3 ms·

This is a survivorship bias article. - "People are building fantastic free apps. They are finding new and creative ways to make money off these apps" People dr

This is a survivorship bias article. - "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. - "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. 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.

Endy 9y ago
They're not really correct that Starbucks has no free alternative. However, this depends on several understandings. The first for me is a sort of A=A mindset, that coffee=coffee regardless of all else. Assuming for the moment ground coffee rather than whole-bean or instant, I can get over a month's supply for about 5 bucks. It's not "free", but it's $60 a year for a pot of coffee per day. On top of that, if I don't want to make my own coffee, a $1 coffee mug allows me to get refills at 7-11. And I can get coffee at the food bank reliably. While you might argue that I'm discounting the cost of the water and electricity, I'd argue that instead we're talking about the same issue as the cost of the phone. I have a $20 phone which works well for me. But any purchase in the Play Store is getting judged against that $20 value; if the phone were worth more there'd be no hope of an app significantly increasing the value of the phone. There's no app I really need that's not free (or OEM like phone, text, memo, camera, ebook reader). The few that I do want or which I might need? I can get that function working in a browser.

Endy 9y ago

They're not really correct that Starbucks has no free alternative. However, this depends on several understandings. The first for me is a sort of A=A mindset, that coffee=coffee regardless of all else. Assuming for the moment ground coffee rather than whole-bean or instant, I can get over a month's supply for about 5 bucks. It's not "free", but it's $60 a year for a pot of coffee per day. On top of that, if I don't want to make my own coffee, a $1 coffee mug allows me to get refills at 7-11. And I can get coffee at the food bank reliably. While you might argue that I'm discounting the cost of the water and electricity, I'd argue that instead we're talking about the same issue as the cost of the phone. I have a $20 phone which works well for me. But any purchase in the Play Store is getting judged against that $20 value; if the phone were worth more there'd be no hope of an app significantly increasing the value of the phone. There's no app I really need that's not free (or OEM like phone, text, memo, camera, ebook reader). The few that I do want or which I might need? I can get that function working in a browser.