Hacker News Reader

I don't get the hate for in-app purchases of this kind. It's just like the shareware model that used to be popular: lots of people get absolutely free usage/enjoyment out of the base product and then, those who specifically want more, can pay—in this case a very small fee—for it. One constantly hears people clamoring for more choice, for example, to pay for just the cable channels they want. So what makes this model "annoying nonsense"?

View on HN

I think because some class of people wonder if a $5 app would better perform. I think it's hard for 53 to succeed that way however, because you have a finite number of users.

By making features an in-app purchase, they effectively monetize users going from version 1 to version 2, and so on. If you used the up-front payment model, new versions of the app would have to be a different app to continually monetize it, which would have a number of it's own problems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com