Wolfram Alpha iPhone app costs $50 [iTunes link] | Hacker News Reader

Wolfram Alpha iPhone app costs $50 [iTunes link]

itunes.apple.com

31 pointstewks52 comments

That's a good way to guarantee that no one uses your app. Especially when it is to access a service that no one uses anyway.

Maybe he is co-marketing with Dyson.

Maybe this is just their marketing strategy? Get lots of free publicity as a result of the high price? Later they might lower it to something reasonable.

That's a good way to guarantee that no one uses your app

Exactly. It will therefore appeal to the market of geeks with disposable income - people who enjoy paying for something cool and exclusive. People who buy $500 mobile surveillance bots on ThinkGeek, mainly because nobody else has one.

Maybe the solution to the "race to the bottom" in the App store is simply to make really high quality apps (not claiming that W@ is) and sell them for a really high price.

Though, personally, I wouldn't buy such apps unless I felt safe about being able to back them up, transfer them to new phones, and most importantly that they wouldn't get "removed" from the store at a moment's notice.

Other than the "removed from the store" thing, you can backup the app, use it on a new phone, redownload it without repaying for it, etc.

Apple is very good about refunds. Their support is friendly, and in my experience they've had the refund processed within a week. Also, the App Store allows users to redownload applications to new devices under the same account as needed, and applications can be synced to multiple devices within iTunes.

I use it in class extensively to show students plots of polynomials, and occasionally to find a few roots. Its a great way to get students into using computers to graph functions, etc.

I've also used it to integrate some tough hyperbolic sinh+cosh functions...

ok, I'll ask the stupid question, what is my advantage in using this app as opposed to just pulling up the site on mobile safari? I cannot see the difference.

I'm wondering exactly the same thing myself. The app is only 0.5 MB in size so they couldn't possibly be licensing a standalone copy of the evaluation engine the way a chess playing game gives you a copy of the game evaluation engine.

Given what the screen looks like, it seems like it is just a custom webkit view. There is no mention of local storage or processing (it says "connect to Wolfram|Alpha's supercomputing cloud").

Between this and their API pricing, I really wonder who makes these genius decisions. Do they talk to customers or people AT ALL? You could have talked to your community/potential buyers easily. Ask HN: How much would you pay for a wolfram alpha iphone app? and Ask HN: How much would you pay for API access? would have resulted in more than enough initial market research.

Do you know how much money they are making off the API and App? How do you know it isn't a genius decision?

$0, the webpage is free, the app should be free unless it makes breakfast for me in the morning.

Requires iTunes. Can you please put this in the title?

A shameless plug of my own site, but hopefully helpful to those not wanting to open iTunes:

http://www.appstorehq.com/wolframalpha-iphone-77717/app

hopefully helpful to those not wanting to open iTunes

Why do people assume that everyone has iTunes installed? I wouldn't let my computer touch that resource-hogging piece of shit with a 10 foot pole.

Because it's maybe the most prevalent piece of software that exists today, save for web browsers and Microsoft Office?

This is a discussion about an iPhone app, located in iTunes, and the browser URL points to apple.com. Everything points to you should have known before clicking where it was going. Furthermore, it's not like Apple fucks up your machine if you clicked and didn't have iTunes. It just told you you couldn't see the page, which is true.

No, it just pulls focus off my HN window, changes Spaces desktops, pops off whatever was selected in iTunes before and replaces it with a link to a $49.99 iTunes app.

Hm. Yes, that could be irritating. I have iTunes set not to take focus, though, and I don't use Spaces (OT: Might I ask you how you set it up to work efficiently for you? I'm always curious about stuff like that), so I guess I hadn't thought much about how other people might experience the link.

I set up Spaces right when I got my Macbook, and it's hugely helpful. I assigned each of the major apps I use (Firefox, Terminal, Xcode, and Photoshop) to a different space.

Combine Spaces with SizeUp [ http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ ] for optimal window management. Throw in Quicksilver and you don't even have to remember which Space holds which apps.

I just don't see the advantage to dividing them. Isn't it easier to run in single-window mode.

Am I the only one that actually likes iTunes? Is it really a resource hog? To be honest I've never really noticed (it seems to work well for me), but recently have seen a lot of anger directed towards iTunes, so am wondering if this is mainly a problem with iTunes on Windows?

iTunes is the best music player I've ever used, and that includes the one I cared enough about to write for myself. It's "big", but so is my collection, so I forgive it.

For windows one of the better clients is foobar (I use itunes for the ipod and foobar for listening), for linux well you are kinda sol if you want a good music player (mpd with a gui client or ncmpcpp come somewhat close).

How does it compare to old stand-by players like Winamp?

foobar2000 requires a little more finagling than winAMP to set up, but it can be very nice when you do. It's also significantly lighter than winamp. They both do things that iTunes won't (in particular play flac and ogg, which is a very important feature for me).

I like it. My only gripe is its sense of timing. If you have it start on login, which is a good idea if other people use your library, it does a LOT of disk seeking and jams up the whole login process. It would be nice if it would prioritize its library read below "getting a browser and mail reader open".

Never had a problem with it here either. Someone trying to rationalize their dislike of a popular brand is my guess.

In my experience, yes - it's a huge resource hog. Up until recently, I'd leave iTunes open all the time. After a couple days of being open without a restart, iTunes would have claimed ~1.2GB of memory. Pretty ridiculous. It's even worse if you use coverflow.

That being said, it's still my favorite audio player. It's one of only two programs I miss when I'm working on Linux.

I don't have much against it, but it doesn't support my operating system.

I wouldn't say it quite that strongly, but I agree. I don't have and iPod or iPhone or whatever iItem apple is putting out, have better software music players and a far cheaper mp3 player to carry around and tune organizing via other means (namely filesystem operations) that keeps me happy.

I found that like most Apple products I've encountered, I don't particularly care for the workflow designed into the software, and can't seem to coax it to work how I want.

That, and getting prompted to update iTunes every week is annoying as all get out.

How efficient are the ads on your site? Are you tracking the actual conversions?

Sorry. I thought that the apple.com link would be fairly indicative of this.

Huh? What? No? Plenty of things at Apple don't pop up iTunes in my face when I click them? Like http://www.opensource.apple.com/? Also, I read HN with NetNewswire and never see the domain?

Add me to the list of people asking to please mark links to ITMS.

If you don't want your web browser to spawn iTunes, then you should configure your browser not to spawn iTunes

We're talking about a courtesy, not a moral crusade. Do whatever you'd like.

The context was, based on the submission title, an iPhone app and its price, with a link to apple.com. Apple doesn't list any iTunes pricing on its website.

Great word of mouth advertising: the legendary $50 app.

CIA analysts? Not sure if that is helping the app.

Bring back the $999.99 "I Am Rich" app!

Maybe if you could talk to it to input the question like the google voice search app. How can anyone in their right mind drop $50 for an app that you could just as easily use the browser for? (and I just tried it, almost exactly the same as their example page.

I'm willing to bet that it will become a top grossing apps. The premium price will make a some people feel like they it is an app they really need. Some will buy it to show off.

The app looks nice, but nothing amazing, just a native viewer for the website contents.

Hey, I can code this one in two hours. Definitely not worth the price.

You make less than 25 dollars an hour?

ED: Five downmods? Okay. If so-and-so wants a product that costs 50 dollars, and his time is worth 30/dollars an hour, then it doesn't make sense for him to spend 2 hours remaking it. If his time is worth 20/hour, then it does make sense. What part of this is offensive? The Math 101 or the Econ 101?

You generally plan on selling more than one.

Chances are he gets paid a salary, so working on this project would not reduce his income. Considering his skill set, he is better off working on this, so he can spend the $50 on something which would take him longer to build, for example a toaster.

Do they cover specialization of labour in Econ 101 still?

On a side note, it will be telling how many reviews there are based on the fact you need to buy the app to review it.

Nope- people who get free download coupons can review as well. This is why the first ten reviews after every update for every application are so positive.

It has one 5-star review. iTunes doesn't seem to let you copy/paste review text...

http://twitpic.com/m1s8m

That's a fantastic review.

    "Don't know why I purchased this application but 
    it does what it claims to do."

/me runs for his check card.

Wow, I wish I could be in the "more money than brains" camp. Oh, wait, I guess I probably am; I just don't have any money, either.

Yikes.. This feels awkward..

A $50 iPhone app with a name like WolframAlpha - how can these guys lose?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com