$3.00

I just spent $1.25 on a King Size Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. 4 cups. Concentrated energy bursts throughout the day. I find they make me more productive. Worth the price for getting work done, not worth the price for my waist line. :) Tweetie for iPhone is about to release version 2. Existing users will need to pay $3 for the app. Version 1 is a pleasure to use. Reviews are all position about the new one. Only, there is a very vocal minority claiming they have been wronged by the makers of Tweetie for charging "full" price. Don't make me laugh. It's $3. My rule of thumb is that when you use a durable good daily, you should always be willing to pay at least your aggregated three meals for the day. Which, interesting enough, is what traditional Mac apps that fill a niche. Roughly $20 to $50. The iPhone app store seems to have introduced a new set of economics. And expectations from users. All of sudden $3 is a huge deal. Almost as if the scaled down interface has a direct relationship with price but an inverse relationship with entitlement. I think what has happened is that app producers, in an effort to dominate a particular market segment, either gave away apps for free or gave away significant updates to paid apps for free. Now that the app store economy is stabilizing somewhat from its initial, incredible growth, app producers are beginning to introduce back into the system sustainable revenue practices... like charging a reasonable price commensurate with their good's usefulness. I'm sorry. When users are crying foul, demanding a discount on $3, something entirely different is wrong. To the degree that economic textbooks may reflect on this point in history. There will be some term for this attitude and behavior of paying customers to expect discounts on useful goods they see everyday to cost less than a BigMac that they see only once.