Hacker News Reader

Well, except that didn't stop Apple from offering iBooks, Find my iPhone, iTunes U, Apple Store, Remote, Find My Friends, iTunes Movie Trailers, AirPort Utility, and Cards apps for free…

View on HN

We're talking about Face Time for OS X. All those apps you list are iOS apps.

I believe Apple uses different income recognition rules for iOS devices than they do for OS X devices, and that may account for the difference here.

Indeed. I don't see why they need to charge even 99¢ for it. They made that in the margins of the original products that are capable of running the app.

I have no inside information, but I would speculate that there might be royalty payments Apple is required to make in return for licensing some of the voice and video codecs used in Facetime. On a new device or OS license, these will be rolled in with the purchase price, but when adding functionality to an existing device they're required to cough up $0.1 or $0.5 or some such to the licensees. Hence the need to collect more money.

(This used to be the case with QuickTime: the basic stuff was free, but if you wanted additional codecs you had to upgrade to QuickTime Pro, for real money -- but it wasn't all going into Apple's pocket: it was simply that if they'd bundled all the codecs with the basic application they'd have been liable for extra royalties.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com