App Store: "Demo" no, "Lite" yes

Turns out you should name the cut-down version of your app "free" instead of "lite".

http://vemedio.net/blog/2009/02/18/how-to-name-your-lite-iphone-app/

@try versions
If the recently changed www.download.nokia.com is anything to go by (Europe only I am afraid) evertything on offer will have a try version.

@49 - I believe you on this. I think however, Apple chooses carefully who can do so. For eg, Stanza (which I love!) links to the Stanza catalogue on the Fictionwise Bookstore which enables users to search, browse, purchase and download books straight to Stanza on the iPhone/iPod touch. I wonder if Amazon will have their Kindle service on the iDevices eventually, or will they be blocked?

'No Kai, Gazobee DID have "real information", they also had good arguments and a logical conclusion. Here is one piece of information they provided that you should have paid attention to - "The bias really is searingly obvious to us lowly non-developers."'

Perhaps Gazobee should follow TUAW a bit more closely...and if you agree with his position, I would suggest the same. TUAW isn't overly slanted towards developers...the record is there. They feature developers, but I don't see evidence that when it comes down to the "who shot John?" of it all that there is a large lean towards developer issues.

Or to be more precise, some of the bloggers here fall to one side, some to the other...the more...experienced ones are in the middle.

"And while you were criticising Gazobee for a lack of real information"

...which, as far as the way the Dev program works, I still believe to be the case...

"you yourself were trotting out the tired and delusional nonsense that some 'Cult of Apple' is responsible for blogs being unable to report honestly on the company"

Is it tired and..."delusional"? Are you sure "delusional" is the word you wanted to use here?

"I mean, do you honestly believe that? Even for a conspiracy theory, it is quite lame."

And do you honestly believe that this, or any other blog where Apple coverage is their main focus is more than passingly critical of Apple? Are we reading the same web?

I've been around for a long, long time. Little has changed since the days of Guy Kawasaki and Joe Ragosta.

Do you believe it is "good business" in this space to "piss off" Apple or proponents of Apple technology by not engaging in soft-shoe reporting or spin?

I am personally not a fan of the 'Cult of Mac' but to deny that it doesn't exist and isn't pervasive in what you read and how information is presented on the vast majority of Mac "news" sites and blogs...well, there is your "delusion" right there.

"It must be fun to attempt to portray people who disagree with you as being unthinking slaves of an Apple-worshipping sect, but seriously, you only make yourself look stupid by doing so.

And quit with the straw man arguments, please - nowhere did Gazobee at all suggest that they thought that iPhone developers were "making money hand over fist" so do not attempt to criticise them for something they neither said nor suggested."

I see you like to point out fallacies in the arguments and positions of others. You probably shouldn't do that if you are going to resort to poisoning the well, ad hominem attacks and glittering generalities ;)

And to reiterate: No, I do not believe that the vast majority of Apple-only sites report on Apple in an unbiased manner.

People don't like it.

-K

-K

Kai Cherry - you missed Steve's point about tying an app's functionality to a service. Sure he mentioned free ad-supported services like Facebook but there are services out that have a paid subscription model. Just like there are some apps out there are free for certain home automation systems but they work only with their system which you must purchase in order to get any real functionality out of that free app (but of course).

No Kai, Gazobee DID have "real information", they also had good arguments and a logical conclusion. Here is one piece of information they provided that you should have paid attention to - "The bias really is searingly obvious to us lowly non-developers."

And while you were criticising Gazobee for a lack of real information, you yourself were trotting out the tired and delusional nonsense that some 'Cult of Apple' is responsible for blogs being unable to report honestly on the company. I mean, do you honestly believe that? Even for a conspiracy theory, it is quite lame.

It must be fun to attempt to portray people who disagree with you as being unthinking slaves of an Apple-worshipping sect, but seriously, you only make yourself look stupid by doing so.

And quit with the straw man arguments, please - nowhere did Gazobee at all suggest that they thought that iPhone developers were "making money hand over fist" so do not attempt to criticise them for something they neither said nor suggested.

"We get story after story about how "hard done by" the developers are and most of it is based on hearsay and whispers that are passed around by, you guessed it, the developers themselves. Possibly the fact that most developers have some kind of links to the bogs and most tech bloggers have at least one friend who is a developer has something to do with it?"

Ah. At it again, eh?

The fact of the matter is that developers actually have *real information* that YOU do not. What you have, is a "Marketing Message".

The bloggers here at TUAW and around the web are privy to all KINDS of information, easily confirmed via multiple sources, about all manner of things you have no *clue* about with regards to these things.

The interesting thing is, our culture, the Mac culture, is one of the most interesting and dysfunctional ones that i have ever come across in all of computing, mostly dude to things set in motion years and years before many of the people that own Macs, read these blogs or even write for them were even involved with Apple products.

Most Mac blogs cannot function as pure journalistic endeavors due to this phenomenon. They cannot do what many say, Windows and Linux blogs do; they cannot do straight reporting and expose real flaws in "the system" for want of a better word, due to an ingrained part of the Mac Culture against the sometimes ugly truth.

While I sometimes jump on TUAW for this, I realiz that TUAW is a product, and at the end of the day, people like you are their customer...people that essentially believe in their hearts and minds that Apple *cannot be* a monolithic, anti-competitive Multi-Billion Dollar Multi-National Corporation...even when it sometimes acts in exactly this way.

It isn't really about developers being "hard done by" in general, Gazoobee. I don't know anyone that develops software for the Mac that believes that their job is a bad one in and of itself.

I have also never met or worked with any that believe for one moment that the closer the relationship gets to Apple, the more *exploitive* it becomes.

The most amusing thing thought about your comment isn't how utterly misinformed and totally out of scale it is with...reality, but how strongly you seem to believe that the vast majority iPhone devs are making money hand over fist selling software for 70 cents per copy...with absolutely no knowledge of the inner workings of the system.

I am not sure I have met ANYONE that believes anything they buy at the "Dollar Tree" or "Everything's $1" that walks away believing that they have purchased a high quality product.

-K

And, as per usual, mind-washed "gee golly, Apple can do no wrong" types miss THE REAL f*cking problem here:

It isn't *only* that you aren't allowed to provide potential cutomers what they want (because it is not in APPLE's DNA to do this, you suffer) in the form of a demo...you AREN'T allowed to "upsell" your own damned app!

You know, like the way Apple does when it bundles demo versions of their i* software on Macs? Apparently, Apple is aware that people like to "try before they buy" and to make sure that the "try" stays that way, they put limitations in said versions...all the while upselling the full one.

TUAW shows "developer bias"?

Actually, I would say it is balanced mostly, with a slight skew overall away from developers since they seem to like to publish (bitch) a lot about pricing.

Look. It is really, really simple: What is good for developers is good for the platform, and ultimately you, the consumer...and by extension, Apple.

After months and months of complaining about the quality of the software available on the platform, one would think that it might be time to do a root cause analysis of what in hell is going on, from a point of view of people that *actually work within the system*.

As I've said many, many times before, a B2B relationship with Apple, Inc. is such a diametrically opposite one than the C2B one that Apple's most ardent supporters would believe you were talking about another company.

I am...almost certain that such things will become shockingly obvious to a much larger group of people as this year progresses.

So, remember: it isn't just the matter of making time or feature-limited *free versions* of apps that is the problem, but informing people *within the application itself* that they can get another one with more features, etc that is forbidden.

That's *totally* fair, reasonable and logical, huh?

-K

Obviously if more demos were put out less apps would be sold. I have plenty of apps that I wouldn't have bought if I'd had a chance to test it first.

Demo Versions = Windows to me, thats what comes to mind 1st, all those DemoWare that PC people are burden with. I like the lite versions and hope it continues.