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The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

blog.wilshipley.com

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Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#91

Post by barkmadley »

frio wrote: post #63
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's business model isn't to release paid apps This differs from every OS vendor I'm aware of in the past. Just noting. > they do release top tier apps. Could you point out to me some of these apps where the alternatives are sold for top-tier prices?

Compare Google Navigation on Android, to TomTom on iOS. Navigation is free, works perfectly, and even goes so far as to include a "Car Mode" for docking your phone in your car. TomTom costs, at last check, $95NZD. I've not bothered trying it.

I think the difference would be that TomTom supplies it's own maps in the App, whereas Google Navigation probably downloads the tiles/street view as you go.

This can make a world of difference when travelling abroad when you can't be bothered getting a local data plan.

I definitely use GPS navigation more often when travelling than when in my home country.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#92

Post by atebits »

kennywinker wrote: post #64
msbarnett wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See Tweetie 2, for an example What's the example, exactly? Genuinely curious. I upgraded to Tweetie 2 as soon as it came out. My impression was that it was very successful right up until Twitter bought Atebits.

It's hard to say how much of that was noise, and what effect it had on sales / success, but there was a lot of hype about the paid upgrade leaving people unhappy. Example headlines (Google "tweetie 2 paid update" for more): "Tweetie 2 Pricing Controversy: An Interview with Tweetie's Creator ..." "Tweetie 2: 'New App' – Will Spit On Existing 'Old App' Users | iSource" "Still won't pay for Tweetie 2 upgrade? Try these…

The publicity only seemed to help. Tweetie 2 hit #1 Top Grossing on the App Store 24 hours after launch.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#93

Post by [deleted] »

benihana wrote: post #20
phillmv wrote: post #13

I want to say something about sharecropping, but I have a hard time thinking of the appropriate analogy. It's making me think about the service model as being a superior revenue stream, for-better-or-for-worse. From a user's perspective, the MAS already acts as a service; the subsidy is just being paid for at the developer's end of the scale. I love the iTunes/MA stores as a marketing and distribution channel, but I…

> without forcing everyone to become serfs. Calling people who willingly cede less than a third of their profits for access to the giant infrastructure and advertising Apple has at their disposal is a bit of hyperbole. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement for both parties, which both parties are free to sever at any time. Doesn't seem like serfdom to me.

[deleted]

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#94

Post by fpgeek »

benihana wrote: post #20
phillmv wrote: post #13

I want to say something about sharecropping, but I have a hard time thinking of the appropriate analogy. It's making me think about the service model as being a superior revenue stream, for-better-or-for-worse. From a user's perspective, the MAS already acts as a service; the subsidy is just being paid for at the developer's end of the scale. I love the iTunes/MA stores as a marketing and distribution channel, but I…

> without forcing everyone to become serfs. Calling people who willingly cede less than a third of their profits for access to the giant infrastructure and advertising Apple has at their disposal is a bit of hyperbole. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement for both parties, which both parties are free to sever at any time. Doesn't seem like serfdom to me.

But it is effectively equivalent to sharecropping (with a somewhat lower percentage, I suppose), which some people reasonably consider a form of serfdom. Developers are willingly ceding 30% of their profits for the benefits of using Apple's infrastructure the same way sharecroppers willingly ceded a portion of their crop (typically 50%, but higher in more exploitative relationships according to Wikipedia) in return for the right to use an owner's land.

In both cases, landlord is more powerful than the sharecropper and can set "take-it-or-leave-it" terms (which, if you consider game theory, suggests that the landlord will capture most of the profits of the relationship - limited only by a sharecropper's alternative ways of making a living and their willingness to make decisions that are economically irrational in the short term in order to improve their situation in the long term).

I could even go on to talk about sharecroppers buying seed, fertilizer from the landlord and compare that to developers buying laptops, paying for developer programs and so on, but this analogy has probably been pushed far enough as it is.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#95

Post by jacalata »

cynix wrote: post #86
jacalata wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compatibility or bug fixes aren't free for all users because just like features, the developer had to spend time building them and needs to get paid for that time.

I build a house for you for $X. You find out that the lights don't work and ask me to fix it. Would you be happy if I told you "Oh, sorry I messed up the electrical connections. It'll cost you $Y though, because I have to spend time fixing them and I need to get paid for that time."?

You build a house for me for $X. Two years later, I notice that if you hang three towels on the bathroom door on a humid day while the living room light was on, the door didn't close properly. Would you be happy if I came to you and demanded that you debug and fix this problem for free? Didn't I pay for a working house the first time?

I very much do not believe that you paid me enough for me to guarantee that my product would work in all circumstances forever. If you did, then by golly I'm yours for life buddy!

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#97

Post by MarkMc »

archildress wrote: post #54

On a similar note, the Mac App Store really needs an option for free trials if it wants to become the premiere marketplace for apps.

Yes! Especially with more expensive software. My software costs £150: No-one wants to fork out this kind of cash without a free trial so I get very few sales through the Mac App Store.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#98

Post by msbarnett »

fpgeek wrote: post #89
msbarnett wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I'm not sure a mechanism for having paid upgrades under the same name as the original app would have avoided any of those headlines, though.

You don't? If people had complained about being charged a reasonable, discounted upgrade price for Tweetie 2, they'd have been laughed at. That has been a common model for software upgrades for as long as I remember (and quite probably longer than I have been alive).

People always complain about being asked to pay to upgrade. If they don't get a discount, they complain about that. If they do get a discount, they complain that the upgrade "should have" been a free minor version bump instead.

In my experience, at least, it's more or less just a pathological behaviour that you can't escape.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#99

Post by JohnQPasserby »

seanalltogether wrote: post #62
r00fus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one very important stakeholder you are ignoring in your analysis - the end user. Apple creates stuff not for devs or themselves, but for the real customers - who are the users of their devices and comptuers. In the case of paid upgrades, if it pains customers and leads to lower device sales, then Apple will come up with a solution to it. Developers (and Apple's internal team as well) come in at a distant sec…

The product teams absolutely should be focusing on the end user. However, the platform and framework teams should be supporting the features/tools for all devs. My criticism of the platforms that Apple pushes is that they seem to focus more on the specific needs of their internal teams than the broader needs of all the other devs that will be helping to grow the platform. The line I occasionally hear in the apple dev…

I have run into those kinds of problems, and it doesn't seem to be a huge burden to make a new component. My complaint is that Xcode is a POS but I have to use it.

Re: The Mac App Store Needs Paid Upgrades

#100

Post by falcolas »

msbarnett wrote: post #79
thelibrarian wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how would you feel if in a few years you bought GreatApp from the MAS, and then found that to get the current functionality you had to then buy as an in-app purchase "2012 Feature Pack", "2013 Feature Pack" and "2014 Feature Pack"?

His post suggests that each " feature pack" would also contain all of the previous years' features, for new-commers.

And yet the new purchaser ends up spending more under this model than they would under a paid upgrades model. New user pays $40 for features X, Y, and Z. User of a previous version, containing X and Y, would pay $10 for the new version.

Under the in-app purchase model, both customers have to pay $50 for X, Y and Z, which provides a high barrier to entry, a poor customer experience, and poor reviews for the app.

There are ways around this scenario, but none of which are as user friendly as allowing previous owners to purchase new versions at a discounted price.

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