This is a little disappointing to me and probably will be to many other long-time smartphone users. I see two types of apps in the iTunes App Store: free and not free. What I don’t see are limited, free trials of appliations. Over on FriendFeed, I’ve asked any iPhone developers if Apple set this up as an either/or situation. While I wait for an answer, I wanted to point this out because I think many folks will be disappointed to find out they have to risk their money and hope they like an app. Some titles might be no-brainers, but there are others that will sound and look interesting… but are they interesting enough to have you ante up? What makes no sense to me is that you can preview a song or a video before buying. Why not an app? I really hope I’m just overlooking "free trials" in the store right now…
You can preview songs and videos in iTunes. Why not apps?
Summary:
This is a little disappointing to me and probably will be to many other long-time smartphone users. I see two types of apps in the iTunes App Store: free and not free. What I don’t see are limited, free trials of appliations. Over on FriendFeed, I’ve […]
I would think it’d be up to the developer to build and offer a free trial version of an app. It’s not like a video or song where Apple can just cut a snippet for a preview. There’s programming involved in creating a trial version of an app. So if a developer wants to offer a free trial version, he can release, say, a free version of Monkey Ball with only one level or ends after 30 seconds. Should work just fine with the current App Store model.
I don’t know about free trials, but I did see one app which had a free lite version, and a pay full version.
I was a little disappointed that eWallet wasn’t in the store.
Read on a forum that when developers try to submit time limited, or crippled versions as free applications, they are being rejected. So you can do a free demo as long as it’s fully functional forever. Not what developers were hoping for, that’s for sure!
Here’s an official response posted on the Apple forum that a developer received: “Hello Mocha Developer, Unfortunately, Mocha xxxx will not be posted to the App Store. We are not accepting Trial, Demo, or Beta versions of any applications. If you would like to provide a free or ‘Lite’ version, it still must be a fully functional app.” It appears free versions are allowed if they follow my example, not the traditional crippled or expiration dated model.
Great idea! And a little bomb animation when the app expires.