A while ago I ranted about “making money in the Appstore” and that EUR 3,- are too much for an application. Most probably the people reviewing those apps never wrote code on their own… that said, there is a great list of 13 reasons why software is not free… and I could not agree more with Brittany… some of my highlights:

• Software is not easy to create — especially not software that people consider easy to use and attractive. It’s a whole heck of a lot of work, in fact.
• Good software takes somewhere between months and years to create. It’s not something you just whip up in a night like they show you in the movies.
• Software is created by hard working people… like you. Do you get paid for your work?
• People who make software have more to do once your purchase has been made. We are here for you when you run into issues by providing a support team to answer questions, walk you through troubleshooting steps, fix bugs, etc.
• You pay for your clothes, gadgets, your movie tickets, your lunch, your plane ticket, etc. So why not your software?

Read the full 13 reasons here and please think about this before you rant about spending money for software…

Absolutely amazing real-time translation app: World Lens. Just point your phone to some text and it translates for you… in place, right inside the image. Unfortunately only English<->Spanish are available right now, but imagine this with Chinese while being in China. Absolutely fantastic!

Download from the App Store. Developers Homepage. Via daringfireball.

Getting rich by writing an app for the iPhone and selling it in the appstore sounds very lucrative… however all those free (and most times useless) apps don’t make it easier to be successful. And in my opinion they destroy the business model, as free can’t pay any bills.

For example:

Pano’s not particularly cheap, at $3, but it can create some enormous, impressive panoramas right on your iPhone. (source)

Unfortunately lots of people I talk to think the same – “oh, this app is sooooo expensive, it costs 3 Euros!”. Come on, you paid at least 200 Euros for your iPhone and you pay about 20 Euros per month for a contract… and then you complain about 3 Euros for some useful software?

What bugs me even more is if these people are software developers who write software on their own! They know how much time it takes to write (bug free, nice and shiny) software, earn money by writing software and and still they complain if a developer wants to get 3 Euros for his software?

Wow.

Update 1: it seems iAd does not really solve the issue of the million apps in the appstore. $ 14,- per sale is not worth it.
Update 2: same problem on the iPad – just too many apps and too little showroom.
Update 3: make sure you don’t miss this comic!

(Image copyrighted by theoatmeal.com)