41–50 of 86 posts
On reflection, given their recent behaviour as a company I can understand that.
The ones that I found more interesting are:
- "The same price as my operating system. Later guys, it’s been fun."
While I understand his/her reasoning I disagree because it's a very deceiving comparison.
- "I love tweetbot, and I know tapbots won’t care, but I can’t afford to buy $20 for something that performs one function, which I can already get on my phone, and the same basic data from other clients and even twitter.com."
I wouldn't go as far to say that it performs just one function but I can understand what (s)he means.
- "The worst thing the App Store did was to devalue software. I write it for a living, I know the time and energy that goes in to building a good piece of software, and asking to be paid for that work is not evil."
- "I’d pay $100 for Tweetbot for Mac. Anyone who whines about $20 has clearly never written a piece of software."
- "Don’t get me wrong, I bought it. I’am a software developer too, so I know how much work you had to put into it. But still, it’s too much. Especially in Poland, where I live. Especially if you compare it to other Twitter clients, or software in MAS in general. Especially, if you consider that the future of the software is not safe (because of Twitter limitations)."
I guess we, developers, are always more understanding when it comes to the amount of effort required to create great software. However, you can apply that same stament to many other professions (shoemakers and shoes, etc)
EDIT: Formatting
Am I the only one smiling at seeing the equivalent of limited-edition software in the year 2012? Twitter is weird.
Really, now. It's on the level of: PAYING for ELECTRONIC "BOOK" "RENTALS"
Think about that. Royalties, intellectual property, and blah blah blah aside...
They insist on implying that you're "renting" electronic signals. They don't want you to think in terms of paying an ISP for a connection (service), and then the transmission (bandwidth), AND THEN THE CONTENT (the "book") ON TOP OF ALL THAT. You could just KEEP the "book" forever, with virtualized backups if you really wanted to. And can't we just dispose of the "book" euphemisms too? What you're really paying for is a brokered decryption of information. Gee, thanks for brightening up that reality with all the duckspeak, marketing.
It's just bits. Induced magnetic fields on a metal platter. Energized wires in an integrated circuit.
I mean I guess you could take the view that we all "rent" beer, in a certain wry sense. But that's like when inmates rationalize that everyone's in a "prison" somehow, or when prostitutes rationalize that all house-wives are essentially "prostitutes" with a different name.
Seriously. Paying for a Twitter interface?
You can just use the website.
For free.
$20 is like 4 hours of work for someone who're making minimum wage.
Why is it $20? Because it's worth that much. I didn't even give it any thought – I just hit the purchase button the moment I read I could. They shouldn't have written this with the sheepish, question-marked headline. They don't need to apologize or feel bashful, though I get why they would. It's a great desktop app. It costs what it costs. Anyone who doesn't like that is just leaving more tokens for the rest of us.
I interpreted this as largely a protest in the hopes of getting Twitter's token policy changed. It seems very odd that they can get 100,000 tokens for free but can't pay for more.
One explanation: not all users are created equal. It could be that the 20% who use third party clients are more/most engaged. Lassoing them back into the fold could have some strategic benefit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I interpreted this as largely a protest in the hopes of getting Twitter's token policy changed. It seems very odd that they can get 100,000 tokens for free but can't pay for more.
That's reasonable. And I agree it's odd. Why should Twitter care if 20% of their userbase is on third party clients with an experience that's not on-brand, if those clients pay a per-user fee? One explanation: not all users are created equal. It could be that the 20% who use third party clients are more/most engaged. Lassoing them back into the fold could have some strategic benefit.
Am I the only one smiling at seeing the equivalent of limited-edition software in the year 2012? Twitter is weird.
"BORROWING" ELECTRONIC "BOOKS" and then "RETURNING" THEM, or else YOU PAY "LATE" FEES.
Someone actually mentioned that idea to me, when we were discussing how the free public library system was imploding in wake of pervasive digital media. I conceded that, yeah, it's kind of sad, but then I just shrugged and changed the subject.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's exactly what I'm worried about. It COULD be a year (and in that case, yes, it would be worth it), but no one can guarantee that. It could be tomorrow for all we know. If they stopped supporting it tomorrow, it wouldn't disappear from your device. The earliest it would possibly break would be in the next major OS upgrade. Y'know, in about a year. The idea that a measly $20 is too much to pay for months of eng…
> If they stopped supporting it tomorrow, it wouldn't disappear from your device. The earliest it would possibly break would be in the next major OS upgrade. That's not true at all. Twitter could revoke their API access or something that could break it tomorrow. Yes the actual app may still be on my device but nothing says it will actually still be able to work. That is all in Twitter's hands. > The idea that a measl…
It's never absurd to choose not to buy anything. But your analogy gets in the way of what is absurd. We're not talking about charging $1000 dollars (the same price as a nice laptop, a middling DSLR, or a crappy used car) for a toaster.
We're talking about $20 (the same price as a delivered pizza, a middling steak, and less than two tickets for an hour and a half movie) for a polished piece of software.
What's absurd is asserting that that's too much to ask for the product of months of engineering and design work. You certainly don't have to buy it! It's totally ok if it's not worth $20 of your money, to you.
But asserting that the authors ought to value their work less than a pizza, that they're doing something wrong by asking a not-unreasonable pizza-money price for it, is entitled, race-to-the-bottom mentality crap.
Engineers are expensive, iOS engineers doubly so. This meme that their work is worth less than a candy bar, let alone a pizza, is a toxic devaluation of the worth of every engineer working in the software field
coda: They're currently both the #2 paid app and #2 top-grossing app in the App Store, so the demand is certainly there at $20. Devaluing their work by launching at less would have accomplished nothing but leaving money on the table.
There have been many discussions here on Hacker News about the risks inherent in building your product—and hence livelihood—on top of someone else's platform, over which you have no control. Unfortunately for Tweetbot, this sort of complaint will possibly strike a chord with the almost negligible minority that would read a tech blog, and of those, an even smaller and more negligible minority will actually complain to…
This, and other actions like it, are only going to drive more people to the underground bot/warez economy wherein terms of use and official API channels don't apply. unfortunately in that world many of the tools also compromise user security as well. Unless Twitter, and other widely adopted platform providers, find a balance between corporate interests and supporting users interacting with their services in the ways…
They'll just use the next most popular Twitter client for iOS, which is likely free or perhaps a buck or two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have a limit over 100k (2x their current user base) IIRC, since they already have 100k+ users on Tweetbot.
Tokens are per-application. So they do not have "a limit over 100k", they have a limit of 100k on "Tweetbot for Mac". Which is a completely separate limit than the one for Tweetbot on iOS.
Tapbots has >135,000 twitter followers. They had significant exposure from many other sources too, like Daring Fireball which has >400,000 Mac + Twitter using RSS subscribers.
Early adopters are more likely to have multiple twitter accounts as well, so they would have already registered multiple tokens.
There have been many discussions here on Hacker News about the risks inherent in building your product—and hence livelihood—on top of someone else's platform, over which you have no control. Unfortunately for Tweetbot, this sort of complaint will possibly strike a chord with the almost negligible minority that would read a tech blog, and of those, an even smaller and more negligible minority will actually complain to…
This, and other actions like it, are only going to drive more people to the underground bot/warez economy wherein terms of use and official API channels don't apply. unfortunately in that world many of the tools also compromise user security as well. Unless Twitter, and other widely adopted platform providers, find a balance between corporate interests and supporting users interacting with their services in the ways…
Well, that's my dream. tent.io is nice, but it's not going to replace Twitter anytime soon, and I actively dislike app.net. But we're past the age when third party clients can be effectively blocked by technical means, and I want to see their return.