Some iPhone photography apps have features I really want to use with my iPhone camera and will gladly part with my hard earned dollars. Others, are light versions of professional apps that I don’t see using more than once to explore the developers way of attacking a problem. In between are the apps that I may not be convinced of buying, but if I could play a while would most often update to a ‘pro’ version.
Some developers have found they can offer their app for a day or week at no charge. Enough fence sitters and blogs will pick it up and talk about it in more detail that when it goes back to full price the public will be better informed to purchase.
There is a group of developers that offer their app for free-for-a-day as often as once a month. This does lead to possible purchasers waiting till the app goes on ‘sale’ and then purchase. Meaning the ‘full price’ purchases start to go way down for the developer.
Enter, the game playing few developers. They offer their app for free, just long enough to get the special to hit the main stream sites, then they pull the ‘free’ pricing. That can be a matter of an hour or two. They don’t say that the sale price is for an hour or a day, so they aren’t being dishonest. But, what happens is that blogs mention the app with a review and the free price, people make the jump and then end up having to pay. Most people will continue with a 99 cent to a dollar ninety nine purchase without backing out since they are either committed or didn’t notice the price is back to full.
This quick changing price caught me out twice with the image enhancement app Large Aperture Pro. I mentioned the app a couple times before as on sale, this time thought I got a lot of emails and pulled my news item. There are many other apps doing this same quick sale removal, I am not singling out the one. It just happened to be the one that got several of my readers this morning. This means that going forward, I won’t mention any apps on sale for Free unless they specifically say for how long or I have personally seen them on sale for at least a half day.
There will be other sites still mentioning the apps playing the quick switching price game. I hope my valued readers will feel a bit better about the deals they read about here going forward (like the DMD Panorama I posted a couple hours ago, still free). Thanks!!