Sure, but people rent movies for $4 without knowing if they'll like it, based solely on reviews. They buy wine they've never had before for $5 or $10. They or

Sure, but people rent movies for $4 without knowing if they'll like it, based solely on reviews. They buy wine they've never had before for $5 or $10. They order food for $5 or $10 or $50 from restaurants they've never been to before. People will even spend $50 or $60 on a game they may or may not like, as long as it's for their computer or their console and not their iPhone. Life is full of uncertainty like that, and most of it costs way, way more than any iPhone applications do. My point is that people who wouldn't balk at spending that kind of money on something else that they may or may not like/use will freak out about an iPhone app that costs that much, and I really don't think there's any rational reason for it: it has nothing to do with uncertainty or expected value, but rather people have just been conditioned to expect that apps are free or $0.99 because the app store is flooded with those apps (just like people expect web-apps to be free just because lots of other web-apps are free), and that's a shame since it makes it that much harder for all the developers that are working on making great applications.