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> Or a free app that is just done as a thank you to the community that has supported them over the years? What would be wrong with this? That would be a very e

> Or a free app that is just done as a thank you to the community that has supported them over the years? What would be wrong with this? That would be a very expensive thank you for a tiny business! Given Panic's level of polish and concomitant development timelines, I expect this app took several months of a designer's time and at least six months of an engineer's time—probably more like nine. Then QA, support, etc. I'd guess we're looking at a >$150k price tag here, plus ongoing maintenance. As to paying for itself via bringing new users into their customer base: given the average sale price of their desktop software, this iOS app would have to generate several thousand net-new sales. That doesn't seem wildly outlandish to me, but I'd guess one order of magnitude fewer is more likely.

natch 9y ago
You haven't responded to the point that the cost is sunk. I have made free apps and the indirect dividends have been huge. You yourself make a free app (and I donate to it monthly, hurray for me) and yet you don't see why anyone would want to make a free app?
natch 9y ago
>That would be a very expensive thank you for a tiny business! I wonder why they don't just scale back the maintenance to bare bones and make it free. The past cost is already behind them... removing it from the store won't fix that. They even did the iPhone X compatibility updates already. For the new protocols and cloud services they'd like to add, I could see an intern tackling that, for a relatively lower cost (not free) compared to a developer. So I'm not so sure the numbers couldn't work out.