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The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

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Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#141

Post by gyardley »

Zirro wrote: post #119
ben1040 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. Thanks to the App Store, the days of paying $30+ for boxed software and paying again every year or so for version n+1 (assuming it comes out at all) are pretty far back in the rear view mirror now. I paid $10 for Sparrow and got far more than $10 in value from it. So while I am disappointed that the best email app I have seen is EOL'd now I did get a decent value and I can't complain a whole lot. I a…

"How do we recalibrate people's expectations about the value of software back to pre-2008 levels?" As someone who wasn't quite old enough to be interested in following this when it happened, I feel the need to ask: Why did the App Store affect pre-2008 price-levels as much as it did? Were most apps this cheap at the launch of the App Store, or did it lower over the year(s)? Did Apple set any guidelines for the price-…

Prices were slightly higher at launch, with $4.99 and $9.99 being fairly common price points. (Super Monkey Ball, the first heavily-promoted game I can recall, was $9.99.) But by Christmas 2008, less than a year later, prices were about what they were today.

In my opinion / recollection, prices dropped because some developers experimented and discovered that they could make more money at $0.99 - the increased unit sales more than made up for it. Of course, those increased unit sales were partly because they were one of the few quality applications selling at $0.99 - and once the other developers saw how the $0.99 apps were cannibalizing their $4.99 sales, they followed along to compete.

I don't recall Apple influencing pricing publicly, but god knows if they had any discussions with their initial, pre-announcement partners. It wouldn't surprise me if they pushed Sega to get Super Monkey Ball out at $9.99, since it sold for much more than this on earlier game platforms, but that's just me speculating.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#142

Post by ams6110 »

rogerchucker wrote: post #42
carsongross wrote: post #40

The reason sparrow had to sell is because they didn't have a recurring revenue model. This is what limits all "pay once" desktop (and mobile) software: either they have to charge prohibitively high amounts or they have to get you to upgrade frequently. The former limits adoption and the latter is tricky and encourages feature bloat. I now want to pay for the desktop software I like as a subscription: it keeps the dev…

Nobody outside the developer community will ever pay for any software on a recurring basis, especially if free alternatives are available.

Pretty much every software product sold to business is on a "initial purchase + maintenance agreement" basis, i.e. you pay up front and they you pay monthly or annually to keep your license and/or support current.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#143

Post by calciphus »

The whole argument seems backwards to me. If your dream was that good software could be supported by users alone (not ads or a giant corporate checkbook), and by your own admission they were selling the software at a price-point below the value you were getting from it ("I'd have given them more money if I could")...

It sounds like you got exactly what you want. You got software that worked great, that avoided the traps of "you're the product" and produced a positive result for everyone. Then they got bought. But you know what? A thousand teams of engineers are ready to take their place, since a big payout at the end means there's considerable draw, and you really can sell an app at a bit above costs, be comfortable, and that allure of a _maybe_ payout at the end is enough to get over the hurdle of starting.

I guess it baffles the mind. It's like saying that big paychecks have ruined sports, because strong athletes are only in it for the money. Perhaps they are, but you get people who would otherwise do something else being willing to give sports a try because that potential paycheck is enough of a draw.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#144

Post by indubitably »

It seems to me that the real story here is that software is starting to face real and widespread commoditization on a deep scale.

Software has always been a very high-end, specialized line of work, and qualified many developers still expect to make upwards of 80K a year (at least).

Well, what happens when the software industry starts suffering from the same crisis as the rest of the economy, in an irreversible way?

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#145

Post by stevenwei »

webwright wrote: post #130
phil wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac app had a run rate of over $1m its first six months, per this interview: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-26/tech/30036420... Who knows what was happening internally, but on the surface: strong team of 5, $1-1.5m revenue their first year, tremendous reputation and another product in the pipeline. What more could you ask for to make a long term go of it?

Talking about run rates in the first 6 months is iffy. The run rate difference between #5 and #26 (where they are now on the Mac App Store) grossing are huge. Order of magnitude huge. How much of that $500k was when they were featured and making their initial splash? What's their daily run rate now at #26? What's the trend? I'd wager it's been down steadily if it's anything like the iOS app store. I don't know about…

The Mac App Store has a lot less competition and high quality apps have a lot more staying power compared to the iOS App Store. There are fewer apps to crowd you out of the market, and the high quality ones (of which Sparrow definitely qualifies) stand out a lot more.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#146

Post by jiggy2011 »

bnegreve wrote: post #138
jiggy2011 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think we have Piracy to thank for this and perhaps to a lesser extent Open Source. There seems to exist a group of people who feel that piracy isn't just something that you do because you can't afford product X and feel marginally guilty about doing but something that is somehow a fundamental human right in a "people who pay for software are mugs" sort of way.

> Open Source. I actually think this is the opposite. Open source users tend to be more informed and thus more understanding to software issues. They post bug reports and even talk to devs when required. Someone who bought a piece of software will complain until it works as expected.

Depends on the software, I know plenty of non techy people who use firefox and openoffice and I would bet that the majority of them have no idea at all that the source code is available online. They just think of it as "free beer" which is fine because they are not devs so having the code would be of limited use to them.

If open source software crashes on them they would just swear at it in the same way they would proprietary software, it wouldn't occur to them to take a stack trace and file a bug report (I guess this is why firefox offers to do this automatically).

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#147

Post by jiggy2011 »

thirdsun wrote: post #109
jiggy2011 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think we have Piracy to thank for this and perhaps to a lesser extent Open Source. There seems to exist a group of people who feel that piracy isn't just something that you do because you can't afford product X and feel marginally guilty about doing but something that is somehow a fundamental human right in a "people who pay for software are mugs" sort of way.

Tell me about it - several of my friends who aren't very tech-savvy would nevertheless go to great lengths in order to have someone jailbreak their iPhones - not to escape the walled garden or other greater reasons, but simply because they heard there's free stuff to get. Of course this isn't limited to software as those are the same people that haven't bought an album in years.

I know someone who jailbroke his iPhone so he didn't have to pay for a $10 navigation app to use to navigate his $40,000 Mercedes.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#148

Post by jiggy2011 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #133
ryanwanger wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a support email, someone demanded that we refund his money because our app was a piece of crap. The app has always been free. I told him this and he retorted that he had jail broken his phone, and doesn't pay for apps.

So... he just randomly writes to people demanding refunds for stuff he didn't buy? And somehow imagines that 'refunds' will be processed on purchases that never happened? Are people really that a) stupid and/or b) evil?

I'm going to assume it was either someone young or from a developing country who assumed there was an off chance that they would plop $4.99 or whatever into his account.

Re: The real reason we’re upset about Sparrow’s acquisition

#150

Post by EdiX »

technoslut wrote: post #20
antihero wrote: post #8

Perhaps we should only pay for development of open-source software, so we actually own what we're paying for.

I don't believe that changes the situation at all. An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of the best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source it after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell apart afterwards. My point is that people who used the app did so because of the talent of the developer. A community can't always make up for…

To be fair in 2007 leopard's spotlight implemented the 20% of quicksilver's features that most users used 80% of the time.

You probably were a quicksilver poweruser, but I don't think there were many of you.

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