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Wolfram Alpha iPhone app costs $50 [iTunes link]
- protomyth 17y agook, I'll ask the stupid question, what is my advantage in using this app as opposed to just pulling up the site on mobile safari? I cannot see the difference.
- henning 17y agoI'm wondering exactly the same thing myself. The app is only 0.5 MB in size so they couldn't possibly be licensing a standalone copy of the evaluation engine the way a chess playing game gives you a copy of the game evaluation engine.
- protomyth 17y agoGiven what the screen looks like, it seems like it is just a custom webkit view. There is no mention of local storage or processing (it says "connect to Wolfram|Alpha's supercomputing cloud").
- protomyth 17y agoOn a side note, it will be telling how many reviews there are based on the fact you need to buy the app to review it.
- colinplamondon 17y agoNope- people who get free download coupons can review as well. This is why the first ten reviews after every update for every application are so positive.
- nirmal 17y agoIt has one 5-star review. iTunes doesn't seem to let you copy/paste review text... http://twitpic.com/m1s8m http://twitpic.com/m1s8m
- lispm 17y agoCIA analysts? Not sure if that is helping the app.
- hvs 17y agoThat's a good way to guarantee that no one uses your app. Especially when it is to access a service that no one uses anyway.
- jws 17y agoMaybe he is co-marketing with Dyson.
- amichail 17y agoMaybe this is just their marketing strategy? Get lots of free publicity as a result of the high price? Later they might lower it to something reasonable.
- caffeine 17y agoThat's a good way to guarantee that no one uses your app Exactly. It will therefore appeal to the market of geeks with disposable income - people who enjoy paying for something cool and exclusive. People who buy $500 mobile surveillance bots on ThinkGeek, mainly because nobody else has one. Maybe the solution to the "race to the bottom" in the App store is simply to make really high quality apps (not claiming that W@ is) and sell them for a really high price. Though, personally, I wouldn't buy such apps unless I felt safe about being able to back them up, transfer them to new phones, and most importantly that they wouldn't get "removed" from the store at a moment's notice.
- ptomato 17y agoOther than the "removed from the store" thing, you can backup the app, use it on a new phone, redownload it without repaying for it, etc.
- cmelbye 17y agoApple is very good about refunds. Their support is friendly, and in my experience they've had the refund processed within a week. Also, the App Store allows users to redownload applications to new devices under the same account as needed, and applications can be synced to multiple devices within iTunes.
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- adrinavarro 17y agoThe app looks nice, but nothing amazing, just a native viewer for the website contents. Hey, I can code this one in two hours. Definitely not worth the price.
- mynameishere 17y agoYou make less than 25 dollars an hour? ED: Five downmods? Okay. If so-and-so wants a product that costs 50 dollars, and his time is worth 30/dollars an hour, then it doesn't make sense for him to spend 2 hours remaking it. If his time is worth 20/hour, then it does make sense. What part of this is offensive? The Math 101 or the Econ 101?
- thras 17y agoYou generally plan on selling more than one.
- DougBTX 17y agoChances are he gets paid a salary, so working on this project would not reduce his income. Considering his skill set, he is better off working on this, so he can spend the $50 on something which would take him longer to build, for example a toaster. Do they cover specialization of labour in Econ 101 still?
- Dilpil 17y agoGreat word of mouth advertising: the legendary $50 app.
- halo 17y agoRequires iTunes. Can you please put this in the title?
- iseff 17y agoA shameless plug of my own site, but hopefully helpful to those not wanting to open iTunes: http://www.appstorehq.com/wolframalpha-iphone-77717/app http://www.appstorehq.com/wolframalpha-iphone-77717/app
- w1ntermute 17y agohopefully helpful to those not wanting to open iTunes Why do people assume that everyone has iTunes installed? I wouldn't let my computer touch that resource-hogging piece of shit with a 10 foot pole.
- unalone 17y agoBecause it's maybe the most prevalent piece of software that exists today, save for web browsers and Microsoft Office? This is a discussion about an iPhone app, located in iTunes, and the browser URL points to apple.com. Everything points to you should have known before clicking where it was going. Furthermore, it's not like Apple fucks up your machine if you clicked and didn't have iTunes. It just told you you couldn't see the page, which is true.
- tptacek 17y agoNo, it just pulls focus off my HN window, changes Spaces desktops, pops off whatever was selected in iTunes before and replaces it with a link to a $49.99 iTunes app.
- unalone 17y agoHm. Yes, that could be irritating. I have iTunes set not to take focus, though, and I don't use Spaces (OT: Might I ask you how you set it up to work efficiently for you? I'm always curious about stuff like that), so I guess I hadn't thought much about how other people might experience the link.
- fjabre 17y agoYikes.. This feels awkward.. A $50 iPhone app with a name like WolframAlpha - how can these guys lose?
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoBetween this and their API pricing, I really wonder who makes these genius decisions. Do they talk to customers or people AT ALL? You could have talked to your community/potential buyers easily. Ask HN: How much would you pay for a wolfram alpha iphone app? and Ask HN: How much would you pay for API access? would have resulted in more than enough initial market research.
- gojomo 17y agoBring back the $999.99 "I Am Rich" app!
- rebelvc 17y agoI'm willing to bet that it will become a top grossing apps. The premium price will make a some people feel like they it is an app they really need. Some will buy it to show off.
- bcl 17y agoMaybe if you could talk to it to input the question like the google voice search app. How can anyone in their right mind drop $50 for an app that you could just as easily use the browser for? (and I just tried it, almost exactly the same as their example page.