351–360 of 385 posts
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You would think a company like Apple could easily build a system that updated exchange rates daily and could do the simple math on any price. Having "price points" seems arbitrarily and stupid.
They could do that, but then users in some countries would have to pay 0.693 of their local currency or whatever. Why should the US be the only country that gets friendly looking prices?
Do you still have to pay $100 every year for the privilege of simply releasing an app? I took one look at that and thought "fuck this". If you're a hobbyist with zero interest in making money off your apps, then you get a giant middle finger from Apple.
Still no easy way for app developers to handle upgrades. Apple really wants to push apps towards profitable but exploitative subscription pricing models.
And selling to business customers who don't have the huge IT dept. to setup a full Apple Business Account is a nightmare! Most employees use their own iPhones, and Apple specifically closed the Volume Purchase Program. The VPP was a way for a small company to basically purchase download codes and distribute as needed.
So, never having bothered with Apple hard-/software I am a bit confused... A developer can't just set a price for something? But then out of the first 10000 natural numbers, Apple semi-arbitrarily select a set of 900 "known-good" numbers that work well for prices? Like, as if the other numbers are somehow bad prices? If you charge someone $7,43 for something, the ghost of Steve Jobs will start haunting you? That's, l…
Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple chooses appropriate prices for each of the ~175 different storefronts where your app could be available. Apple then periodically adjusts the international prices as exchange rates fluctuate, to keep them in parity with the US prices at the same tiers. The alternativ…
Here seems make some sense.
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Not even close. They semi-arbitrarily came up with prices they allow in the App Store, probably “justifying” it using some metrics, or your app will be rejected.
The press release implies that the chosen price points are "approachable" for app store customers.
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Thank you for clarifying this. This is such an Apple thing to do. Frankly it doesn't matter what the exact price is. All economics are approximate.
Disagree on that. Is Apple trying to arbitrage currencies at this point?
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I think youre missing several inputs into your feedback loop. The original statement about the US system bearing the brunt of development stands. It's also true that insurers influence the market. Both are true. There are also government inputs into the market, political inputs a d supply chain elements that all feed into this. The one stakeholder will little real input in the end consumer who gets stuck paying whate…
That doesn't explain the behavior of off-patent drugs being jacked up in price on a whim or near identical variants being made to extend patent protection and maintain the predatory pricing of the name brand. Their development costs are already recouped during the initial patent phase. Tweaking things a little doesn't cost them nearly as much.
So, never having bothered with Apple hard-/software I am a bit confused... A developer can't just set a price for something? But then out of the first 10000 natural numbers, Apple semi-arbitrarily select a set of 900 "known-good" numbers that work well for prices? Like, as if the other numbers are somehow bad prices? If you charge someone $7,43 for something, the ghost of Steve Jobs will start haunting you? That's, l…
So, never having bothered with Apple hard-/software I am a bit confused... A developer can't just set a price for something? But then out of the first 10000 natural numbers, Apple semi-arbitrarily select a set of 900 "known-good" numbers that work well for prices? Like, as if the other numbers are somehow bad prices? If you charge someone $7,43 for something, the ghost of Steve Jobs will start haunting you? That's, l…
Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple chooses appropriate prices for each of the ~175 different storefronts where your app could be available. Apple then periodically adjusts the international prices as exchange rates fluctuate, to keep them in parity with the US prices at the same tiers. The alternativ…
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Price points smooth the exchange rate fluctuation (how often should the prices be updated? Every second? More often?) and selects for prices that have certain cultural"gravity" as well. I think buyers are more accustomed to and comfortable with "round" or "standard" prices like x.99, x.88, x.95, x.00 etc rather than x.47 or x.31.
Exchange rate fluctuation I think could be handled perfectly fine without price points but the price point "gravities" is a really good reason to use the system. Not sure why it should limit developers to that system but it certainly makes the system attractive/useful for many.