrtksn wrote: post #114
dijit wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the going rate for a freelancer is $100/hr in my part of the world, but you can check your going rate. You can calculate your expected baseline yearly sales from this, based on how many hours you expect to work bugfixing and improving things on average per year. You can timebox the work- having a half-dozen services like this is exactly how Panic Inc. came to mass prominence. Everything depends on the actual amount o…

I think you should just release an app that does just that at your rates.

Who says I haven't?

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#119

Post by cffntd »

ZekeSulastin wrote: post #112
Vegenoid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same - if an app is "free" but has In-app purchases, I'll simply avoid it, even if I'd be willing to pay some price for it if it works. I don't have time to download every app, open it, and navigate to its pricing page to see how much it costs. You should be able to see the name, description, and price of all the in-app purchases from the App Store.

I’m not sure about the Mac OS side, but at least on iOS there’s a specific entry in the information section for in-app purchases that can be expanded into exactly that pricing list.

But it's always listed as something like "Premium Features" or "Monthly Subscription." Those descriptions don't tell what I'm getting. So then it's usually download the app, try to figure out which are the premium features and which are baked into the app. It's a mess. And I get it, it's not really the dev's fault, but the system is completely broken.

Re: Show HN: A macOS app to prevent sound quality degradation on AirPods

#120

Post by luuurker »

mrtksn wrote: post #94
simple10 wrote: post #77

This is great! I've been needing a solution to this problem. However... I would pay $20 one time for it. But a subscription is a deal breaker. My guess is you'll make a lot more revenue by doing one time fees tied to a specific AirPod version. So each time I upgrade my AirPods, I pay a new one time fee instead of the subscription.

Thanks! Much appreciated. Unfortunately I don't see how 20$ one time fee will works for such a niche app. After commissions and taxes $20 becomes $10. Anywhere in the developed world the money required only to survive is at least 2000$, which means I will need to be selling 200 copies every month as long as the app exist only to get basic level of income and accumulating customers that I will have to support the year…

Let me start by saying that I wish you the best of luck and success with the app.

With this said, I have many subscriptions that "costs less than a coffee per month", to use a popular excuse. The problem is that I pay $3 here, $5 there, $7 for this, $10 for that... and when I add it all up, it's a lot of coffee, if you know what I mean. And at this point I don't see why I should pay for a program that will work without your intervention while I'm running this macOS version (or even across multiple macOS versions). I'm not using any of your resources/time or costing you any money.

I completely understand that you want to be paid for your time if something breaks and you have to fix it, but you don't need a subscription for that. Some apps give you x years or x macOS updates for X dollars. After that, if you want a new update, you pay for another x years/pay for the latest major update (or something like that).

If this used any server side stuff or required regular updates, then I would understand the subscription. As it is, it's a bit like Adobe software... I don't need it enough to pay for the subscription.

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