There are some apps we've kept on our phone for a long time. Some we play for just a moment or 2 and then we're done with it. Sometimes we hit a perfect stride with an app and just keep it on forever.
In those cases where we buy the app once and we continue to continue to use it after many many iterations, the return to the developer gets smaller. I bought Solid Explorer when it first came out and paid a few dollars for it, and I use it still. At some point the $/yr I've contributed to the product gets quite small. There can be a whole debate about apps and what you should charge, and taking into effect the longevity of the product. It's something I don't think many of us have given us much thought to as the 'app era' is still fairly new to us.
We buy a Windows or Office license and we can use it continually fo ra while, sure what we paid for is bug fixes, but when new features come out in a newer version they don't automatically apply it to the version we've bought.
So it goes with apps... but we expect that our $1.99 would cover us forever for updates, bugs and new features. All of which will take the developer time to do. They would need a large client base to be able to support their work and continually get new installers to continue to support their... err... support.
Factor in that now and again the game changes with services or the OS and it can make their job harder.
Welcome to Luke Klinker's world. He's developed Talon, a really good client for Twitter (or so I hear, I rarely use Twitter to bother for a 3rd party app). It's got lots of great features, and he's been eager to continue the trend when Android L drops with its Material-goodness.
All these new features are coming at a cost to himself to develop. And normally you bank on the next batch of new clients to help fund. But chances are even though he'll gain some new clients, the majority will be pre-existing clients. So Luke had to come to a tough decision - he's going to make the L version of Talon a separate app that you'll have to pay for. You can see his G+ post about his decision. It's really well written (I'll embed the post at the end as well).
Which leads me to think about should they or shouldn't they do this kind of thing? I remember when 4.0 came out and there seemed to be a big divide between Gingerbread or HOLO themed apps.
My big annoyance is that I paid for Photoshop Touch. At one time there was PSTouch for tablets and for phones. I opted to buy the phone version. Well Adobe has done away with that and just has one version now for $10. Sadly, I can't convert my purchase from the 'for phone' to the 'unified' version. And the 'for phone' doesn't work on my phone. Here's a clear example of the developers not telling the users what they're paying for.
I think Luke does a great job of not following in Adobe's shoes and really explains what the value in buying again.
What do you think?
Source: https://plus.google.com/+LukeKlinker/posts/6e9sDb87du7
In those cases where we buy the app once and we continue to continue to use it after many many iterations, the return to the developer gets smaller. I bought Solid Explorer when it first came out and paid a few dollars for it, and I use it still. At some point the $/yr I've contributed to the product gets quite small. There can be a whole debate about apps and what you should charge, and taking into effect the longevity of the product. It's something I don't think many of us have given us much thought to as the 'app era' is still fairly new to us.
We buy a Windows or Office license and we can use it continually fo ra while, sure what we paid for is bug fixes, but when new features come out in a newer version they don't automatically apply it to the version we've bought.
So it goes with apps... but we expect that our $1.99 would cover us forever for updates, bugs and new features. All of which will take the developer time to do. They would need a large client base to be able to support their work and continually get new installers to continue to support their... err... support.
Factor in that now and again the game changes with services or the OS and it can make their job harder.
Welcome to Luke Klinker's world. He's developed Talon, a really good client for Twitter (or so I hear, I rarely use Twitter to bother for a 3rd party app). It's got lots of great features, and he's been eager to continue the trend when Android L drops with its Material-goodness.
All these new features are coming at a cost to himself to develop. And normally you bank on the next batch of new clients to help fund. But chances are even though he'll gain some new clients, the majority will be pre-existing clients. So Luke had to come to a tough decision - he's going to make the L version of Talon a separate app that you'll have to pay for. You can see his G+ post about his decision. It's really well written (I'll embed the post at the end as well).
Which leads me to think about should they or shouldn't they do this kind of thing? I remember when 4.0 came out and there seemed to be a big divide between Gingerbread or HOLO themed apps.
My big annoyance is that I paid for Photoshop Touch. At one time there was PSTouch for tablets and for phones. I opted to buy the phone version. Well Adobe has done away with that and just has one version now for $10. Sadly, I can't convert my purchase from the 'for phone' to the 'unified' version. And the 'for phone' doesn't work on my phone. Here's a clear example of the developers not telling the users what they're paying for.
I think Luke does a great job of not following in Adobe's shoes and really explains what the value in buying again.
What do you think?
Source: https://plus.google.com/+LukeKlinker/posts/6e9sDb87du7
Comments
Post a Comment