iPhone App Pricing Limits Developers

HardYakka writes "According to this post in the Fortune blog, the iTunes app store has been a boon for users but some developers are saying the number of free and 99 cent apps make it difficult for developers to create complex, higher priced apps. Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory says the iPhone may never get its killer app like the spreadsheet was for the Mac. If Apple does not do something, the store will be left with only ring tones and simple games. Some are suggesting that overpaid developers are the problem and the recession will soon lower the wages and costs for complex apps."

Comments

Spreadsheet

[penguinboy]

Visicalc was an app for the Apple II, not the Mac.

Re:Spreadsheet

[stewbacca]

Pagemaker (or Quark), Freehand (Aldus), Authorware/Director, and Photoshop v1.0 were the killer apps back in the late 80s and early 90s. Those programs are what made the Mac "insanely great" and the IBM compatibles go "beep" in all their mono-color glory.

Re:Spreadsheet

[ishobo]

How about I ask my wife? She works as an artist. Honey, is computer animation a form of graphic design. She says no. You would get no animation training in a BFA or MFA graphics design program. The field is about typography, print and editorial design, branding, information design, and packaging.

Re:Spreadsheet

[morgan_greywolf]

As others pointed out to you, what Pixar and other movie studios do with Linux is CGI, not graphic design or DTP. Those are completely different and unrelated concepts.

Additionally, I'd like to point out that while you can certainly do professional graphic design on Linux these days (I do, personally. Surprise! I don't even own a Mac!), there isn't much depth in terms of software choice, and the software that does work is still immature.

You have two good illustration programs -- Inkscape and Xara. Inkscape isn't too bad and it's gotten lots better, but is still missing key features like automatic drop shadows. Xara is okayish, but uses a non-standard file format, is limited in some ways and is pretty unstable.

You have one good photo editing application -- the GIMP. And it lacks a lot of Photoshops really slick 3rd party plugins and the ability to modify photos in CMYK mode. -- But note that it does do CMYK seps, which is really all you need.

There's only one good DTP layout package, and that's Scribus. Scribus is still lacking in some areas compared to major closed-source apps like QuarkXPress and PageMaker -- mostly in the prepress area. It's also less stable than I would like. It does output to PDF, which is good enough for many service bureaus, however.

Now let's compare with the Mac: You have industry standards like Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand on the illustration front. Plus, you can run Inkscape on OS X. You have Photoshop, you have QuarkXpress, you have PageMaker. And you have Scribus and GIMP.

And that just touches the surface. There are so many more applications on the Mac. Plus, Macintosh fonts tend to be rather better than their Windows/Linux equivalents -- the font designers pay much more attention to kerning details and such on the Mac than they do on Windows for some reason.

After having said all that....I don't own a Mac, though I have used one in the course of my professional graphic design work. I use Linux because I prefer the concepts free and open source software over closed-source, proprietary stuff ripe with vendor lock-in, etc.

Re:Spreadsheet

[disunencoded]

You would get no animation training in a BFA or MFA graphics design program. The field is about typography, print and editorial design, branding, information design, and packaging.

That sort of depends on the school and the artist's interests. Specialty art schools usually offer several computer animation courses and you can take as electives. At my former college, (http://www.ccad.edu) it was pretty common for advertising and graphic arts majors to take a computer modeling class that had some animation training as part of the coursework. Hell, that was true for me even over a decade ago.

Re:Spreadsheet

[atmurray]

"Bigtime movie producers" can afford to employ people with the sole purpose of maintaining and configuring linux. Small/Medium businesses that specialise in graphic design like to do just that, graphic design. They don't want to have to open up a console to pair a bluetooth mouse (although I am told the latest version of Ubuntu has changed this). Yes linux is getting better by the day, but it isn't quite there for some users.

Re:Spreadsheet

[ishobo]

Well, since GD has nothing to do with animation, it is not nonsense. You can use 3-D tools but that does not equate GD to animation. The field has nothing to do with animation. You could take electives on photography and scultpure, but you cannot say photography is the same as graphic design. Animation and GD are two distinct fields in the the realm of visual arts.

Re:Spreadsheet

[andrewbutts]

I am sitting at my desk at Pixar right now. Our graphic designers use macs.

Re:Spreadsheet

[JohnnyBGod]

I've run and used daily both an OS X and an Ubuntu workstation for several years, and in that time I've essentially given up on trying to make A/V playback, browser plugins, or even multiple-screen use work on the linux box.

Nowadays, all it takes to make A/V and plugins work on Ubuntu is "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras". Really, that's it.

Re:Spreadsheet

[drerwk]

I'm not positive that the Laser Writer was the first laser printer - but it sure did work well. I think this was critical in addition to the applications you list.

Like spreadsheets for the MAC?

[way2trivial]

What the Hell? spreedsheets were the killer app for PC's period.

it was not mac-specific-- it was a much earlier dawn of the PC age.

"VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It may well be the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool.[1] VisiCalc sold over 700,000 copies in six years.[2]"

Re:Like spreadsheets for the MAC?

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Visicalc came out for mac first....

Sorry. Visicalc was running on the IBM PC before Macs were made. It actually came out for Apple ][, first - before the IBM PC was made.

Re:Like spreadsheets for the MAC?

[LMacG]

WTF? Who "currently recognizes" an ancient Apple II as a "Mac"?

Half truth

[cpct0]

I'm an iPhone developer. My company have been in the top sellers in US and Canada. And I agree, with some reserve, to what is being written.

If you look at the games that are produced on the iPhone, they are very good, frankly, many of them have many hours of replay value, many of the apps are top notch, and compared to other phones, they are of insane quality. And for a game that we sell more than $20 on any PC, and even more on consoles, we can only barely nudge a $5 on the iPhone, for nearly the same production quality. That's thousands and thousands of man-hour of work, sold at $5. Think about that. Even then, we got average results: either the comments were raving on our game, either people were giving one star and saying it was way too expensive. That's total bull. And that's what's pissing off people creating solid applications.

When the iPhone started, some games (like Monkey Ball) were $10. Some productivity apps were $10 to $15. I paid for a few $10 software, and they were with ample merit. Omnifocus is such a tool, real great, well made, even the v1 was excellent. Then, the top sellers became $5 software. Now it's mostly $1 software.

And that's where I put my grumpy developer shell on the shelf. Frankly, I congratulate $1 games and free games and $1 leisure and productivity tools. They make sure we are not paying $5 like on other phones to get a total piece of crap snorted out by a subcontract firm in 2 weeks. They make sure if we want to pay $5, it's for a good reason. That a software becomes a meme and gets sold by the thousands for 2 weeks and then get replaced by the following meme, I congratulate them. The only reason we are noticing these is because the way the ITMS works "free" and "pay" tops, and nothing else.

Many good applications cost much more, and hopefully they are getting their own crowd and their own push, with their own publicity. Like on PC with freewares and sharewares and commercial software, you pay mostly by merit.

Re:Cry me a river...

[Red Flayer]

The iPhone is the first and foremost platform for cellphones these days.

[citation needed]. Truth is, Symbian still dominates the mobile platform market, with RiM in second (though Apple is closing in on Rim).

Apple's market share is about 1/4 that of Symbian.

Please, don't talk out your ass about market share without doing your homework.

Re:It's a stupid rant

[ScrewMaster]

There are still programs we pay for that are $3,000+ a seat

Some of the simulation programs my company uses cost $75,000 a seat. It's a thunk, but it's not a huge market and compared to the cost of building and tweaking dozens of prototypes ... well worth the money.

Re:Well, that is the problem right there

[Free the Cowards]

Guess what. Cellphones APPS DO NOT SELL IF THEY ARE EXPENSIVE.

Tell that to Omni, who are making a killing off of OmniFocus at $20 a pop.

Re:What a whiner.

[sirambrose]

Lots of developers are making free versions, but apple restricts the developer from using the free version as an effective demo for the full version in the same ways that developers could on palm or windows mobile. Nearly all complex applications for palmOS had a time limited demo that allowed the user to try all the features. Usually the software would have a popup that reminded the user to pay for the software. If you didn't register after a few weeks, the software would disable all the advanced features or display a nag screen for 30 seconds at startup. Apple forbids an iPhone application from doing all these things.

As a result, developers have to find a way to produce a fully functional free version of their software that lacks a few features that the majority of their users will pay extra for. In many cases, the majority of users will not pay extra for premium features even though they would have paid for a well built application on palmOS. People porting applications from palmOS are finding that they need to price their application lower on the iPhone store even though it is better than the other choices in the category. For example, the PocketMoney finance application cost $30 on PalmOS and it costs $10 on iPhone because people are reluctant to try applications without a demo version. If the author released a free version, it would probably be better than the vast majority of similar applications and very few users would pay for the full version.

Re:Add Top Apps for more price ranges

[teh kurisu]

Old news, this has already been fixed.