If I see something that is both "free" and "in-app purchases", it already <i>greatly</i> reduces the chance I'll even bother to download because <i>so damned many</i> of these are just <i>terrible</i> experiences. On the off chance I bother to look one step further and preview the "top in-app purchases", I usually see something totally unsurprising like the absurd "$9.99 gem bags" or whatever.<p>Please, please just start charging for apps again. I <i>specifically</i> search for "pay once and never again" apps now.
I prefer to apply this analogy to the situation with how users expect updates into perpetuity in exchange for their 99 cents. Developers that try to fund continuous updates through a small annual subscription fee (like Dark Sky on Android, for example) get pilloried for it.<p>You wouldn't pay $4 for a coffee at Starbucks, then come back to the store six months later and say "I paid $4 for this, refill it." But you expect that app you paid a buck for in 2008 to still work in 2017 across 10+ new OS revisions (and one or two major UI paradigm shifts), and the justification for that is "I paid for it once."<p>When you went out and bought boxed software it was kind of an expectation that it was going to work for a reasonable time period afterward. But if you want an update or support for a later OS version that didn't exist at the time of purchase, you're going to pay for it.
The article makes some pretty compelling points, but I think it's underestimating the irrationality in human behavior. It's well known that people's purchasing habits are deeply irrational on many levels - one of which is the idea of anchoring. We've had the idea of $4 coffee prices anchored in our heads, and so, don't think twice about it. Conversely, we've also had the idea of free-apps anchored in our heads, and so, feel deeply averse to spending $1 on it, even when a rational person would conclude that the app's lifetime value (over free alternatives) exceeds 25% of the value provided by a single cup of coffee.<p>There are certainly many rational reasons for why someone wouldn't want to pay a buck for an app, but it's worth pointing out that a significant number of people are irrationally averse as well.<p><a href="http://www.investopedia.com/university/behavioral_finance/behavioral4.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.investopedia.com/university/behavioral_finance/be...</a>
The app world has really been grinding my gears lately. The move to subscription services is really getting to me. Especially on iOS. I've dropped a lot of money on writing apps - I'm looking at you, Ulysses - to move to a subscription - and eventually lock me in, or lock me out. "At a cost of a coffee a month," you say.
I think the article misses the point.<p>If we transfer the app store experience over to the real world who would pay $4 for a cup of coffee at your shop if there were coffee stands on the sidewalk literally every 100 meters offering excellent free coffee for you to grab with some ads printed on the cup.<p>That's about the sort of competition that mobile app developers have to put up with. Starbucks however didn't have that competition when they started out, that's why they could become so big in the first place.
I was expecting this to go in a different direction when I read the headline, which is this: a decision to buy and experience an app does not have a guaranteed ending. The app could easily command more of my attention than I want it to, which--not to get all self-important here--is valued at way more than $0.99. I personally don't buy apps because I feel attention-saturated by the ones I already have. I do buy cups of coffee regularly, though, because I know where they start and end.
I think this essay touches on something that is obvious yet feels frequently overlooked: time is valuable/money. And apps, unlike coffee, suck up your time.<p>It's not that 99 cents is expensive. It's that if 1 hour of my time is worth $50, and a 99 cent app wastes 1 hour of time, I'm out $50.99. The low price tag is itself a disincentive because experience has taught me that it's very rare to find something indisputably worth $9.99 that has been valued (by its own creator!) for 99 cents.<p>And as a technical issue, if you were to pick up apps because they were free or cheap, you'd subject yourself to cognitive overload, even if you never even opened those apps and wasted time on them. Nothing is ever free, and even if Starbucks/Peet's is a bit overpriced, at least I know what I'm committed to (barring an unexpected discovery that coffee is much more harmful than previously thought).
I have fond memories of freeware and postcardware from a few decades back. In contrast, I'm rarely impressed with either free or paid apps.<p>The most solid apps I use just promote or expand another primary product. They're made as an adjunct by a company with a different revenue stream.<p>I don't know if it's walled gardens or the ease of payment that drives the shift. I'm glad people can get paid for good work, but I worry we lost something.<p>On the other hand, maybe it's just nostalgia taking. I wish I could find all the old astronomy simulators and games I found on BBSs, see if any of them actually hold up. Maybe software overall has gotten so much better I just raised my standards.
My coffee spending is naturally capped at a level that is imperceptible to my budget. That's why I feel comfortable blowing the $4 on a cup - without any conscious decision making.<p>That's not the case with apps. I could easily spend a thousand bucks on them in a single day, so I am very careful with every single $.99.
This is a survivorship bias article.<p>- "People are building fantastic free apps. They are finding new and creative ways to make money off these apps" People drop $4 on coffee at new coffee places/restaurants all the time, so that whole I trust this experience thing is really not valid when you think about it a little further than your morning Starbucks.<p>- "Fact: Starbucks Has No Free Alternative" - This can be interpreted to say that maybe more apps should be $0.99, so that users get used to paying for the apps. I dont think anyone would question the $0.99 price for apps if thats how it was from the beginning.
- "People are building fantastic free apps. They are finding new and creative ways to make money off these apps". This is because the prevalence of free apps has trained developers that people wont pay for apps. So new/creative ways of making money is most likely a result of there not being a way to make money by selling the app itself. Another way to look at it is, because you cant make money just selling the app, the only people who survive are people who can find other ways of making money. If the expectations was for apps to be paid, maybe more people would make apps and we would see a whole different world of apps.<p>I realize that its hard to change consumer habits, so free is likely to be the dominant distribution model. But its important to distinguish that the current reality might not be the best alternative.
This is why free to play, apps that offer premium modes, or apps that have social conversions are good models for a digital store. When there is almost no barrier to entry users have good reason to doubt the value of what they are downloading. Hence they want to try it first or hear strongly from a trusted source that it is valuable.
Well, considering "Save The <$INSERT-CAUSE-OF-THE-DAY>" charities have been peddling "For the cost of a cup of coffee a day" scams for years rather successfully I would be shocked if it did not work. Of course it may require TV ads.
The cost of goods on a cup of Starbucks coffee is substantial (servers, beans, equipment, rent, utilities, cup, creamer)<p>The cost of goods on your $1 app is close to, and perceived to be, zero.
The best model would be to have an app that slowly unlocks more functionality based off off TOTAL revenue, so the whales effectively unlock content for the non-spenders.
> <i>Is There Hope for the Paid App?<p>Sure there is. Just do what Starbucks does:<p>• Build an app experience that’s unique and doesn’t feel “easily replicated”<p>• Provide something the user sees as valuable to their daily life<p>• Package it such that it shows off its craftsmanship
Find creative ways to profit off of a “free” version (Starbucks doesn’t do this…. yet)<p>• Quit complaining about money wasted on cups of coffee</i><p>Don't forget the part about spending millions on advertising, so that people know what your product is.
People who make this comparison wildly underestimate how much I like coffee. It's a lot more than your dumb app, I assure you. In fact, I'll go further. There isn't an app in <i>existence</i> that I'd trade for coffee. Not Facebook or Instagram or anything else on my home screen. Coffee is better than <i>all of them</i>. This comparison could only be made by somebody who doesn't drink coffee.
I agree with the author. Although the author didn't mention apps being "digital" as a reason for no sales, others have done so and I commented on that not being a convincing roadblock: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13634892" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13634892</a>
I don't think it's supposed to be an analogy, the point is just to illustrate that 1 dollar is a very small amount of money and you shouldn't hesitate to spend it on an app.
Let's also not forget that an app is a digital experience and coffee is a physical one.<p>Plus even if the facts the author wrote were not true, it's just overused at this point anyway.
> Last week I bought a game for 99 cents and it was terrible. I played it once, for 15 seconds. I could be shoving $1 straight down the toilet again for all I know. Your app, good sir, is a total gamble. Sure, it’s only a $1 gamble… but it’s a gamble and that fact matters more than any price you might place on it.<p>Haven't the ability to return apps been around for like, 6-7 years?<p>EDIT: I see downthread that this has apparently changed
I think there is another piece to this. Buying a cup of coffee means I get a cup of coffee. Buying your $0.99 app means I have the right to trade my time for whatever your app provides. The reason I don't buy apps is because I don't have the time to spend on your app, not because I think the $1 is strictly more valuable elsewhere.
I don't mind buying something for a dollar and with the knowledge that it might not be that good. Gambling with a dollar is not exactly going to ruin me.
bad luck for such developers, i don't drink coffee, neither drink beer<p>actually i can't think of thing i would buy daily which would be waste of money and not essential<p>if the app is useful like launcher or calendar reminders i am willing to pay, but i have trouble to imagine more paid apps i would be willing to pay with great free alternatives
I wish the emphasis in TFA was not on "craftmanship",<p>1) it's a tired metaphor with weird resonances to a male dominated guild structure.<p>2) even the positive aspects don't really apply to Starbucks which is more fits the "well oiled machine" analogy. If i think of craft coffee, I think of a small (possibly independent) coffee shop where the baristas really know what they are doing<p>3) I think that customers do care about Quality, but they dont' (en masse) care about craft, your journey is not of typically of interest to them, just your results.<p>The article relies too much on a notion of <i>craft</i> which describes how a product is made, I believe that the consumer cares about the <i>quality</i> which is the result of that journey, only a fraction of customers care about the process.