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Apps Software Technology

Horrible Piece on The Verge about Charging for IOS App Updates

In a bad piece by Ellis Hamburger on *The Verge*, this might be the worst paragraph:

> Even so, and despite Clear’s very low price tag, your frustration is warranted if you bought Clear within the last couple months and now have a to buy a new version, or if you bought Reeder, an RSS app, expecting months or years of updates and now have to buy a new version. Reeder developer Silvio Rizzi left his iPad users out in the cold by abandoning the app when its syncing engine, Google Reader, was killed off by Google. Several months later, Rizzi debuted Reeder 2, which works on both iPhone and iPad, but many of his Reeder for iPad users were appalled. The previous version of Reeder for iPhone still works, while Reeder for iPad users were forced to upgrade or find another RSS app. Some of them likely would have been more forgiving had Rizzi been more communicative during the process, but the developer is notoriously quiet online in comparison to others in the iOS community.

This whole paragraph is completely wrongheaded. People’s expectations for what applications, mobile or otherwise, should cost are completely out of touch. Developers spend weeks, months, and even years developing these applications and people get upset because a developer charges 99 cents for them? It is beyond ridiculous.

I have utmost respect for the [Omni Group’s](http://omnigroup.com) decision to release new, $20 versions of its apps as part of the iOS 7 upgrade cycle. I wish more developers would follow in Omni Group’s footsteps, and, relatedly, that people would recognize the value they are getting from their applications.