This week Tapbots released a long-awaited iPad version of what is easily my favourite iOS Twitter client ever, Tweetbot. I haven’t yet tried it because I’ve been trying to limit my access to Twitter to just one device so that it’s effectiveness as a time-waster and a distraction is somewhat mitigated, but I suspect I’ll buckle shortly because I just love using Tweetbot.
They have put it on the App Store as a standalone iPad app for $2.99, same price as Tweetbot for iPhone. It is not a Universal update; if you have the iPhone version and want the iPad version, you need to buy it.
This seems absolutely fair to me and to many other people around the world, all of whom are eagerly putting their cash down for a bespoke iPad version of one of the top iOS Twitter clients. Unfortunately, there exists a group of people for whom a $3 purchase when they already bought the iPhone version is just offensive, and they’ve taken to Twitter to express their disgust that Tapbots are trying to scam them, nickel-and-dime them, extort them out of 299 cents.
How incredibly childish
There’s plenty of people expressing their own opinions of these whiners. A couple of choice tweets that are pushing through to the top of the pile are these from Matt Gemmell and Chris Herbert:
Matt Gemmell:
Tweetbot for iPad isn’t universal. I have to pay TWICE and am ANGRY. Also I am INEXPLICABLY POOR despite having both an IPAD and IPHONE.
(link)
Chris Herbert:
Tweetbot is ‘Universal’, spend $6 and it works on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad; now quit complaining.
(link)
Now, there are a few apps that have standalone iPad versions where I feel a little aggrieved paying for the iPad version, especially if they charge significantly more than the iPhone version, because all it seems they’ve done is up-scale the graphics without any re-designing to make better use of the larger screen space.
Fieldrunners was an early app that eschewed a Universal version and charged a fair bit more than the iPhone version without any immediately obvious re-design. Fieldrunners HD seemed to be all but identical to running the iPhone version pixel-doubled on the iPad, but with less blocky graphics. I realise that producing higher res graphics takes time, but I didn’t feel there was much value in the iPad version so I simply didn’t buy it.
I didn’t go bitching on the internet about how I was entitled to a free iPad version, though.
Similarly, there are plenty of apps that have graciously offered Universal updates at no extra cost at all – if you have the iPhone version already, the iPad version is essentially free to you. This is very generous and while it’s something to hope for we should have no expectation of this happening; I often wonder how much money might be lost by a developer who puts a specific iPad version into a Universal update.
On the other hand, maybe developers are considering the pricing culture that has sprung up and are more afraid of alienating potential customers by daring to charge separately for the iPad version.
In Tapbots’ case, they’ve crafted what looks to be a superb iPad Twitter client that makes use of the extra screen space. It is not simply a pixel-doubled version of their iPhone app. They deserve to be paid and there is nowhere that I can think of except the App Store where customers of one version of a product would expect to get a new version designed for entirely different hardware for free.
Bellowing into a gaping chasm of indifference
The above phrase is an apt description of the futility of engaging with people on the internet who have differing opinions to your own, unless you’re already friends or colleagues with some modicum of respect for each other.
Nevertheless I had a wee look through Twitter to see for myself what people were really saying and the entitlement is just incredible. I’d link to choice examples but it would probably be easier for you to go to Twitter and search for ‘tweetbot universal’ and scroll through the hits.
(the link will take you to realtime search results which may not be relevant if you’re reading this in the future!).
Despite being well aware of the futility of internet arguments, I did engage with around 6-10 such tweeters, asking why they felt entitled to a free Universal update, or why the developer shouldn’t charge for their work. I tried to keep my tone as non-aggressive as possible but who knows how they were read by the recipients.
Most people engaged me without resorting to snark or insults (proving, unscientifically, that how you word something is crucial to how it is received); many defended their position, frustratingly, although one chap (@rakhmad) completely rethought his opinion when I tweeted that I thought developers deserved to be paid for their hard work, acknowledging that put like that yes, they should be.
But of course there’s always one guy who considers an unsolicited challenge to his opinion to be nothing short of abuse, and responds in kind. Today, that guy was @OmniChinChilla. Mr Chilla says that he hates:
…apps that don’t make a universal one so they can charge you double. Guess I won’t be getting @tweetbot, oh well. (link)
I asked him why he hates developers that want to be paid for months of work, to which his response was not to answer my question but to query how I knew how long it had taken. I explained that I’d read allusions to this app being in development months ago and it was a poorly kept secret in the iOS development community.
At this point, Mr Chilla decided the best way to explain or defend his point was to not explain or defend it, but to bombard me accusations of spamming, trolling, and being a cry baby. Sadly I was unable to continue a civilised discussion with him as I was distracted by my ACME Irono-meter disintegrating in my pocket as the needle rocketed off the scale…
The fact that the majority I tweeted stood by their opinion was disappointing although not surprising, but one chap I got talking to, Marc Schlüpmann (@schlupmann), went a little further. Marc believes that the App Store Guidelines must be changed so that apps with an iPhone and iPad version must be Universal, and must not be charged extra for. I suggested that an iPad version took development time that costs money, and it is reasonable for Tapbots to charge for that.
sure it is the decision of @tweetbot, but the idea is different and I would welcome a change in the App Review Guidelines
(link)
I asked if he meant a change in the App Store rules to force Universal apps.
Yes, exactly that rule: iPad/iPhone apps with the same service must be universal. Because: To get rid of all this * HD apps
(link)
As I mentioned above, it’s true that a customer may feel some ‘HD’ apps don’t deserve the asking price, but preventing developers from setting their own price is not an acceptable practice.
Marc pointed to how Apple charge for a service once, not per machine. I guess he’s thinking of something like iCloud where you pay once and use it on every Apple device you own that is signed into that account. And of course it’s true that purchasing an app from any Apple App Store lets you install it on multiple devices after purchasing once.
I don’t think that’s relevant to this though. A third party Twitter client is not a service. And an app downloaded once and then available to all other similar devices running that OS is still just one app. That some developers are unprecedentedly generous in creating Universal apps that you buy once and run on two different classes of device does not mean that all developers should charge similarly, no matter how great it is for our wallets.
Remember, you’re already getting updates to these apps for free, and coming to expect those to be eternally forthcoming as well. And despite a long history in the Mac/PC software world of free point releases but paid major version releases, because Apple still doesn’t provide paid update functionality in the App Store, some developers that entirely overhaul their apps for a major update are forced to release them as new paid apps, and boy does that start an internet shitstorm.
All this expectation and entitlement, we have no right to it.
If you begrudge a developer charging for working on an iPad version then your best option is not to buy it and instead just run the iPhone version pixel-doubled. After all, it’s the same app. What’s that, the iPhone UI is clunky and weird-looking when you pixel-double on the iPad? But… it’s the same app, so what’s the problem? Perhaps an iPad-focussed design is worth something to you after all.
What other options did Tapbots have?
As it happens, Tapbots have always said that an iPad version of Tweetbot would not be Universal (kudos, Federico Viticci at macstories.net), so all this stupid whining is rather impotent. But just for argument’s sake, let’s look at the pricing options open to a developer with a $2.99 iPhone app that they’ve redesigned for the iPad:
- Release an iPad version as a Universal update and keep the price the same; this would appeal to more potential new customers, but would mean that every time someone with the existing iPhone version installed it on their iPad (or vice versa), the developer would not get paid for their work creating the second version. Furthermore, if the original iPhone version has been out for a long time as Tweetbot has, a free Universal update represents a fairly significant loss of deserved earnings as those users with both devices install the app to their iPad for free.
- Release as a Universal update and pump up the price to, say, $6; a fair few people complaining about the lack of Universal are asking why this option wasn’t chosen, as if buying one app for $6 is somehow less offensive to them than buying either app for $3 each or both for $6. However, this would effectively punish all those new customers who have only one device as they are being made to pay double what everyone so far has paid for their own iPhone-only version. The developers of the iOS version of Carcassonne (which is great, by the way) did exactly this when they released the iPhone version first, but they always made it clear that when the iPad version was ready the app would go Universal and the price would double.
- Release a Universal version for $6 (or whatever), as well as an iPad only version for $2.99 alongside the existing iPhone only version for $2.99; on paper you might think this would satisfy everyone, but I think it would just cause confusion as there would be two Tweetbot apps listed in both iPhone and iPad App Stores (the device specific version at $3, and the Universal at twice the price). Can you imagine how many people will buy the wrong one and then demand a refund or accuse Tapbots of confusing them? I believe there’s a lot more people that would make this mistake than you might think.
- Release an iPad-only version at $2.99, alongside the existing iPhone version (also $2.99); this is the least confusing way of doing it that allows them to charge seperately for the new app and also gives customers the choice of which version to buy – the iPhone version, the iPad version, or both (the ‘Universal’ option). Finally, by not hiking up the cost of the iPad version they’re being rather generous with the pricing where other developers have charged more.
First world problems
There will always be people who expect an iPad version of an iPhone app they’ve already bought to be free. It’s no leap to say this situation has arisen almost entirely because of the race-to-the-bottom pricing culture that the App Store has inadvertently created in just a few years. But Apple doesn’t drive this culture. They made a wide range of pricing tiers available but it’s developer who are dropping prices lower and lower and that has led to wholly unrealistic expectations in the minds of App Store customers.
I would just echo Matt Gemmell’s perfect tweet from above: if you bought an iPad and an iPhone, what the fuck are you doing complaining about spending $3 on a newly-developed iPad version of a world class app that you really, really want?
Please, support developers who make stuff you like by paying them the asking price for it. And if you’re really so desperately skint, maybe just don’t have that Starbucks today instead?
