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Comment by boxein | Hacker News Reader

$2 per tool? This is not a free app, this is a bait-and-switch. Just charge $15 for the app, guys.

If they had gone with the traditional free lite version / paid premium version model, you would lose all of your drawings when you upgraded. This is just a free trial for the real product which can be unlocked at any time with minimal friction. Personally, I prefer this to having to hunt in the app store for the "premium" version if I decide to make the switch.

Doing this also gives the developers the option to introduce paid updates in the future, which is potentially good or bad.

As of iOS5, free and paid versions of apps (or any apps by the same developer) can share data, so the issue of losing data when upgrading has been solved.

There is also no reason the developer can't link to the paid version direct from the app - no heed for hunting.

I don't mind them charging in-app for features in principle. but I found that the free version wasn't enough for me to draw anything serious so it didn't really let me try out the app.

I think it would have been better to go with a fully featured free version with say, just one notebook with limited pages. That way users could use the app fully, and upgrade if they used it enough to need more capacity.

> If they had gone with the traditional free lite version / paid premium version model, you would lose all of your drawings when you upgraded.

Wow...UX in systems with hidden file-system is so awesome.

Why not have a lite / pay to get everything version, then?

This price model will motivate the developers to create products that exactly tailor all the needs of their users, and the users could potentially (and probably will) save money buying a subset of the products they deem necessary. A flat fee will make the developers focus on top X priorities, leaving a segment of the user base possibly out of luck.

No, it will motivate developers to create add-ons that cost $2 each.

In general, your argument about a subset of products is reasonable. In a drawing app when you have to buy individual brushes it's scummy.

For a drawing app, feel and responsiveness are incredibly critical, with features being a distant second. These qualities are essentially impossible to convey without trying it out.

I feel it's actually more respectful of the user's time to let them figure out whether the app will work for them for free, rather than forcing them to commit to a purchase of something that may not in the end be suitable for their needs.

(insert discussion about being able to return apps for a refund here)

Why? If I have no need for colouring, it's a whole lot cheaper.

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