Fair enough. The notoriety or devotion to the brand and other "soft" benefits also have weight on the utility of a product. The traits like material used and en

Fair enough. The notoriety or devotion to the brand and other "soft" benefits also have weight on the utility of a product. The traits like material used and engineering are encompassed within the utility. If an app runs better, it's worth more. If it looks better, it's worth more. So yes, people will value TB for Mac differently. But that doesn't defend the initial sentiment. Those guys did not argue something akin to "I like the Tapbots Guys and the aesthetic of the product has value, so I will pay more." In fact, they argued close to the opposite. Regardless of the value people get (which is going to vary by person), they assert that the product is worth that much to everyone because of the effort that went in to it. They were actually indignant that people did not see $20 worth of value in the app. I don't believe that perception of value is absolute. In regards to the defense of the price, I don't think the fact that they are resource-constrained changes the endgame: they want to make money. Conceivably, TapBots wants to accrue a large amount of money over the lifetime of TweetBot. This artificial constraint changes their ability to earn money because the number of sales is limited and life of the product is shortened. So, they charge more to compensate for Twitter's absurd policies. That does not change their motives, it just changes their strategy. They're not being coerced by Twitter to sell it for $20. They could sell it for $10 or $15, and could likely make a profit, but it would be substantially less than if they were to sell it for more. It's all in pursuit of money. Like I said, this isn't bad. I admire people who are capable of creating such rabid fans and defenders, and who can get away selling an app at far above the market average.