It's a bird! No, it's an app! No, it's Tweetie 2 for iPhone!

I have to disagree facebook 3.0 was a free upgrade from facebook 2.5 which i think all of us woulds have to agree that was a major upgrade. developers do have the option to have their upgrade be free

I don't quite understand the argument that he owes the current users something more for their loyalty. He's already released a couple of incremental updates in the 1.x versions. How about some user loyalty to pay the guy another $3 so that he can make a living doing this and not have to charge $15 or $30 bucks for the app.

I really like Tweetie and the fact that its developed by a lone coder is an incentive to stump up for couple of £ required, but I think there is a happy medium between charging current users full price for 2.0 and rewarding them for their loyalty.

Are there any Psych (under)grads out there who fancy collaborating with me on a paper about micropayments and their influence on behaviour? I reckon we're starting to reach a tipping point where even though the cost of an app is comparatively low, its still FEELS like too much in the context of the app store and the usefulness of the software.

Equally I wonder how many sales are influenced by nerds being berated by other nerds about an app "only" costing $2 or whatever?

I have no problem paying for this. Photoshop CS4 wasn't free to users of CS3. Same situation but several hundred dollars cheaper.

It would be nice if there were another upgrade path available for discounted upgrades for current users, but the work-a-rounds that exist don't really seem justified given that the price is $2.99. Sure, on another platform, they might be able to discount upgrades for users of the previous version, but when have you upgraded anything for under $3?

I bought Tweetie once, and it's been my go-to Twitter client for a while. The upgrade was worthwhile even if only for the landscape Tweeting function (but there's other stuff going on there that I like, too). Recently I decided that I really like having all my @ replies and my DM's show up in my main Twitter feed, so I've been using Twitterific again, but when I want to type, I switch back to Tweetie. If they can throw some new features in that I like, I have no problem buying the new version of that application.

No one is taking Tweetie 1 away. There continues to be free options available. I see no reason to worry about a $3 optional upgrade. If you don't see $3 worth of value in the upgrade, then don't buy it. It seems like a non-issue to me, but there's always people who feel that all of their software should be free. I don't really have a problem with that. I use a lot of free software myself. But that doesn't mean anyone is obligated to give their work away.

$3.00 is not a lot of money for a new app, but it's harder to take when I just bought 1.0 6 days ago. A little more notice that 2.0 would be full price would have been appreciated.

I don't understand why there are in-app purchases, but not paid upgrades. Kind of silly Apple.

That said, if Tweetie 2 is all it's touted to be, I have no probs with another $3. So does the original Tweetie go free after version 2 is released?

1. I think it's OK to charge for a new update, especially with the feature set it's coming out with. However, the dev has handled it incredibly badly. He should have pulled the current Tweetie from the app store for the couple of weeks before the new app. Many people will not have read thoroughly and will continue to buy current Tweetie, those are the users that will complain.

2. The dev should not abandon Tweetie 1. Instead of providing large-scale feature updates, the ev should provide smaller updates that users request more, such as more url-shortening, video and image services. This will keep the punters happy, but anyone looking for a richer experience will splash out on 2.0.

3. The pinstriping is horrific! Seriously. This is what a profile looks like in the current Tweetie: http://j.mp/K2dEJ and, on the Tweetie 2.0 (I believe): http://j.mp/2JNsQ7 Horrid.

4. Has anyone else noticed that the blue 'glow' highlighting under the icons appears like they are cut off from the screenshots in the Chicago review?

Why are some people such cheap bastards? $2.99 is not expensive

He could do what the author of Picture Safe and Video Safe does - if you own PS, the most recent upgrade had an option for in-app purchase to upgrade to the new one for the difference in price.

While a ground-up rewrite would essentially mean maintaining the previous one within the code for the new one, he can release the new edition at the same time, and make that new one the current edition.

It'd be a complicated solution, but one that people would probably appreciate.

(I don't have a dog in this fight either way - I use Twitterific, myself - but it seemed to me to be relatively obvious (albeit complicated) as to how to do this...)