Originally this blog post wasn’t going to be going up for another week or so, but with the recent explosion of people complaining about the (teeny tiny!) upgrade price of Atebits’ Tweetie application, and the people who seemed to revolt at the idea of paying a very small amount for a wonderful piece of software, a piece of software that they use day in and day out for months on end, I decided this would get posted now.

What is this about? Part of it is how some users seem to think that coding an application is easy. These users seem to think a developer takes twenty minutes throwing together an application, and then gets rich from it. Not true.

Another part is how the iPhone has devalued the mobile software market, and to an extent the Mac software market. These same users who would have paid $20 for an application not 2 years ago now revolt at the idea of paying $10 for the same thing.

Anyways, regarding my first point – how some people seem to think developing software is easy. It isn’t – it’s hard, and it takes time. How much time? Lots of time. Let me try and put this into perspective for you. Notify 1.0 was not a very large application by any means, with maybe a total of 100 hours of work. Notify 1.1 (which is a complete rewrite), is probably going to top out at close to 250-300 hours of work.

If you add up the total manhours invested in both 1.0 and 1.1, that’s about 400 hours of work or so. This is time that I’ve had no return on, and we all know if you want to not be homeless you need to have a return. I could have had an easy return on this, through freelance design. But I chose not to do this. I chose to make a product that fills a need. A product that people like.

This is why most developers make things – because they want to fill a need, a void, an area in which they are not satisfied. Is it so much to ask for a small amount in return so the developer can afford keep putting in time and making something that you love? Is something you use time and time again really not worth it?

One sidenote I want to address the notion that some other users seem to have – the notion that adding new features is easy. It’s not. For example, in Notify 1.1 you can pick which date format you’d like to use from a list of a few. How many hours do you think were involved in this? 1? 2? Closer to 6. This was about a day’s work, just to give the user choice in how a date is rendered.

This brings me to my next point – the iPhone is devaluing the mobile software market. You’ve all known this for a while, right? When the App Store first opened over a year ago, it was not uncommon to see “expensive” (read: over $5) apps doing well in the top 100. Now it seems to be dominated by crappy “ringtone” apps. People revolt at the idea of paying $2 for a game as fine as Ramp Champ - and I find this astounding. Is that McDonald’s hamburger that lasts for all of 4 minutes really worth more to you than a beautiful game you will be using for months and months? Really? If it is, you need to rethink your priorities.

What some people might not have noticed is that this devaluation is slowly leaking over to the Mac software market – users who have gotten used to paying 1, 2, and 3 dollars for something in the app store find it hard to bring themselves to spend even $20 on a desktop app. When you buy an app, think this way – how much time and aggravation will this app save you over it’s lifespan? If you spend $20 on an app and it saves you 20 hours of time every year, and you make $30 an hour, that’s $600 you’ve saved in the course of a year. You have literally profited from owning this application. Doesn’t seem so expensive now, does it?