Apple's example Mac app prices land around $15-20

Reader Shane did a little zoom and enhance on Apple's promo image for the Mac App Store, and divined some potential prices for Apple's official apps. These same apps are the ones that set the pricing bar on the iPad, and so if these are real (and not just photoshopped in), then they're the first official indication we've gotten of just where Apple imagines pricing should be on the App Store. And where is that? Turns out they're pretty close to current software prices -- the iLife apps are priced out at $15, while the iWork apps are priced at $20, and when you add them all up, they cost about the same as the bundles you can buy in the Apple retail store.

There's also a few other titles (which appear to be just placeholders, not official Apple software, unless they're going to premiere some new apps with the App Store) at various prices. There's a dice game called Roll 'Em which is priced for free, an app called Color Studio at $29.99, and another game called Fast Lane priced at just $4.99. So as you might expect, there will be prices all over the place. Just like the iOS App Store, developers will probably come up with all sorts of ways to fund and profit from their apps, so I'm sure we'll see some popular free games as well as premium specialized apps.

But it sounds like Apple is aiming to hit about $15-20 for a standard full-featured Mac app. The question, then, will be what customers are willing to pay -- obviously each app is different, and each customer has their own priorities, but it'll be very interesting to see, as the Mac App Store debuts, just what happens to prices on this software.

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Source: http://www.tcgeeks.com/apple-mac-app-prices/

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Reader Shane did a little zoom and enhance on Apple's promo image for the Mac App Store, and divined some potential prices for Apple's...

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Ben

Everything about releasing iWork 11 with the new Mac App Store makes perfect sense. As a teacher, I make frequent use of Pages and Keynote, but Numbers has little use for me. Being able to purchase just the two is a sensible option, and paying Â£15-20 for high quality programs (which in my view are far superior to Microsoft's or Open Office's offerings, especially when comparing Keynote to, say, Powerpoint) is more than reasonable.

Whilst I don't doubt that the new iWork will surface on this new platform for buying software, you should note that the teaser images of the store front feature the current version of the software. Looking at the images on Apple's preview page in close up show Pages 4.0.4, for instance.

December 18 2010 at 9:16 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ElM

Interesting.. Charge the same amount as before, minus the packaging, instead of dropping the price to account for packaging..

hm.

November 05 2010 at 5:17 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

3 replies to ElM's comment

shane

The prices were known, however I think it was more of a great discussion on the prices themselves and the idea that a lot of people have mentioned that they felt the apps would be a lot lower in price. It was an observational discovery :-)

November 05 2010 at 5:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Macario

News sites are so dumb... they crwate a news article about pricing, developers wont make new apps, apps from other companies will be on there probably once they see people buying the apps

November 05 2010 at 5:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Raj

They need to address returns or trials.

Over $10 and I'm not impulse shopping. If I buy externally, I can redress my concerns about functionality or usability (ie, returns/support). If I buy on App Store, I should have the same capabilities or I'll be very hesitant to pull the trigger.

November 05 2010 at 4:56 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Raj's comment

shane

Raj. I agree and this is where it is going to get interesting!

November 05 2010 at 5:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jon

Also, the majority of software I download on my Mac comes with a fully functioning time limited trial. I doubt the Mac App Store will offer this.

I also think this will be a new way for developers to gouge customers. We all know developers change per pixel (think iPhone vs iPad apps).

November 05 2010 at 7:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mrtotes

I don't really want Keynote or Numbers but so I can see me paying out for Pages pretty early on. Even if Â£=$ in the conversion the cost for a fully featured app is very reasonable: especially when you look at the cost of stand-alone Word.

I assume that only point updates will be free in the Mac App Store? In the App Store once bought an App is freely updated unless the developer released it as a different app. I don't think that model works so well on the Mac. I'd expect to buy say version 4 and get all the updated to 4.9 and then pay again at 5.0 for example. Have we seen any details in this regard?

November 05 2010 at 4:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

shane

Thanks for the mention Mike. It will be interesting to see where these prices go and what the rate of adoption will be as we see the Mac app store fill up. Additionally, I am excited to see how well the apps will share data and expand in functionality

November 05 2010 at 4:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jon

MacRumors noticed those iLife and iWork app prices weeks ago...with a quick analysis of how it compares to the bundle prices.

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/21/mac-app-store-to-offer-unbundled-ilife-and-iwork-applications/

November 05 2010 at 4:15 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Jon's comment

Lucky

Uh, watch the Keynote, and the prices are already on there. No need to look at other sites. And this post by TUAW is um, pretty late. Some real news please.

November 05 2010 at 4:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply