Boxcar, Byline now free and ad-supported

Here's news of two big apps that have gone free (with ads) in the past week. Boxcar is up first -- the app pushes notifications from any number of social and information services out to your iPhone or iPad, so you can know when you've got a Twitter DM or a Growl notice waiting for you elsewhere. Boxcar (on the App Store) has added support for iPad, and the core functionality is all free. The app comes with ads automatically, or you can pay an in-app purchase of $4.99 to turn them off forever. If you need a lot of quick notices on your iPhone or iPad (and don't want to bother with individual solutions for every app), give it a look.

Byline has made a similar move -- the Google Reader, erm, reader still has its paid version in place, or you can download Byline Free, which offers the same RSS functionality with ads included. I don't see an in-app way to upgrade, but if you try the free version and decide you'd rather support the developer directly, you can buy the full version for $4.99.

This is likely only the beginning of premium paid apps going ad-supported -- with the arrival of iAds in iOS 4, we'll probably see a lot more developers using Apple's advertising solution to supplement their development costs.

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Here's news of two big apps that have gone free (with ads) in the past week. Boxcar is up first -- the app pushes notifications from any...

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james

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June 08 2010 at 12:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

stainboy

"The app comes with ads automatically, or you can pay an in-app
purchase of $4.99 to turn them off forever."

now THAT'S a great use for in-app purchasing. i hope many developers
that implement iAds take this route. i strongly dislike advertising
and would choose an app that had the ability to pay to remove ads
(either in-app or by selecting a separate app) over one that didn't.

June 08 2010 at 9:24 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Elliott

This is a very interesting idea. I definitely think Boxcar are making a better choice by allowing removal of ads in-app, rather than having a separate version. Seems like it gets too messy when you have free and paid versions of apps, not to mention the hassle when trying to get updates for both approved at the same time.

June 07 2010 at 11:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

codeman38

If you bought Boxcar when it was a paid download and are seeing ads after upgrading, this is a bug that apparently was not supposed to happen. Here's the support thread for it:
http://help.boxcar.io/discussions/questions/83-removing-ads-for-users-who-bought-boxcar-when-it-was-099

June 07 2010 at 11:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to codeman38's comment

Jonathan George

Yep - just let us know and we'll take care of it right away.

best,
j

June 07 2010 at 11:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply