Vignette: add photos to your contacts by searching public social media profiles

> While you’re looking at the effort and cost of developing an app, also consider that not everybody has $4 coffees (like another commenter put it) or can afford to buy many apps that are each $5 or $10 or more. Getting an iPhone is one of the best things someone could do (on privacy and security), and it does cost a lot just to get the hardware. Lower priced apps are a boon to many in countries that are not the US or another developed country.

This is, again, a problem of perception. People will pay $1200 for their phone, whether they can afford it or not. The perception is that they will get a beautiful physical device and that it is "worth it". To make good use of that physical device one should expect to buy apps — but they are somehow not "worth it" anymore.

I realize that not everybody cares about contact photos, but my gripe was with the "too expensive" statement. My take on this is that when buying a computer (any computer: laptop, desktop, tablet, phone), you should expect to spend around 50% of its price on apps in the long run, and even more in niche business settings. That is the real price of your purchase. If that is too expensive, consider getting a less expensive device.

This is going to come off as quite bitter, but the more I listen to podcasts like ATP, the more it angers me how incestuous the Apple indie community is. There are about a million of these kinds of utility apps in the App Store. Many are potentially useful to thousands of people like this one. None of them get widespread podcast coverage, writeups on Techcrunch and Macstories, and trending posts on HN. This is exclusively fame and personality driving sales, and yet nobody on these shows seems to want to acknowledge it.

Worse yet, this might make fledgeling indie developers believe that they, too, could make a living with their first or second projects. But I know from experience that merit isn't nearly enough: getting even a single journalist to pay attention will require weeks or months of unanswered e-mails to everyone you can find—and even then, only if you're lucky, and your app actually does something incredible.

Perhaps the unstated prerequisite in this market is that if you don't have a network, your app almost certainly isn't going anywhere, no matter how good it is. And if you know a bunch of people within the Apple indie community, you're going to have some degree of success, no matter what. I recently released an app that performs an important task substantially better than all the existing competition, and yet getting anyone at all to pay attention is like pulling nails. It's hard not to feel dejected when you see a newcomer with a comparatively simple app enter the stage and immediately get widespread acclaim.

As a long-time fan of the show, I'm happy for Casey's success (because he's a genuinely nice and well-meaning person), but I'm probably going to have to stop listening soon. This release is just an absolute distortion of the app developer experience, and it ticks me off that everyone in this sphere is acting like it's completely normal. In reality, almost anybody else would be lucky to make $100 from the lifetime of an equivalent app, and nobody would be donating $5 to you just because they like you.

>Worse yet, this might make fledgeling indie developers believe that they, too, could make a living with their first or second projects.

Where did Casey or anyone else give this impression? I think you're reading a LOT into this that isn't there.

Obviously the app has done well because its creator is well known. That's a very viable method of marketing. Anyone hoping to start a business needs some sort of marketing angle, and fame or network is one of them.

Not just that: the app has to work, and Vignette works well. And it solved the problem of the people recommending it, too. That's part of why everyone who knows Casey is eager to talk about it: the app genuinely helped them.

Can you point to something anyone said, anywhere that backs up your own interpretation? Ie. someone saying "see, anyone can do it"

I didn't listen to this week's ATP yet, so maybe I missed something grotesque, but what you're saying doesn't sound like how Casey talked about the app in the runup.

> My take on this is that when buying a computer (any computer: laptop, desktop, tablet, phone), you should expect to spend around 50% of its price on apps in the long run, and even more in niche business settings. That is the real price of your purchase. If that is too expensive, consider getting a less expensive device.

I get that it’s your personal take, but it just doesn’t work that way in developing countries. I’m not sure most people would consider spending 50% of the hardware cost on software in developed countries either, if the apps are for personal use.

There are variations in price expectations depending on the type of product. Hardware is something people are willing to pay more for. Video content is slightly similar in the very long run (if using streaming services). Software seems to be generally lower on the rung, regardless of the platform.