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Apple pushing iPhone developers to charge for would-be free apps - Page 4

post #121 of 152
6/6/08 at 5:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland View Post

Thank you!

Don't thank him until you try his app!

Proud AAPL stock owner.

 

GOA

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Proud AAPL stock owner.

 

GOA

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post #122 of 152
6/6/08 at 6:32pm
Owning a couple of online stores myself I find 30% is a steal. Google alone can consume over 50% of your profits, not to mention maintaining the website, PayPal and bank accounts.

So Apple is being a good Apple with this deal.

Ron Paul

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Ron Paul

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post #123 of 152
6/6/08 at 6:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bloggerblog View Post

Owning a couple of online stores myself I find 30% is a steal. Google alone can consume over 50% of your profits, not to mention maintaining the website, PayPal and bank accounts.

So Apple is being a good Apple with this deal.

How does Google take that much?

It would be nice if you could break it down more specifically. Even though others charge more, it's stated often among all forums that Apple is raping the developers. A first person example would be great for future reference.
Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"
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post #124 of 152
6/6/08 at 7:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

How does Google take that much?

It would be nice if you could break it down more specifically. Even though others charge more, it's stated often among all forums that Apple is raping the developers. A first person example would be great for future reference.

Advertising. Probably the best thing about the Apple store is a huge collection of existing customers for your Apps. Without customers you don't have a business.
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post #125 of 152
6/6/08 at 7:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by winterspan View Post

First, turn of the caps, it makes you look like a complete jackass. Secondly, do you have any concept of the open source community and what has been contributed from programmers for free for decades. You are on an Apple fan website, so I assume you use Mac OSX, the core and foundation of which is all open source, CREATED FOR FREE BY PASSIONATE DEVELOPERS! I'm sure you like to browse the web, right??? Well 60% of the web runs on Linux (free) and Apache web server (free).

Most of those use some form of programming language, right. PHP (free), Ruby (free), Python (free), Perl (free), etc.
I'm sure they have a database for website/web app, right. MySql(free), PostgreSql (free), SqlLite(free), etc
Debugging tolls, development environments, etc. Many are free.
Web frameworks? mostly all free.
Most popular blogging software? Free
Web browsers like Safari/Webkit (free) or Firefox (free) or Opera (free)? What about browser extensions? Free.
What do your developer program with? What development environment do they use? What tools and utilities do they use? I GUARANTEE some of them are free.

Even major commercial applications use some form of free or open source software. There are countless low-level software libraries and utilities that used throughout the commercial software world like.

In academic scientific fields, free and open source software dominates the entire landscape. Chemistry, Biology, Molecular Biology, Computational Biology, Physics, Astronomy, Mathematics, Geology, Paleontology, etc etc etc. And not only in science, but ever other academic discipline sees some use out of free software.

I haven't even mentioned the *HUGE* variety of useful, polished, and FREE open source and freeware applications available for end users for OSX, Windows, and Linux.

The following is not a pasted list. I actually went through them and found just the ones I am familar with and have used before:
Adium, AVG anti-virus, AviSynth, Cinelerra, VirtualDub, ClamWin anti-virus, 7Zip, AbiWord, Acid Express, Firefox, Google Earth, Adaware, Anim8or, Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat, Aptana, Audacity, Avast, Azureus, Blender 3-D, Cinepaint, Cygwin, Cyberduck, DVDFlick, DVDShrink, Democracy Player, Eclipse, Ethereal, FileZilla, Filseclab, Flac, Frostwire, Fluidsynth, Foxit, Gaim, Gimpshop, Google Picasa, Groovy, Handbrake, Infrarecorder, Inkscape, Irfanview, Joost, Juice, Kerio Firewall, Komodo Edit, K3D, MacTheRipper, Netstumbler, Ogg Vorbis, Open SSH, OpenOffice.org, Opera, Outpost, PDF Creator, Paint.Net, Thunderbird, TrueCrypt, Pidgin, Pixia, Pixen, Putty, Quasar, RSSBandit, Scribus, Selenium, SharpDevelop, Sketch It Up, Skype, Songbird, Spybot, Spyware Blaster, Trillian, UltraVNC, VirtualBox, VirtualWin, VNC Player, WinSCP, XAMPP, PovRay..........

Bottom line.. Free and open source software has made a huge impact on modern software and computing in general, and is an excellent movement to join.


Do you realize that 99% of those free software have a paid option, for better support or more features?

Exactly what Apple is trying to get the developers to do, according to this article.
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post #126 of 152
6/6/08 at 11:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mbradley67 View Post

I was already under the assumption that most of the apps would cost money anyways...

What's a good free app? the AIM client?
Games and everything will of course cost money.

I would be shocked if a high quantity of solid apps come out as free.

This is not a good sign. There are plenty of good free apps. Have a look at LyX for example. One can only hope that the Mac doesn't return to the days of the early 90's...
A trend towards taking Open Source sw and touching it up a bit and charging would not be good.

philip
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post #127 of 152
6/6/08 at 11:24pm
The story here is that Apple made a big deal of all the free apps they'd be hosting; the rumor of their encouraging charging is contradictory to the hype. Maybe the rumor isn't even true, but that's hardly the point. It's just a rumor. Given that, it's odd to see so many people saying they don't care. It's equally odd to see that people who do care (reasonably so, I think) are being flamed.

Who the hell knows what hosting all those programs costs Apple? I'm inclined to think they'll cash-in either way: if they encourage pricing or if they don't. They would certainly garner more good will if they took the latter course. When has Apple ever been concerned about that, however? I'm not saying they have to be concerned. It's just interesting that they're not. And it's interesting that so many people are seemingly oblivious or apologetic of this.

All discussion of Apple being a for-profit company are irrelevant. That's a given. The for-profit company hyped free apps. People are supposed to believe that Apple just suddenly reevaluated its business model--that Apple just realized free hosting could cost them a lot of money? No. Their coaxing for fees is a back-door strategy for more.

On a tangent, relating to OS X and BSD, there are people in the open source community who resent what Apple has done. A great many in fact. These people are whack-jobs like Stallman who discourage profit from open source on principle. What is this principle? Who knows? They hate BSD because of what it offers in terms of proprietary rights. They even want to strip companies like Tivo of their earning power from wholly open sources like Linux. (Here, it's worth noting that Torvalds is eminently more reasonable and that he's not concerned with whether or not others profit from open source software. Personally, I like people who aren't threatened by success.)
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When will the governments realize it's got to be funky, sexy ladies?
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post #128 of 152
6/6/08 at 11:56pm
"Do you realize that 99% of those free software have a paid option, for better support or more features?"

Perhaps for support. I highly doubt the 99% figure for more features. There are many quality applications that are free. There is nothing wrong in charging for work based on open source sw, although I do think a good supply of free sw will only help the hardware platform.

On a (un)related note, I am a bit uneasy about our information exchange medium being based on profit based models. You don't need to pay someone to translate a typical conversation. I do think there is something unpleasant about charging for information and yet we all do it.

philip
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post #129 of 152
6/7/08 at 5:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by WIJG View Post


No. Their coaxing for fees is a back-door strategy for more.

I don't think it is Apple who will set the price for the apps, it is more likely that's the prerogative of the developers.
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post #130 of 152
6/7/08 at 6:54am
I'm wondering if Apple is missing the big picture here.

Having a large library of apps, especially free ones, keeps people coming to look at the store. More exposure for everything they DO sell.

I'm thinking about how it works with iTunes. I download 20+ podcasts a week. It keeps me coming back to the iTunes store regularly, occasionally actually buying something I see as well. If I had not been there specifically for the free content in the first place, I would never have seen the items I did end up buying.
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post #131 of 152
6/7/08 at 7:29am
I've always planned to charge a little bit for the casual games I'm developing under the Cocoa Touch Games moniker, but it would sure as hell help if I knew more than one other Canadian who had his bloody certification, first!

Come on Apple, I have my $99 in hand, let's get going on the certifications, shall we?

PS. I do expect this to change come Monday, very rapidly.
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post #132 of 152
6/7/08 at 7:48am
This sounds reasonable.

Software takes a lot of time and effort, and if you just give it away, you have no real motivation to keep innovating it, or maybe take advantage of new features in new iphone releases.

A little bit of money makes for some great motivation to make great stuff... free is great, but you should not fail to consider all options when you have a software product that you want to share.
You can't quantify how much I don't care -- Bob Kevoian of the Bob and Tom Show.
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You can't quantify how much I don't care -- Bob Kevoian of the Bob and Tom Show.
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post #133 of 152
6/7/08 at 8:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by a_greer View Post

Software takes a lot of time and effort, and if you just give it away, you have no real motivation to keep innovating it, or maybe take advantage of new features in new iphone releases.

The usual motivation for sharing your code is so that other developers contribute to your code improving it and adding features. Usually other developers do not do that if you're selling the product, without getting some payback themselves for their work.

So I can see why Apple charging will have the exact opposite effect on some products and preclude entry for some open source projects entirely. It was already on shaky ground with the $99 fee for joining the app store.

I just hope someone gets around the app store requirement (yes I know about jailbreaking but that seems to have been causing bricking on updates in the past) in a way that allows other stores and free distribution. Having Apple as the gatekeeper and 'suggesting' terms might be ok for the majority but there's plenty of people uneasy with that.
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post #134 of 152
6/7/08 at 11:57am
IMO, this move by Apple makes a great deal of sense. Furthermore, it doesn't stop a developer from pushing a "lite", free version of an app, and one where one pays to obtain a version with features mainstream users might not be inclined to pay for.

I think what Apple is trying to avoid is what I'm seeing in the video production business. If you give away stuff for free, pretty soon it becomes impossible for anyone to make coin, period. You then face an uphill battle convincing customers that your labor is worth something, and are left with no choice but to charge fat fees for "consulting" and the like. Not the greatest of business models, I would suggest.

As for software I use, I don't have a problem with using shareware or open source software. For instance, Camino is my web browser of choice. However, because it's free, I don't think I'm in the right to beat up the development team over their feature choices. (Indeed, they would most likely tell me to get off my a$$, learn Objective-C, and help them...) OTOH, if indeed I'm paying something, anything for an app, I think that gives me the right to (politely) take issue with that app when it doesn't work as advertised.
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post #135 of 152
6/7/08 at 12:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Damon View Post

IMO, this move by Apple makes a great deal of sense.

Shut up!!

DaHarder just got banned. Let's crack open the champagne.

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DaHarder just got banned. Let's crack open the champagne.

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post #136 of 152
6/7/08 at 1:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by merdhead View Post

Indeed. He reformatted his iPhone for our sins. Now for some important philosophical questions:

- Would Jesus jailbreak his iPhone?
- What does Jesus listen to/watch on his phone?
- If Jesus has an iPhone, does the devil have a Nokia?

I'm open to an intense theological debate on these issues.

I don't think Jesus would need a mechanical device to communicate directly to you.
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post #137 of 152
6/7/08 at 4:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by macinthe408 View Post

For reference, I pulled out my decrepit Treo 680 and went to its online store. It's like watching old people fuck.

I laughed so hard that milk came out my nose!

QUOTE=macinthe408;1260870]Apple just friggin' gets it, and not just gimmicky hardware, where others seem to have their buck stop at. They make sure every last detail is awesome. Squared.[/QUOTE]

Agreed! Apple have proved that attention to detail is what people really want, not vague functionality in a cheap plastic enclosure.
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post #138 of 152
6/8/08 at 5:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by a_greer View Post

This sounds reasonable.

Software takes a lot of time and effort, and if you just give it away, you have no real motivation to keep innovating it, or maybe take advantage of new features in new iphone releases.

A little bit of money makes for some great motivation to make great stuff... free is great, but you should not fail to consider all options when you have a software product that you want to share.

A lot of things take time and effort. That doesn't mean financial return is the only motivation. True artists typically do not operate that way.

philip
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post #139 of 152
6/9/08 at 4:22am
The key word in the story is 'encourage'.

Apple are not forcing anyone to charge for an application, if you want it to be free then it can be free. I suggest what they are doing is pointing out the benefits from charging at least something for an application, which they have every right to do as it is there service being used after all.

Get a grip!
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post #140 of 152
6/9/08 at 8:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by merdhead View Post

Really, what are you majors? "Superstitious Cults of the Last 2000 Years" and "Indoctronation Jesus Style"?

This explains why you're offended by pretty much every reply to your posts.

Really? I though it was more due to the fact that someone was:

1) SHOUTING AT HIM. (undeniably rude regardless of the content of the message)
2) Making needless personal shots (still lives with parents; leeching off them financially - both of which were rationally refuted).

Now, people are attempting to bait him to lash out again by diverting comeletely off-topic and intentionally dropping blatant anti-religious comments, and yet he hasn't felt compelled to address any of that in this thread. Insecure much?
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post #141 of 152
6/9/08 at 11:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by zeasar View Post

Oh how I enjoy the breath of free air (be it fresh or polluted), how I enjoy waking up to the free sound of birds sining outside my window every morning, and how I enjoy free chatting to some wise old man at the park at weekends.

Everything in life IS free, it only becomes "not free" when man puts a price tag on it.

Finally, someone with common sense.

philip
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post #142 of 152
6/10/08 at 5:44am
Hey philip, if you want everyone to know you're philip, you could have just made your username, oh I don't know, something like philip. (It would help your "common-sense" argument. )

You asserted that "true" artists don't charge for their work. Does that mean "true" farmers don't charge for their produce? Does that mean that "true" ditch diggers don't charge for the ditches they dig?

You seem genuinely offended by the exchange of goods except through charity. Keep in mind that the only time true 100% communism has worked in all of recorded human history, is in small and isolated socio-economic units such as remote villages. To prefer that lifestyle is perfectly reasonable, but you shouldn't expect things like 3rd party iPhone apps to be possible in such villages. At some point in the future, technology may make pure communism pheasible. But until then, you just might have to pay for goods and services, even in what are now considered communist nations. How's that for common sense?
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post #143 of 152
6/10/08 at 7:07am
How difficult is the iPhone SDK to use? I would love to try throwing together a small interactive program (better looking than an interactive QT movie) but don't know if I should jump in. I studied BASIC over 2 decades ago and can barely remember any of it.

 

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Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

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post #144 of 152
6/10/08 at 7:22am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler View Post

You seem genuinely offended by the exchange of goods except through charity. Keep in mind that the only time true 100% communism has worked in all of recorded human history, is in small and isolated socio-economic units such as remote villages. To prefer that lifestyle is perfectly reasonable, but you shouldn't expect things like 3rd party iPhone apps to be possible in such villages. At some point in the future, technology may make pure communism pheasible. But until then, you just might have to pay for goods and services, even in what are now considered communist nations. How's that for common sense?

Why is it USAians get all defensive whenever the standard rules of capitalism are challenged and describe anyone giving stuff away as some kind of communist plot to undermine the state? I've never understood the insecurity. Grow up, it's not the 1950s anymore.

Giving stuff away isn't communism, it's altruism or philanthropy. Communism has nothing to do with giving stuff away. In a communist society you work for AND GET PAID BY the state and everything you produce is the property of the state. WTF has that got to do with writing free software and giving it away?

So what political ideology do you ascribe Apple's single store that they control to? It's certainly not the workers controlling the means of distribution.
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post #145 of 152
6/10/08 at 7:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

Another misleading article title. "Pushing" is not the same as "encouraging".

Besides, it makes a lot of sense to offer both a free and a for-pay version of all apps. The paid version could include customer support and additional features.

It helps separate the wheat from the chaff quicker, and it also would be a positive for app developers hoping to sell their company if they can clearly point to earnings as a metric, not just free downloads.

Actually, it can be the same. Pushing is just an aggressive form of encouraging.
Heck, if I put a gun to your head and **encouraged** you to withdraw your money and give it to me, that is still encouraging.

I think the word pushing was used to indicate that the effort is aggressive and not passive.
if someone got on the phone with you constantly to do something, that is more than encouraging.

Nice of apple though to encourage developers to make a profit. Maybe they would encourage the music companies to charge as much as they want so they too can make whatever profits they want (after all, apple does get a percentage)...

(yes that was sarcasm)..
gee, what next.. apple "encouraging" developers to only charge a specific amount for their apps?.. where does it end?
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post #146 of 152
6/10/08 at 7:42am
Apple was blasting the music companies for wanting to charge consumers more but now, it's ok for them to encourage developers to charge consumers more?. The music companies also have to pay a percentage to apple.. wow, it was evil for them to want to charge so they could make what they thought was enough to give them the profits they wanted and also cover apple percentage.. now that the shoe is on the other foot.. now that apple is the one that wants to cover it cost, they want to charge the consumer more (i don't know about you all.. but even paying 1 cent for an app is more than free). How disingenuous.
Where are the mac diehards to call out apple?. BTW, i support apple in this move. I always thought the music companies should be allowed to charge what the market will bear (ie, they should be allowed to raise their prices and if no one bought their music, they would be forced to lower it.. but having an omnipotent company dictate their prices, i hated that). So yes, i have to be fair, apple should be allowed to make as much as they want. I am just curious where all the people that were blasting the music companies as greedy.. where are you?. How come apple can decide to make a profit (i guarantee you that apple will never state that the profit they make is too much.. whatever it is, it will always be about right). The music companies, they had to justify their profits.. apple, they don't. Everyone is clapping cause apple wants to make more money. The fact that they get a percentage from each iphone sale, that is not enough, no, it's ok for them now to want to maximize their platform and you all are clapping like jackasses?. You hypocrites make me sick.
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post #147 of 152
6/10/08 at 7:47am
I'm honestly shocked by the amount of contempt some of you seem to have for free apps and their developers.
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post #148 of 152
6/10/08 at 8:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FuturePastNow View Post

I'm honestly shocked by the amount of contempt some of you seem to have for free apps and their developers.

Like animal farm, Apple attempted to create a utopian computer society but soon, the head pig (ie Steve Jobs) became much worse than the overlords (Bill Gates) he is attempting to overthrow. Notice how all the animals (or apple fanatics) do not realize what is happening. Soon, they will wake up to a future where a Apple tells them how much to pay for a song, if and when to pay for an app, whether an app can be free or not, etc. Long live our master, Steve Jobs.
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post #149 of 152
6/10/08 at 8:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by aegisdesign View Post

Giving stuff away isn't communism, it's altruism or philanthropy.

That is a very good point.

Altruism should have been included in my rebuttal to pmcd, rather than focusing solely on communism. If you read back through his assertions, I think you'll find both topics are applicable to his promotion of a profit-less iPhone Apps "market".

But keep in mind that the underlying purpose of communism is quite altruistic. They are highly related concepts. Both philanthropy and communism provide to those who would otherwise be without, if reliant completely on a capitalistic market.

On a side note: Please don't turn this into a nationalistic bickering contest. By doing so, you made false assumptions about my beliefs and preceded to argue against your own strawman. Hint: I am not in love with American capitalism and don't hate the Chinese flavor of communism.
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post #150 of 152
6/10/08 at 8:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FuturePastNow View Post

I'm honestly shocked by the amount of contempt some of you seem to have for free apps and their developers.

Where's the contempt? I must have missed it.

Some people in this thread have espoused the benefits of commercial software and expressed their preference for it. This shouldn't be interpreted as contempt for free software.
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post #151 of 152
6/10/08 at 8:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler View Post

Where's the contempt? I must have missed it.

Some people in this thread have espoused the benefits of commercial software and expressed their preference for it. This shouldn't be interpreted as contempt for free software.

All over the first two pages. I stopped reading after that.
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post #152 of 152
6/10/08 at 8:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FuturePastNow View Post

All over the first two pages. I stopped reading after that.

You mean the one post in all CAPS? That troll got you good.
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