This posting is very true, and this is exactly why I prefer Free Software when it comes to sustainability.
Even if the developers' revenue plan (services, merchandising, whatever) turns out to not be sustainable, at least the remaining software is free (in the sense of freedom) such that others can fork it and can take care of it.
In that sense, Sparrow could have made a great move, since they don't plan to make any more money with their product: publishing their latest code base under GPL.
However, in that case Google might have hesitated to acquire them in the first place. On the other hand, MySQL has been acquired by Oracle despite being Free Software, and despite having existing forks such as MariaDB.
That's exactly what I had in my mind immediately after reading the article. I'm no Mac user, but seeing loyal users let down, I just wish the app was free software.
I don't think Google will release it as free software, but if they made it open from the start, maintaining it would be a possibility.
Also, frankly, I think people chose Sparrow because they weren't happy with the big boy's applications (Apple's Mail.app on Mac OS X, Apple and Gmail's apps on iOS).
It's a case of "We don't like Google or Apple's apps, so we're going to _pay extra money_ to get something we like."
So when the Sparrow team gets picked up by Google _and_ we hear that Sparrow.app is becoming abandonware, many people think "the bad guys win again."
Of course, I hope the hue and cry about this will suggest to google that Sparrow might be worth maintaining after all. A mail app that people like? That can't possibly be a bad thing, can it?
Would the "feel" be difficult to reproduce?
Maybe someone in a country unhindered by the DMCA could reverse engineering it and find whatever the secret sauce was.
The DMCA isn't a problem; feel is hard to copyright. And if Google now owns the IP, they don't give two shits about suing somebody making a copycat app of something they abandoned.
The problem is that good UI takes an absurd amount of work. It's the difference between painting a wall and painting a mural. With Sparrow to copy you'd have a good start, but you have to be enough of a UI devotee to even notice what makes a UI strong, and you'll still have to do a lot of user testing and polish.
DMCA is not a problem. The code ie copyrighted. You cannot copy it without permission (which you don't have). You cannot legally "take it apart to look at the code" to build a derived work without permission (which you don't have).
A country without the DMCA still has copyright law.
It's my impression that Sparrow is intended primarily as a GMail client. I don't have data, but I'd be surprised if a significant portion of its users didn't have GMail.
Althogh Sparrow supports non-GMail protocols, it really is primarily for GMail. I use a standard IMAP-mail provider (folders, not tags), and to me Sparrow added very little over what I had with Apple Mail.
(Conversly, when I used GMail, it didn’t work that well with Apple Mail.)
It's a fair point, but I'd suggest the main reason people get upset is it feels like they've somehow wasted time getting attached to it.
People such as the OP get excited about having this pleasant thing in their life and the implicit relationship in that as long as you buy it, it will continue to improve.
For me it's the same reason early adopters back certain tech products, why fans will follow film directors and why we sometimes get disappointed when they don't follow the path we hope they would take.
Gmail supports POP3 and IMAP and they even mimic an exchange server, I think it's clear they think it's in their own best interests to give people a lot of options for accessing their email even if many of those options don't serve ads. I don't believe I've ever seen an ad on any of gmail's own mobile offerings, either.
I guess the problem with this is that in the days of app stores, internet everywhere , automatic updates and 0 day vulnerabilities software suddenly looks very fragile and susceptible to bit rot.
I remember in the late 90s there were still plenty of people around using Word 6.0 which was old at the time but still usable since MS allowed recent versions of Word to create docs compatible with it.
Now, if your favourite app gets pulled from the store (that your device is locked to), gets broken by an OS update or the developers simply release a non reversible update that you don't like you're in trouble. Not to mention the consequences of the vendor going bust or getting bought by a rival.
There seems to be a strong "C'mon just use an iPad and the cloud already!"
voice on HN, I guess I can understand why people are somewhat conservative about it.
The agreement between the Free Qt Foundation and Nokia gives them right to release the latest Qt version under a BSD-style licence if Nokia stop releasing Qt versions (GPL+LGPL).
I don't use Sparrow so please correct me if I am wrong.
The applications are still fully functional and are working perfectly fine until Apple changes anything they heavily depend on or something replaces imap.
You own your copy of Sparrow and it still works.
Imagine you buy a BMW and in 10 years you cannot get the required fuel anymore. Does this mean you only pay for a new car when you get all plans for the engine and the whole construction or do you just buy another car?
(I know that the comparison doesn't work 100%)
I think the broader point that doesn't analogise so well with cars is network effects and compatibility.
Even cars from the 1950s are compatible with modern roads, also they can have a lead additive put into the fuel, or the owner can convert the car to run on unleaded petrol.
If your program is old and closed source (in this context , old cars are basically open source since they can be repaired by anyone with relatively standard knowledge and tools).
I never used Sparrow, but I'll assume that at least they worked with standard email protocols like IMAP and POP3 making a switch to another mail client feasible. Imagine instead that they had used some proprietary (and possible patented) web service API. Then their users would really be in trouble, and this is a sort of model many startups seem to be going for.
Obvious thing: Some security vulnerability is found which gives attackers access to your system or so.
Or: There is some bug which gets active let's say after year 2013 or after 10k mails or so.
Or: (I don't know Sparrow so not sure if this applies.) You have created/build some app-specific content/database (like have done all your mail tagging with Sparrow) so you want to re-use it on future Apple hardware. Now assume that Apple introduces some new architecture (like an ARM MacBook) or makes some incompatible API changes in future MacOSX versions. Either you can't upgrade your hardware/OS or you will loose the app-specific work.
Everything valid - but as time passes there is sometimes just no way around upgrading your software. The fact that there could be an immediate problem was ignored by me, that's true.
Since they want to keep it alive (in its current state) I believe they'd fix something critical.
A lot of the complaints are about the fact that the Sparrow team had promised push notifications for the iOS client "with or without Apple". Now we get nothing.
I know, I know, don't buy an application based on promises, buy it based on what the application currently offers. Wise words, I have learned.
One worry is since iOS is so dependent/tied to the app store for updates or reinstalls, if the developer pulls the app from the store, you can never redownload it, and you are then stuck trying to maintain a copy that you backed up and hoping you don't lose the file. And if you don't plug in to a PC you wont be able to reinstall the app. This happened to me with smule and "Magic Fiddle".
I don't believe that changes the situation at all.
An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of the best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source it after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell apart afterwards.
My point is that people who used the app did so because of the talent of the developer. A community can't always make up for that hole.
> An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of the best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source it after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell apart afterwards.
I don't use a Mac, and don't even know what Quicksilver was until I checked, but this was posted 17 hours ago:
Maybe development didn't follow at the same pace as before, but to say it "fell apart" when they are very close to releasing 1.0 seems not very accurate to this outside observer.
Much of what is left of Quicksilver today is about fixing bugs and keeping it on life support which is why I used the term "fell apart" instead of "dead". This was an app that the developer stopped programming for in 2006 and the bug fixing didn't really start until last year. Th plug-ins to other apps are part of what made Quicksilver great and most still don't work and haven't been updated since that time.
I'd still take "basic bugfixing and maintenance" over "gone completely" however.
I suppose in some sense it's a bit like owning a classic car, the warranty and support from the manufacturer is long since gone but there exists a community of owners and refurb businesses keeping it alive.
The difference with your car analogy is that the car doesn't stop working because other cars are adopting new technology or that the roads became worse. Quicksilver broke once Leopard was released.
After a long hiatus Quicksilver was taken over by a dedicated team of contributors who resumed active development[1]. Open-source worked after all, as this wouldn't be possible otherwise.
I realize that many Quicksilver fans will be upset with my comments but I can't rely on something that was essentially broken for five years and count on it being something I can use a couple of hundred times everyday.
What happens the next time something gets broken after a major OS update? I can't wait for a few months to get it working again.
I'm not saying that open source software is lousy. I use it all the time. It's just that in certain situations you need the person there who created it.
Another example was VisualHub, a Mac front-end for ffmpeg video conversion. The author, Techspansion, EOL'd it in 2008 and released a "code dump" as open source. Someone tried to pick up the pieces and form an open-source version called FilmRedux, but it was last updated in 2009.
Techspansion, however, was a good citizen and when a Mac OS X Lion broke VisualHub, he released a patched binary, so I'm still able to use VisualHub four years after it was EOL'd! :)
This makes me wonder if you could open source a project like this and still sell it through the App Store. Then there would be a paid version (that's easy to acquire and pay for) as well as the code being shared with the community. Anyone could still get the app for free, but I'd be willing to bet most people would financially support the project if given such an easy and integrated means to do so.
You can, I am on my phone right now so i can't give specifc examples, but there are apps I paid for through the OS X App Store that are open-source. It was easier to get it through the app store and I got to support the developers. I prefer this model because anyone can contribute back to the collective whole and abandonware is less of a problem.
Thing is, Sparrow was relatively cheap. And as I understand, they had a team of 5. So perhaps they were not as 'self-sustaining' as we assumed.
I guess the take-away is that, if you're going to remain independent - you had best charge a premium. In fact, Sparrow already was a premium app - so it is conceivable they could have doubled or tripled the price of their product with minimal impact on the size of their customer base.
It is 2012, and when I purchase software, I don't buy into the premise that this software is going to be static for perpetuity, and this is because of the fast-paced nature of OS, platform and web evolution.
I "marry" the software I love, and I am very happy to pay for upgrades. I upgrade my Mac the day after a new OS X version is released, not only that, but I use non-large company software every day for years: Panic, Bjango, Made@Gloria, etc.
When I buy software, I don't only buy into the software I get, but I support it because I think it has a bright and better future. If I knew the developer was to stop development going forward, I would simply not support it.
Going forward, if I find that a small/medium developer has received capital from an angel or VC, I am going to stay away from it (I already decided not to use Foursquare, Path, Highlight, Kik and many other mobile apps for this reason) - the investor will have the need to flip the company, whatever the outcome for the software is.
I think github would be the exception that proves the rule, because the github investment isn't a typical "Venture" investment- it was much closer to a late stage hedge, or hedge fund investment.
This was a company that was profitably growing like crazy and thus could effectively dictate terms. Whatever A16H's exit expectations are here, I'm pretty sure they are rather long term, and on the order of "github goes public" rather than "github is shut down after an aquihire."
Yesterday I was watching a presentation where Steve Blank said that the pyramid has shifted-- the big VCs have replaced IPOs and private equity, and everyone has moved up the stack. (So now instead of needing VCs for your first investment, for instance, there's accelerators like YC, then angels, then super angels.)
> Yesterday I was watching a presentation where Steve Blank said that the pyramid has shifted-- the big VCs have replaced IPOs and private equity, and everyone has moved up the stack. (So now instead of needing VCs for your first investment, for instance, there's accelerators like YC, then angels, then super angels.)
I agree.
An additional value which VCs provide that hasn't been eroded that much is credibility to enterprises. It's a good guess that Github took the investment so they appear more credible to enterprises, i.e. they are going after Perforce and ClearCase
True, but I expect you use access github through the standard "git commit" , "git pull" type commands. So switching git providers can be done relatively transparently without changing the "UI".
Although I guess you would lose whatever extra features github provides, which is partly why I build my git workflow around "standard" git.
GitHub's value is not what you think it is. It goes beyond Git hosting, being a social network for developers and OSS projects. Anybody can setup their own remote git repo on a cheap Linode or EC2 micro instance, but replacing a social network is almost impossible.
FWIW, I was an early employee at a startup that was acquired around 1998 for around this amount of money.
In those days this wasn't considered an "acquihire" but a "successful exit" or a "base hit". (e.g.: not a failure but not the success that pays for all the other companies in the VC firms cohort that year.)
The VCs got about 5X on their money and because of liquidation preferences and other shenanigans, I, and the other employees, pretty much got screwed.
I upgrade my Mac the day after a new OS X version is released
I used to do that—until I realized that 10.7 (and now probably 10.8) don't offer any substantial improvements to things I care about (as discussed here: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/mac-os-10-7-is-out...). In other words, I've probably reached "peak operating system," in that marginal improvements to OSes are really quite marginal. That's also true, at least for me, of a program like Word. Have we really seen substantial improvements since, say, 2002? Maybe in stability, but not much else.
I'm not arguing that software itself isn't improving—a lot of software has a huge amount of search space left. But some doesn't, and we get diminishing marginal returns. Maybe I'll upgrade to 10.8 or its successor—Textmate 2.0 or iMovie 12 could be the inciting factors—but there's a solid chance I won't.
YMMV, but I find Mission Control to be absolutely invaluable in Lion (and I was a huge Spaces fan - removing it for Mission Control was one of my biggest apprehensions). It was worth $30 (amortized across all my Macs) to me, easily. I don't buy that we've reached "peak operating system", though I would say that in the Microsoft ecosystem they may have reached "peak Windows" with Windows 7.
Using an outdated OS that is not supported anymore isn't good security, but in theory there shouldn't be much danger as long as you follow some basic restrictions :
1/ Put the computer behind a NAT router with no open ports/outside access
2/ Use a browser that hasn't dropped your platform (just because the OS isn't supported anymore doesn't mean you can't find at least one browser that's up to date with continuous security updates. There are still people porting Firefox to PPC macs, an initiative called "TenFourFox". You can also try Camino or iCab, two alternative browsers that have kept PPC compatibility)
3/ Don't open an email attachment unless it has been scanned through an antivirus
Point 1 and 3 are something I do even on a patched computer anyway. Your desktop shouldn't be directly exposed to the internet.
I've never ran an outdated OS myself but I would feel confident in using one as long as I respect those principles. The one thing I wouldn't be confident in doing, though, would be running an outdated browser or an outdated mail client. Security updates for anything that is in direct contact with the internet is a top priority and using an abandoned mail client like sparrow that doesn't guarantee security updates is a terrible, terrible idea.
> When I buy software, I don't only buy into the software I get, but I support it because I think it has a bright and better future.
Eric S Raymond made this point in "The Manufacturing Delusion" (http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/magic-cauldron...). The value of software to a user lies more in the expected future value of updates than in the immediate value of using the software. This is true regardless of whether you pay for the software up front, and regardless of whether you expect to pay for the updates.
I would add this: the cost to a user of software is also much more than its price. To use software means investing time and effort into it, regardless of whether you paid any money for it. Then, as time goes on, you come to rely on the software's presence--you build your habits around the assumption that it is available, and bear the risk of disruption if it suddenly isn't. These hidden, non-monetary costs can be far larger than the monetary price paid, if any.
The problem is that the implicit non-monetary costs on the user side do not represent any benefits for the developer. That the user invested time and took risk doesn't give the developer anything--they only gain the explicit monetary price. But the implicit future benefits expected by the user DO translate directly into future costs for the developer--just as much as the present benefit corresponds to past developer costs!
So there is a big mismatch between what people intuitively feel they are exchanging. On the developer side, Matt Gemmell's comment quoted in the article feels right: "you paid, you got software." But on the user side, the story feels like "I spent time and wrapped my habits around this software, in expectation of its continued improvement, then found out to my surprise that no improvement is coming."
That said, I don't have any new shiny ideas on how to solve this problem. In the end, I agree that the developers of Sparrow owe the users nothing. But I also see why the users are reacting as if somebody took something away from them that they thought they had.
I'm not upset about the acquisition. I'd be happy if Google was acquiring them to put extra muscle behind developing the app. But they are moving the developers to other projects. That means a fast, native email client for Mac isn't on Google's agenda. So I'm back to Mail.app or the browser. Gmail on Chrome is good, but for me and a lot of other users of Sparrow, it's not a replacement for the real thing.
It's all about value creation. Assuming every party here is rational: Google decides to pay for the Sparrow team only because the potential value of these developers is much higher than the price they pay. And Sparrow team accepted the offer only because the big pay check exceeds the value all their own customers combined.
If we hate this, we can either make such talent acquisitions less attractive, or increase the value of software customers.
Talent acquisitions become less attractive when:
- The number of talents available increases significantly
- Economies of scale in software business is less substantial
- There's ethical pressure from online communities
- The act of "selling customers" (through data collection or ads) becomes less profitable or costs more (with things like DNT or ad blockers)
The value of customers increases when:
- More people are willing to spend more money on independent software development
- Access to software market is easier (with things like app stores)
- More revenue streams with higher payouts (like high-quality ad networks such as Deck and Carbon)
- Higher potential to get big (with VC money and building platforms/ecosystems)
The sad truth is, independent software developers tend to be less entrepreneurial than startup founders (but I don't think the line can be drawn clearly). They are only a little bit more entrepreneurial than consulting developers (which are even more likely to be hired by big companies, but we don't care much about them). Therefore they may not be willing to actively improve their revenue by taking risks, and hence the acquisitions happen.
There's also the very basic disappointment that a piece of good software won't grow to maturity. I finally found a mail client that restored my faith in SMTP as a communications medium; a mail client that had me managing email exclusively on my iPhone. A mail client that broke away from email as a metaphor for paper envelopes with written messages on pulp.
I liked handling email in Sparrow. It felt modern, and now it won't get any better.
Could it simply be that Google is willing to so overpay for engineers that it makes sense for Sparrow, which, in previous times would itself be a nice successful small business (like eudora used to be, etc.)
Back in the day, Sparrow might have grown over 5-10 years to be a big company to get swallowed up... but now, companies like google are so desperate for talent that they cut them off too early by making absurd offers?
As much as I hate working for big companies (and refused googles constant, persistent pursuit to go work for them) I'd be tempted by a $25M "Signing bonus" (or whatever a Sparrow Founder's split of that is....)
I think this is not about the engineers that built the company, but about the VCs that funded it. Usually the contractual conditions put the VCs in control of the situation so they can take an exit when it presents itself. Sometimes the original owners get nothing out of these acquisitions.
For me it's as simple as knowing a product I like is not going to be developed anymore, and having a complete lack of faith in Google to use them to turn out anything near as good.
The reason sparrow had to sell is because they didn't have a recurring revenue model. This is what limits all "pay once" desktop (and mobile) software: either they have to charge prohibitively high amounts or they have to get you to upgrade frequently. The former limits adoption and the latter is tricky and encourages feature bloat.
I now want to pay for the desktop software I like as a subscription: it keeps the developer fed and on call, and doesn't put undue pressure on them to add features, while still keeping their revenue from me contingent on the continued usefulness of their product.
Eastgate systems publish Storyspace and Tinderbox. Tinderbox is sold with 'a year of free upgrades', and after that there is an upgrade fee. Sort of subscription based.
Pretty much every software product sold to business is on a "initial purchase + maintenance agreement" basis, i.e. you pay up front and they you pay monthly or annually to keep your license and/or support current.
Ever heard of a small company called Adobe? How about Autodesk? Or how about every antivirus company on the planet? They might all not have an explicitly recurring revenue stream, but the updates to the software damned near mandate the purchase of a new license to prevent problems with incompatibility.
I've downloaded Sparrow on my iPhone and used it for a bit but then later switched back to the native email app, primarily because of the lack of push notification at the time of its initial release.
I wonder how much of this sale has to do with the updates to email in ios6, such as the ability to attach photos directly from the mail app.
Can they differentiate enough to continue to keep an active user base? if not its hard to beat a native app.
Obviously, those arguments are somewhat metaphorical. Paying $2.99 (or even $2,999) for software doesn't guarantee its sustainability. It doesn't move the needle. It's more like voting where your individual vote doesn't count but you still feel that its important to vote. Especially if you voice an opinion and try to convince others (something that probably has more effect than voting).
I think we are talking about more abstract things. We want this software to exist. We want these business models (small, profitable development companies) to exist. It's not just "I want to use this software."
I think a reason for these kind of reactions to acquisitions is that we feel or suspect that they are destroying rather than creating value. But, it's kind of hard to tell so we don't usually make that claim. For small companies, we know what they make and how many people use it so its easy to get a feel for the value they create. When Google acquires a great team, its hard to know what, if any value they create. Google obviously create enormous amounts of value but its hard to tell what a new team ads or subtracts from that. Much more nebulous are the effects that the existence of such acquisitions have on founder and investor motivation to start and fund these companies in the first place.
I think thats it at the core. A suspicion that such acquisitions are value destroying activities resulting in less/worse software being available to the world.
Unfortunately, this is what you get when you pay $10 for an app.
There is a huge disparity when it comes to the cost of apps these days vs the salaries required to sustain the engineers who make those apps. Even at $10/pop, you need to sell a lot of apps just to sustain the salaries of very good engineers, and THIS is what makes great products vulnerable to acqui-hires.
The problem is that the $0.99 model of the App Store makes a $10 app look ridiculously expensive, especially when there are free alternatives out there, even though it's only 2 Starbucks coffees. And even though $10 is worth it.
It's the price of the apps that have drastically lowered the expectations of what people need to pay for software, and this goes in direct conflict to the rising costs of great engineers' salaries.
I'm not sure what the exact price point is, but my guess is that people need to start getting used to the idea of spending $30-50 PER YEAR in a subscription model for a great app in order to create enough monetary incentive for the developers to keep their products alive. Otherwise Google and Facebook will continue to drop the bills and pick off the best teams who eventually get tired of the smaller comparative payoffs that these apps bring in.
This is spot on. Thanks to the App Store, the days of paying $30+ for boxed software and paying again every year or so for version n+1 (assuming it comes out at all) are pretty far back in the rear view mirror now.
I paid $10 for Sparrow and got far more than $10 in value from it. So while I am disappointed that the best email app I have seen is EOL'd now I did get a decent value and I can't complain a whole lot. I am no worse off than had I bought a boxed copy of software with no promise for updates ever.
I would have paid $30 up front for Sparrow and purchased a large feature release for that price later down the line. Happily. That is a price far more in line with the value delivered.
How do we recalibrate people's expectations about the value of software back to pre-2008 levels? Not everything can or should cost a buck.
I guess they are meaning "free as in freedom" which is something that comes up time and time again thanks to the FSFs insistence on using poor wording.
I don't think that developers don't "value" software.
It would be a push to suggest that people who use Linux,Apache or Emacs don't see any "value" to them.
I'm sure if they though about it they could probably assign a high dollar amount that would reflect the utility they receive from these programs.
Personally I don't have a problem either paying for a commercial software or using an open source alternative.
It's when an application is either free (as in $0 or outrageously cheap) and closed source and I can't "get" the developer's business model that I would be very hesitant to rely on it.
Not necessarily. Most of the software developers use - from IDEs/editors, through version control, synchronization, web stack, to server software and even the basic but important tools like ls or grep - is free. Free as in "free beer". We are used to get tremendous value for free. We are used to give away value for free. And I'm not surprised that many developers (myself included) like this utopia, even if it is not currently sustainable.
Open source is a sustainable way of making software a zero money cost though. The contract is basically that they allow you to use the software on the basis that you might give some value back in the form of patches, bug reports or even just asking intelligent questions on their forum or paying for commercial support. Even if you don't they don't really lose anything.
A huge amount of OSS is fairly "developer facing" too, with possible exceptions of stuff like firefox of VLC (few people would imagine paying for a media player or browser today).
I agree though that bad FOSS evangelism may be partly to blame, if you tell everyone to "use Linux because it is free, all software should be free!" without explaining that price not the important part of the equation and you are a software developer yourself then I guess you can't be too surprised if people see that as endorsement to pirate Photoshop.
Exactly! When the torrentfreak folks start bitching about Kim Dotcom's problems, I think about that very point. How can anyone expect to be paid for their labor in creating something while at the same time arguing for wholesale software/music/movie theft under the shoddy justification that the marginal cost of digital content is nearly zero.
The early days of the App Store were a gold rush. People were able to make a good chunk of money off a $5 app. That brought in investment dollars (angel or internal corporate development) that allowed prices to be lowered because there was less direct need to have revenue and costs line up. Over time, that pushed the prices down lower.
Customers became accustomed to getting an amazing app for $0.99 (or even free), so they complain at best and refuse to buy at worst if the price is much higher.
Apple never provided any guidelines on pricing. The market went where it wanted to.
I know I'm not the only one, but I rarely buy iphone/ios apps, mostly because there's often no trial process, and there's no return/refund policy. Yes, it might get abused, but give vendors the ability to do more (time limited trials, functional trials with in-app upgrades, etc). Some vendors try to provide this, but... they're fighting against Apple App Store policies.
Yes, you can argue "hey, it's just $x" ($2? $1? $3?) Over time, those tend to add up, and when there's no recourse, I'd rather just not participate much.
Prices were slightly higher at launch, with $4.99 and $9.99 being fairly common price points. (Super Monkey Ball, the first heavily-promoted game I can recall, was $9.99.) But by Christmas 2008, less than a year later, prices were about what they were today.
In my opinion / recollection, prices dropped because some developers experimented and discovered that they could make more money at $0.99 - the increased unit sales more than made up for it. Of course, those increased unit sales were partly because they were one of the few quality applications selling at $0.99 - and once the other developers saw how the $0.99 apps were cannibalizing their $4.99 sales, they followed along to compete.
I don't recall Apple influencing pricing publicly, but god knows if they had any discussions with their initial, pre-announcement partners. It wouldn't surprise me if they pushed Sega to get Super Monkey Ball out at $9.99, since it sold for much more than this on earlier game platforms, but that's just me speculating.
> Thanks to the App Store, the days of paying $30+ for boxed software and paying again every year or so for version n+1 (assuming it comes out at all) are pretty far back in the rear view mirror now.
I think this is overblown. There are a lot of business models, many that don't revolve around app-store-like freemium or one-time $1 purchases. They are waiting to be used. In the enterprise world, I don't think the app store has even made a dent in purchasing decisions.
How do we recalibrate people's expectations about the value of software back to pre-2008 levels?
One suggestion: Stop trying to push the cutting edge forward and start delivering value to people in the technical stone ages. In other words: B2B.
Stop focusing on entertainment or social value and make something that actually makes or saves money. People are still paying $12,000 per seat per year for the Bloomberg Terminal. Make another one of those.
How much would Sparrow have had to sell for in order to make a $25mil offer from Google not seem attractive? Would you have still bought Sparrow at that price?
This is very very true. Their overall top grossing US rank (on iPhone) was stabilizing in the 500-700 range (after generally declining for months[1]), which equates to tens of thousands of dollars per month from my understanding. I'm sure they made some from their Mac app as well. This is GOOD MONEY, don't get me wrong. But you'd have to really love self-employment to take this over a $2M payout and a $200k comp package (stock, benefits, etc).
If I were to guess, these guys were also buried in support from paying customers who felt entitled to it. What are the economics of technical support for a $2.99 app?
There's a Top 1000 Grossing Apps list for iPhone that is track-able. They are in that list in the 500-700 range. Here's a screenshot of their graph so you don't have to create an appannie account: https://skitch.com/webwright/eenji/sparrow-rank-history-app-...
Who knows what was happening internally, but on the surface: strong team of 5, $1-1.5m revenue their first year, tremendous reputation and another product in the pipeline. What more could you ask for to make a long term go of it?
The article says they made "more than half a million" in the first six months on the Mac App Store, not $1M. Since then, they've consistently been in the Top 50 on the Mac App Store, so the numbers have likely sustained over time.
$1-1.5m per year is a realistic estimate, IMO. Of course, if Google was offering the rumored $25M, taking a 25x payday is pretty hard to resist.
Talking about run rates in the first 6 months is iffy. The run rate difference between #5 and #26 (where they are now on the Mac App Store) grossing are huge. Order of magnitude huge. How much of that $500k was when they were featured and making their initial splash? What's their daily run rate now at #26? What's the trend? I'd wager it's been down steadily if it's anything like the iOS app store.
I don't know about the Mac App store, but on the iPhone, their daily revenue was in a state of decline. There is SO much gravity in the app store. Stuff falls-- it's the natural state for almost all apps unless you have an ARPU or some marketing hack to counteract it.
I'm not saying they were in a crappy position-- though I'm not sure that a $2.99 / $9.99 email client is a good business bet for 5 engineers. Email is complex/weird and users will want support-- with a LTV of $2/$6, it's really hard to afford to support them well. You can't afford marketing. You're competing with $200k comp packages for your team.
The Mac App Store has a lot less competition and high quality apps have a lot more staying power compared to the iOS App Store. There are fewer apps to crowd you out of the market, and the high quality ones (of which Sparrow definitely qualifies) stand out a lot more.
As a matter of economics, $25 million in one lump sum is always better than the same $25 million spread out over more than one year.
With the lump sum, you can do whatever you wanted to do, now. With the "annuity", you must continue earning the annuity each year, which significantly limits your options.
It's easy to blame the app store and focus on Apple here, because Sparrow runs on Apple products, but it's not Apple's fault. Developers have given away software products for less than $0.99 since long before Apple conceived of an app store.
Open source software is free. Firefox is free. Thunderbird is free. That anyone would pay for an email client at all is exceptional.
Why? People pay for quality and the OSS email apps tend to be unlovable. Sparrow proved there's a market willing to pay for better clients but Apple doesn't want their money and nobody else seems interested in trying for it.
Many users actually think everything should be free.
And they even claim they are 'ripped off' because the free version of software does not do 'X'. And they post bad reviews and send hate emails. (First hand experience).
Somehow, thanks for Facebook and Google, people feel entitled to free software and service.
I actually think we have Piracy to thank for this and perhaps to a lesser extent Open Source.
There seems to exist a group of people who feel that piracy isn't just something that you do because you can't afford product X and feel marginally guilty about doing but something that is somehow a fundamental human right in a "people who pay for software are mugs" sort of way.
Tell me about it - several of my friends who aren't very tech-savvy would nevertheless go to great lengths in order to have someone jailbreak their iPhones - not to escape the walled garden or other greater reasons, but simply because they heard there's free stuff to get. Of course this isn't limited to software as those are the same people that haven't bought an album in years.
No, they just ask, express their interest and I usually try to explain that it isn't a very good idea to jailbreak - especially if you don't know what you're doing.
It's weird what triggers one's aversion to spending money. I had to really struggle with myself to buy the GBP4 app that let my GPB400 tablet do the very thing I bought it for. It feels actually offensive to be asked to pay for internet, though I'll happily pay for overpriced drinks in a place that does "free" internet.
I actually think this is the opposite. Open source users tend to be more informed and thus more understanding to software issues. They post bug reports and even talk to devs when required.
Someone who bought a piece of software will complain until it works as expected.
Depends on the software, I know plenty of non techy people who use firefox and openoffice and I would bet that the majority of them have no idea at all that the source code is available online. They just think of it as "free beer" which is fine because they are not devs so having the code would be of limited use to them.
If open source software crashes on them they would just swear at it in the same way they would proprietary software, it wouldn't occur to them to take a stack trace and file a bug report (I guess this is why firefox offers to do this automatically).
In a support email, someone demanded that we refund his money because our app was a piece of crap. The app has always been free. I told him this and he retorted that he had jail broken his phone, and doesn't pay for apps.
So... he just randomly writes to people demanding refunds for stuff he didn't buy? And somehow imagines that 'refunds' will be processed on purchases that never happened?
I'm going to assume it was either someone young or from a developing country who assumed there was an off chance that they would plop $4.99 or whatever into his account.
You have never worked in a call center for cheap product ... my gf worked in a call center for telephony card. Granted, they are shady with very weird pricing model, but still, people would just call to get refunded for their "lost" credit all the time all the time. (the connection didn't work ... but sir, you spent 2 hours ... yes but it was not my brother it was his wife) They would call if they found a empty card on the street to try to get some credit back.
You quickly lose your faith in humanity when you sell large volume of cheap stuff.
I don't understand this argument at all. None of it. It's odd and quite frankly silly. It doesn't matter if the app was $10. Enterprise software companies, that sell for 5, 6 and 7 figures get acquired all the time. Their offerings then get EOL'ed many times. Free doesn't help you. $30 doesn't help you. $1 million doesn't help you. If a larger company believes that acquiring smaller company is attractive and writes a big check then that's what happens. The only determinant I can see is if you want a lifestyle business where you're always the master of your own domain. That seems to be the only reasons folks won't sell (Marco won't move a family to the Valley - at least not unless he gets a LOT of money)
When did we all start pining for everything to be the same forever?
Openoffice was dead to begin with; it never had a dev ecosystem outside of the people sun paid. All it did was kill more promising linux office projects (koffice, the gnome efforts).
I always thought, or at least hoped, that the economy of scale will allow $0.99 software to be profitable. That software would be so cheap, that you don't think even twice. But because millions do the same, the developers can still become rich.
Right now, there might be a few dozen million clients on the app store. What if someday there will be a few billions?
It depends how many people are going to use your software which is some function of your marketing, how good it is and how many people would find any use in it at all.
I'm not going to download an app that is useless to me, even if it costs nothing.
Obviously there are only so many people who use email and only so many of those are interested in using an alternative client.
The funny thing is, they probably should have priced lower. If you look at their rank history on Mac and iOS, they saw big grossing rank bumps the few times they dropped the price.
Maybe that's just a short-term effect (yay, sale!), but based on the week they sold Sparrow for $4.99, there's a good chance they would have made more long term.
What's the point of paying at all if it's going to be acquired? Seems to be you could save a bit of money by just stealing it until it gets acquired, then download the free version legally. I'm all for supporting independent developers, but I feel like I'm wasting money when I buy an app that's just going to be free in the future anyway.
We (most in this discussion) seem to forget that the advent of $10 or $0.99 app actually expanded the market. As in, more people paid money for software than before, thus paying for more indy/non-indy developers.
So let me say this again. The App store, with its $1-5 apps, is a good thing for the developers as well as the users.
What should have happened is to hand off development and/or ownership of the app to another dev team. Sofa, the team that made Versions and Kaleidoscope, did just that when they were acquired by Facebook. The apps still live on, thanks to Black Pixel, and everyone is happy.
This feels to me very much like the argument that "it's not worth voting unless my vote is specifically the one that changes the outcome". You are but one little person. You can do all the right things in the world and the universe can still stomp on your face. The right things are not "the right things" because they guarantee success, but because they maximize the odds of it. There are no actions that guarantee success.
This isn't a disproof of the "don't be a free user" philosophy; it's a disproof of the idea that it's a guarantee of success, which it never was, and never could be. The argument still holds.
> "it's not worth voting unless my vote is specifically the one that changes the outcome"
I think that's a bad comparison - it implies the outcome would have been different if everyone voted with their wallets. Yet a saturated market would increase the odds of an acquihire.
If _everyone_ had bought Sparrow, they would have had enormously larger revenues. Almost as important, they would have had much greater certainty in some portion of future revenues. That certainty is economically important, one reason for taking a chunk of Google Cash is checking off the 'funded retirement', 'funded kids college', 'bought house' items off the to-do list.
They also would have been more likely to attract investment for development without a big partner.
They might still see reasons for joining Google, but financial security and investment would have been less important.
I think that's why you need to put your money into open source software, not closed source software. Mozilla thunderbird could be the next Sparrow. If the people with the vision and with the proper backing are willing to put the effort into it.
The reactions across the board are quite disappointing, to be honest.
All you can do as a customer (or as anything, for that matter) is give up the illusion of control.
This is the Sparrow story: A fantastic product was built, and exchanged for money. The people behind the product were recognized, and were acquired for a significant amount.
Everyone is a winner, and customers move on to the next thing.
What's more worrying is our reaction to an email client going under: it's clearly a sign that we don't have enough well designed products for a system that's been in mass use for more than a decade.
I completely agree with the fact that there are no well designed products for email, now that Sparrow stopped developing new features - hopefully someone gets a cool idea and puts it on the app store soonish.
Yes, the Sparrow acquisition is a great illustration of how the whole "you're the product" cult was broken from the start.
No matter how much you are (or aren't) paying you are always both the customer and the product. Even Apple, who gets plenty of money from their customers directly, is willing to pimp out their customers as "400 million active credit cards" in the right context. At the other extreme, Google devotes an immense amount of effort to continuously improving search. They know that they live and die based on how happy you are as a search customer, even though they aren't paid even a nickel from searches directly.
I'll say it again: we're always both the customer and the product. There's no escaping that. Our only option is to decide which vendors' tradeoffs we are and aren't willing to live with. And black-and-white moralizing about whether or not "you're the product" gets in the way of picking the shades of gray that work for you.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadEven if the developers' revenue plan (services, merchandising, whatever) turns out to not be sustainable, at least the remaining software is free (in the sense of freedom) such that others can fork it and can take care of it.
In that sense, Sparrow could have made a great move, since they don't plan to make any more money with their product: publishing their latest code base under GPL.
However, in that case Google might have hesitated to acquire them in the first place. On the other hand, MySQL has been acquired by Oracle despite being Free Software, and despite having existing forks such as MariaDB.
I don't think Google will release it as free software, but if they made it open from the start, maintaining it would be a possibility.
It's a case of "We don't like Google or Apple's apps, so we're going to _pay extra money_ to get something we like."
So when the Sparrow team gets picked up by Google _and_ we hear that Sparrow.app is becoming abandonware, many people think "the bad guys win again."
Of course, I hope the hue and cry about this will suggest to google that Sparrow might be worth maintaining after all. A mail app that people like? That can't possibly be a bad thing, can it?
Or open source the app code? c.f Intellicad when Microsoft bought Visio
The publicity and goodwill alone should be worth it!
Because they have a directly competing product. I'm sure that getting rid of a competitor factored into the acquisition.
The problem is that good UI takes an absurd amount of work. It's the difference between painting a wall and painting a mural. With Sparrow to copy you'd have a good start, but you have to be enough of a UI devotee to even notice what makes a UI strong, and you'll still have to do a lot of user testing and polish.
A country without the DMCA still has copyright law.
(Conversly, when I used GMail, it didn’t work that well with Apple Mail.)
People such as the OP get excited about having this pleasant thing in their life and the implicit relationship in that as long as you buy it, it will continue to improve.
For me it's the same reason early adopters back certain tech products, why fans will follow film directors and why we sometimes get disappointed when they don't follow the path we hope they would take.
Since when was Sparrow a competitor to Google?
I remember in the late 90s there were still plenty of people around using Word 6.0 which was old at the time but still usable since MS allowed recent versions of Word to create docs compatible with it.
Now, if your favourite app gets pulled from the store (that your device is locked to), gets broken by an OS update or the developers simply release a non reversible update that you don't like you're in trouble. Not to mention the consequences of the vendor going bust or getting bought by a rival.
There seems to be a strong "C'mon just use an iPad and the cloud already!" voice on HN, I guess I can understand why people are somewhat conservative about it.
Perhaps a neutral third party gets code access and a contract with the developer and users as to when/if it will be released?
The agreement between the Free Qt Foundation and Nokia gives them right to release the latest Qt version under a BSD-style licence if Nokia stop releasing Qt versions (GPL+LGPL).
The applications are still fully functional and are working perfectly fine until Apple changes anything they heavily depend on or something replaces imap.
You own your copy of Sparrow and it still works.
Imagine you buy a BMW and in 10 years you cannot get the required fuel anymore. Does this mean you only pay for a new car when you get all plans for the engine and the whole construction or do you just buy another car? (I know that the comparison doesn't work 100%)
Even cars from the 1950s are compatible with modern roads, also they can have a lead additive put into the fuel, or the owner can convert the car to run on unleaded petrol.
If your program is old and closed source (in this context , old cars are basically open source since they can be repaired by anyone with relatively standard knowledge and tools).
I never used Sparrow, but I'll assume that at least they worked with standard email protocols like IMAP and POP3 making a switch to another mail client feasible. Imagine instead that they had used some proprietary (and possible patented) web service API. Then their users would really be in trouble, and this is a sort of model many startups seem to be going for.
Apple doesn't have a habit of changing things. If anything, I feel that Apple is too conservative when it comes to making changes.
Or: There is some bug which gets active let's say after year 2013 or after 10k mails or so.
Or: (I don't know Sparrow so not sure if this applies.) You have created/build some app-specific content/database (like have done all your mail tagging with Sparrow) so you want to re-use it on future Apple hardware. Now assume that Apple introduces some new architecture (like an ARM MacBook) or makes some incompatible API changes in future MacOSX versions. Either you can't upgrade your hardware/OS or you will loose the app-specific work.
Etc.
Since they want to keep it alive (in its current state) I believe they'd fix something critical.
I know, I know, don't buy an application based on promises, buy it based on what the application currently offers. Wise words, I have learned.
An example of this is Quicksilver on the Mac. It's considered to be one of the best Mac apps ever and the developer who made it, decided to open source it after he decided to take a job at Google. Quicksilver development fell apart afterwards.
My point is that people who used the app did so because of the talent of the developer. A community can't always make up for that hole.
I don't use a Mac, and don't even know what Quicksilver was until I checked, but this was posted 17 hours ago:
http://blog.qsapp.com/post/27644282840/ss69-release-quicksil...
Maybe development didn't follow at the same pace as before, but to say it "fell apart" when they are very close to releasing 1.0 seems not very accurate to this outside observer.
I'd still take "basic bugfixing and maintenance" over "gone completely" however.
I suppose in some sense it's a bit like owning a classic car, the warranty and support from the manufacturer is long since gone but there exists a community of owners and refurb businesses keeping it alive.
[1] http://blog.qsapp.com/
What happens the next time something gets broken after a major OS update? I can't wait for a few months to get it working again.
I'm not saying that open source software is lousy. I use it all the time. It's just that in certain situations you need the person there who created it.
Techspansion, however, was a good citizen and when a Mac OS X Lion broke VisualHub, he released a patched binary, so I'm still able to use VisualHub four years after it was EOL'd! :)
http://www.isquint.org/
You probably were a quicksilver poweruser, but I don't think there were many of you.
I guess the take-away is that, if you're going to remain independent - you had best charge a premium. In fact, Sparrow already was a premium app - so it is conceivable they could have doubled or tripled the price of their product with minimal impact on the size of their customer base.
It is 2012, and when I purchase software, I don't buy into the premise that this software is going to be static for perpetuity, and this is because of the fast-paced nature of OS, platform and web evolution.
I "marry" the software I love, and I am very happy to pay for upgrades. I upgrade my Mac the day after a new OS X version is released, not only that, but I use non-large company software every day for years: Panic, Bjango, Made@Gloria, etc.
When I buy software, I don't only buy into the software I get, but I support it because I think it has a bright and better future. If I knew the developer was to stop development going forward, I would simply not support it.
Going forward, if I find that a small/medium developer has received capital from an angel or VC, I am going to stay away from it (I already decided not to use Foursquare, Path, Highlight, Kik and many other mobile apps for this reason) - the investor will have the need to flip the company, whatever the outcome for the software is.
This was a company that was profitably growing like crazy and thus could effectively dictate terms. Whatever A16H's exit expectations are here, I'm pretty sure they are rather long term, and on the order of "github goes public" rather than "github is shut down after an aquihire."
Yesterday I was watching a presentation where Steve Blank said that the pyramid has shifted-- the big VCs have replaced IPOs and private equity, and everyone has moved up the stack. (So now instead of needing VCs for your first investment, for instance, there's accelerators like YC, then angels, then super angels.)
I agree.
An additional value which VCs provide that hasn't been eroded that much is credibility to enterprises. It's a good guess that Github took the investment so they appear more credible to enterprises, i.e. they are going after Perforce and ClearCase
Although I guess you would lose whatever extra features github provides, which is partly why I build my git workflow around "standard" git.
I'll just go to push my local changes to it one day, and it'll be gone, and I'll still have the entire history of my project.
In those days this wasn't considered an "acquihire" but a "successful exit" or a "base hit". (e.g.: not a failure but not the success that pays for all the other companies in the VC firms cohort that year.)
The VCs got about 5X on their money and because of liquidation preferences and other shenanigans, I, and the other employees, pretty much got screwed.
I used to do that—until I realized that 10.7 (and now probably 10.8) don't offer any substantial improvements to things I care about (as discussed here: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/mac-os-10-7-is-out...). In other words, I've probably reached "peak operating system," in that marginal improvements to OSes are really quite marginal. That's also true, at least for me, of a program like Word. Have we really seen substantial improvements since, say, 2002? Maybe in stability, but not much else.
I'm not arguing that software itself isn't improving—a lot of software has a huge amount of search space left. But some doesn't, and we get diminishing marginal returns. Maybe I'll upgrade to 10.8 or its successor—Textmate 2.0 or iMovie 12 could be the inciting factors—but there's a solid chance I won't.
Would you feel confident going online with an OS that has known security issues that will never be patched?
1/ Put the computer behind a NAT router with no open ports/outside access 2/ Use a browser that hasn't dropped your platform (just because the OS isn't supported anymore doesn't mean you can't find at least one browser that's up to date with continuous security updates. There are still people porting Firefox to PPC macs, an initiative called "TenFourFox". You can also try Camino or iCab, two alternative browsers that have kept PPC compatibility) 3/ Don't open an email attachment unless it has been scanned through an antivirus
Point 1 and 3 are something I do even on a patched computer anyway. Your desktop shouldn't be directly exposed to the internet.
I've never ran an outdated OS myself but I would feel confident in using one as long as I respect those principles. The one thing I wouldn't be confident in doing, though, would be running an outdated browser or an outdated mail client. Security updates for anything that is in direct contact with the internet is a top priority and using an abandoned mail client like sparrow that doesn't guarantee security updates is a terrible, terrible idea.
Eric S Raymond made this point in "The Manufacturing Delusion" (http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/magic-cauldron...). The value of software to a user lies more in the expected future value of updates than in the immediate value of using the software. This is true regardless of whether you pay for the software up front, and regardless of whether you expect to pay for the updates.
I would add this: the cost to a user of software is also much more than its price. To use software means investing time and effort into it, regardless of whether you paid any money for it. Then, as time goes on, you come to rely on the software's presence--you build your habits around the assumption that it is available, and bear the risk of disruption if it suddenly isn't. These hidden, non-monetary costs can be far larger than the monetary price paid, if any.
The problem is that the implicit non-monetary costs on the user side do not represent any benefits for the developer. That the user invested time and took risk doesn't give the developer anything--they only gain the explicit monetary price. But the implicit future benefits expected by the user DO translate directly into future costs for the developer--just as much as the present benefit corresponds to past developer costs!
So there is a big mismatch between what people intuitively feel they are exchanging. On the developer side, Matt Gemmell's comment quoted in the article feels right: "you paid, you got software." But on the user side, the story feels like "I spent time and wrapped my habits around this software, in expectation of its continued improvement, then found out to my surprise that no improvement is coming."
That said, I don't have any new shiny ideas on how to solve this problem. In the end, I agree that the developers of Sparrow owe the users nothing. But I also see why the users are reacting as if somebody took something away from them that they thought they had.
If we hate this, we can either make such talent acquisitions less attractive, or increase the value of software customers.
Talent acquisitions become less attractive when:
The value of customers increases when: The sad truth is, independent software developers tend to be less entrepreneurial than startup founders (but I don't think the line can be drawn clearly). They are only a little bit more entrepreneurial than consulting developers (which are even more likely to be hired by big companies, but we don't care much about them). Therefore they may not be willing to actively improve their revenue by taking risks, and hence the acquisitions happen.Why is that? Because they have a working monetization model when they launch?
Risk/Reward scale:
Selling your labour -> Selling your skills -> Selling your product -> Selling your vision
I liked handling email in Sparrow. It felt modern, and now it won't get any better.
Back in the day, Sparrow might have grown over 5-10 years to be a big company to get swallowed up... but now, companies like google are so desperate for talent that they cut them off too early by making absurd offers?
As much as I hate working for big companies (and refused googles constant, persistent pursuit to go work for them) I'd be tempted by a $25M "Signing bonus" (or whatever a Sparrow Founder's split of that is....)
Edit: clarification.
I now want to pay for the desktop software I like as a subscription: it keeps the developer fed and on call, and doesn't put undue pressure on them to add features, while still keeping their revenue from me contingent on the continued usefulness of their product.
Can't comment on the Mac, haven't tried it.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/sparrow-mac-mail-app/
>In terms of numbers we've made more than half a million dollars in the past six months since Sparrow was introduced in February.
That quote is from August last year.
I think we are talking about more abstract things. We want this software to exist. We want these business models (small, profitable development companies) to exist. It's not just "I want to use this software."
I think a reason for these kind of reactions to acquisitions is that we feel or suspect that they are destroying rather than creating value. But, it's kind of hard to tell so we don't usually make that claim. For small companies, we know what they make and how many people use it so its easy to get a feel for the value they create. When Google acquires a great team, its hard to know what, if any value they create. Google obviously create enormous amounts of value but its hard to tell what a new team ads or subtracts from that. Much more nebulous are the effects that the existence of such acquisitions have on founder and investor motivation to start and fund these companies in the first place.
I think thats it at the core. A suspicion that such acquisitions are value destroying activities resulting in less/worse software being available to the world.
There is a huge disparity when it comes to the cost of apps these days vs the salaries required to sustain the engineers who make those apps. Even at $10/pop, you need to sell a lot of apps just to sustain the salaries of very good engineers, and THIS is what makes great products vulnerable to acqui-hires.
The problem is that the $0.99 model of the App Store makes a $10 app look ridiculously expensive, especially when there are free alternatives out there, even though it's only 2 Starbucks coffees. And even though $10 is worth it.
It's the price of the apps that have drastically lowered the expectations of what people need to pay for software, and this goes in direct conflict to the rising costs of great engineers' salaries.
I'm not sure what the exact price point is, but my guess is that people need to start getting used to the idea of spending $30-50 PER YEAR in a subscription model for a great app in order to create enough monetary incentive for the developers to keep their products alive. Otherwise Google and Facebook will continue to drop the bills and pick off the best teams who eventually get tired of the smaller comparative payoffs that these apps bring in.
I paid $10 for Sparrow and got far more than $10 in value from it. So while I am disappointed that the best email app I have seen is EOL'd now I did get a decent value and I can't complain a whole lot. I am no worse off than had I bought a boxed copy of software with no promise for updates ever.
I would have paid $30 up front for Sparrow and purchased a large feature release for that price later down the line. Happily. That is a price far more in line with the value delivered.
How do we recalibrate people's expectations about the value of software back to pre-2008 levels? Not everything can or should cost a buck.
When I talk to many developers they tell me that everything should be free.
How do you recalibrate the consumer's perception of the value of software, when so many developers don't value software either?
I don't think that developers don't "value" software. It would be a push to suggest that people who use Linux,Apache or Emacs don't see any "value" to them.
I'm sure if they though about it they could probably assign a high dollar amount that would reflect the utility they receive from these programs.
Personally I don't have a problem either paying for a commercial software or using an open source alternative.
It's when an application is either free (as in $0 or outrageously cheap) and closed source and I can't "get" the developer's business model that I would be very hesitant to rely on it.
Not necessarily. Most of the software developers use - from IDEs/editors, through version control, synchronization, web stack, to server software and even the basic but important tools like ls or grep - is free. Free as in "free beer". We are used to get tremendous value for free. We are used to give away value for free. And I'm not surprised that many developers (myself included) like this utopia, even if it is not currently sustainable.
A huge amount of OSS is fairly "developer facing" too, with possible exceptions of stuff like firefox of VLC (few people would imagine paying for a media player or browser today).
I agree though that bad FOSS evangelism may be partly to blame, if you tell everyone to "use Linux because it is free, all software should be free!" without explaining that price not the important part of the equation and you are a software developer yourself then I guess you can't be too surprised if people see that as endorsement to pirate Photoshop.
As someone who wasn't quite old enough to be interested in following this when it happened, I feel the need to ask:
Why did the App Store affect pre-2008 price-levels as much as it did?
Were most apps this cheap at the launch of the App Store, or did it lower over the year(s)?
Did Apple set any guidelines for the price-levels of apps, thus creating the levels we're seeing today, or was it entirely up to the developers?
Customers became accustomed to getting an amazing app for $0.99 (or even free), so they complain at best and refuse to buy at worst if the price is much higher.
Apple never provided any guidelines on pricing. The market went where it wanted to.
Yes, you can argue "hey, it's just $x" ($2? $1? $3?) Over time, those tend to add up, and when there's no recourse, I'd rather just not participate much.
In my opinion / recollection, prices dropped because some developers experimented and discovered that they could make more money at $0.99 - the increased unit sales more than made up for it. Of course, those increased unit sales were partly because they were one of the few quality applications selling at $0.99 - and once the other developers saw how the $0.99 apps were cannibalizing their $4.99 sales, they followed along to compete.
I don't recall Apple influencing pricing publicly, but god knows if they had any discussions with their initial, pre-announcement partners. It wouldn't surprise me if they pushed Sega to get Super Monkey Ball out at $9.99, since it sold for much more than this on earlier game platforms, but that's just me speculating.
I think this is overblown. There are a lot of business models, many that don't revolve around app-store-like freemium or one-time $1 purchases. They are waiting to be used. In the enterprise world, I don't think the app store has even made a dent in purchasing decisions.
One suggestion: Stop trying to push the cutting edge forward and start delivering value to people in the technical stone ages. In other words: B2B.
Stop focusing on entertainment or social value and make something that actually makes or saves money. People are still paying $12,000 per seat per year for the Bloomberg Terminal. Make another one of those.
If I were to guess, these guys were also buried in support from paying customers who felt entitled to it. What are the economics of technical support for a $2.99 app?
[1] Source of the rank data-- requires an account but worth it if you're interested in this stuff: http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/492573565/ranking/history/#v...
Here's a screenshot if you don't want to create an account: https://skitch.com/webwright/eenji/sparrow-rank-history-app-...
Who knows what was happening internally, but on the surface: strong team of 5, $1-1.5m revenue their first year, tremendous reputation and another product in the pipeline. What more could you ask for to make a long term go of it?
$1-1.5m per year is a realistic estimate, IMO. Of course, if Google was offering the rumored $25M, taking a 25x payday is pretty hard to resist.
I don't know about the Mac App store, but on the iPhone, their daily revenue was in a state of decline. There is SO much gravity in the app store. Stuff falls-- it's the natural state for almost all apps unless you have an ARPU or some marketing hack to counteract it.
I'm not saying they were in a crappy position-- though I'm not sure that a $2.99 / $9.99 email client is a good business bet for 5 engineers. Email is complex/weird and users will want support-- with a LTV of $2/$6, it's really hard to afford to support them well. You can't afford marketing. You're competing with $200k comp packages for your team.
With the lump sum, you can do whatever you wanted to do, now. With the "annuity", you must continue earning the annuity each year, which significantly limits your options.
Open source software is free. Firefox is free. Thunderbird is free. That anyone would pay for an email client at all is exceptional.
It's not Apple who is at fault here -- it's us.
A better email client can only go so far:
- Gmail is already a great email client, I just plug other accounts into it
- I really want a good email client. For Linux
- Outlook/Thunderbird/Evolution may be bad, but they're usually good enough
And they even claim they are 'ripped off' because the free version of software does not do 'X'. And they post bad reviews and send hate emails. (First hand experience).
Somehow, thanks for Facebook and Google, people feel entitled to free software and service.
There seems to exist a group of people who feel that piracy isn't just something that you do because you can't afford product X and feel marginally guilty about doing but something that is somehow a fundamental human right in a "people who pay for software are mugs" sort of way.
I actually think this is the opposite. Open source users tend to be more informed and thus more understanding to software issues. They post bug reports and even talk to devs when required.
Someone who bought a piece of software will complain until it works as expected.
If open source software crashes on them they would just swear at it in the same way they would proprietary software, it wouldn't occur to them to take a stack trace and file a bug report (I guess this is why firefox offers to do this automatically).
I personally use free software, but I'd rather pirate something than encourage copyright-ridden software.
Are people really that a) stupid and/or b) evil?
You quickly lose your faith in humanity when you sell large volume of cheap stuff.
When did we all start pining for everything to be the same forever?
Since time immemorial... it’s one of the few constants of human nature that does stay the same.
Oracle couldn't kill Open Office for example.
LO is actively developed and supported by both local and really Small ME-s, and the https://www.documentfoundation.org/
Right now, there might be a few dozen million clients on the app store. What if someday there will be a few billions?
I'm not going to download an app that is useless to me, even if it costs nothing.
Obviously there are only so many people who use email and only so many of those are interested in using an alternative client.
Maybe that's just a short-term effect (yay, sale!), but based on the week they sold Sparrow for $4.99, there's a good chance they would have made more long term.
App store economics are weird.
So let me say this again. The App store, with its $1-5 apps, is a good thing for the developers as well as the users.
They depend on GMail.
They cannot even deliver push-notification for their iOS apps because they don't want to save your credentials on their servers.
The argument around Instapaper still stands as long as it's an independent, complete product.
False. Sparrow works with any IMAP mail server.
This isn't a disproof of the "don't be a free user" philosophy; it's a disproof of the idea that it's a guarantee of success, which it never was, and never could be. The argument still holds.
I think that's a bad comparison - it implies the outcome would have been different if everyone voted with their wallets. Yet a saturated market would increase the odds of an acquihire.
They also would have been more likely to attract investment for development without a big partner.
They might still see reasons for joining Google, but financial security and investment would have been less important.
All you can do as a customer (or as anything, for that matter) is give up the illusion of control.
This is the Sparrow story: A fantastic product was built, and exchanged for money. The people behind the product were recognized, and were acquired for a significant amount.
Everyone is a winner, and customers move on to the next thing.
What's more worrying is our reaction to an email client going under: it's clearly a sign that we don't have enough well designed products for a system that's been in mass use for more than a decade.
No matter how much you are (or aren't) paying you are always both the customer and the product. Even Apple, who gets plenty of money from their customers directly, is willing to pimp out their customers as "400 million active credit cards" in the right context. At the other extreme, Google devotes an immense amount of effort to continuously improving search. They know that they live and die based on how happy you are as a search customer, even though they aren't paid even a nickel from searches directly.
I'll say it again: we're always both the customer and the product. There's no escaping that. Our only option is to decide which vendors' tradeoffs we are and aren't willing to live with. And black-and-white moralizing about whether or not "you're the product" gets in the way of picking the shades of gray that work for you.