you militantly miss the point of the comparison when you benchmark the experience of installing a new app against the enjoyment you get from a cup of coffee.
Actually, you're missing the point here. Yes, marginal utility blah, blah, blah, but you seem to be assuming I have infinite marginally useful dollars to piss away each month. There is, by definition, a limit to how much disposable funds I am able to spend each month.
I only have $X ± Y of disposable income to toss down the drain each month, and I'm going to try and optimize the value for that money.
A dollar at the margin for a person with a $600 phone on a $50/mo data contract is not an enormous gamble.
Sure, I have nothing to loose by buying your shitty app. But I don't have a whole lot to gain, either. I still have to choose where to spend money. I'd rather get my regular cup of coffee that tastes like dirt because I know its going to wake me up for work.
If you gave a shit about the dollars you were going to spend for coffee, you wouldn't spend them at Starbucks, which is about 4x more expensive than the second most convenient place you can get coffee. You spend the money for Starbucks because you do not care about those dollars. Which is the point, when you get past all the noodling about what Starbucks coffee actually does for you in the morning.
Nobody who makes this comparison gives a fuck about coffee.
I haven't missed the point of this blog post. It suggests that developers should find ways to make their "craftsmanship" show in order to get prospects to part with $1. I find the idea of "$1" and "craftsmanship" sharing a sentence to be disturbing.
I do care about the money I spend. Our family plans a zero-balance budget every month, meaning we track every dollar. I still end up getting Starbucks once or twice a week. That would fall into the "snacks and candy" category.
I do not go to Starbucks for "good coffee." Ironically, I have given up on finding "good coffee" in the US for one of the reasons mentioned in the article: going somewhere else is a gamble and I have yet to find a decent cup of espresso. I go to Starbucks for exactly the reason that he mentions: it is a known quantity. I want caffeine and I know Starbucks will give it to me in a drink that is consistently good. It is not great and it does not really qualify as coffee, but it tastes good and it does not change (if it does they remake it free of charge).
The main point I took from the article is that comparing a cup of coffee to an app is not a useful comparison. Even though the marginal utility of both is low, the pattern of buying is very different. People don't get in a habit buying their daily app like they do coffee. Personally, I ran out of apps I wanted to buy on my phone--or even download for free--about three days after I got it. Now I only go to the app store when I hear about something that sounds interesting or I think of something new I want my phone to do.
I do agree with a higher price point than $1. If one of the problems with app purchases is finding a well-made app amidst the crowd of crap, then using price to signal higher quality makes sense, from both a marketing and business perspective.
Actually, you're missing the point here. Yes, marginal utility blah, blah, blah, but you seem to be assuming I have infinite marginally useful dollars to piss away each month. There is, by definition, a limit to how much disposable funds I am able to spend each month.
I only have $X ± Y of disposable income to toss down the drain each month, and I'm going to try and optimize the value for that money.
A dollar at the margin for a person with a $600 phone on a $50/mo data contract is not an enormous gamble.
Sure, I have nothing to loose by buying your shitty app. But I don't have a whole lot to gain, either. I still have to choose where to spend money. I'd rather get my regular cup of coffee that tastes like dirt because I know its going to wake me up for work.