tinylittlefish

At least where I live, many landlords have no mortgage at all, because they just buy properties with cash. Another scenario would be a landlord making a very large down payment, and thus, financing a much smaller amount, and thus a much lower monthly payment.

I built this app because I got tired of entering my e-mail address over and over to sign into apps, or entering my address when filling out forms, etc.

As far as I know it's the only custom snippet keyboard that doesn't require enabling "Full Access" on iOS in order to work, so it's very respectful of your privacy.

Questions or feedback welcome.

A developer can't just set a background fetch interval in iOS7 and have the app fetch at that interval (i.e. fetch every hour). Rather you can set your app to background fetch, and when it fetches is at the mercy of the OS.

The OS tries to be smart about it, lumping fetches together when it can, and noticing things like when the user opens the app typically.

So say the user launches GREAT WEATHER app app normally at 8 am, the OS notices and performs a background fetch a few minutes before (for example).

I'm the guy who runs Two Dollar Tuesday (I'm also a Mac App Developer):

A few reasons why you wouldn't necessarily do it every day:

At $1.99, he would have to sell more than twice as many copies as he is selling now to make the same revenue. Plus, he'd have more support requests to deal with. $1.99 may not be the optimal price point.

The reason to participate in any "bundle" like Two Dollar Tuesday:

- Mailing list: TDT has a mailing list of thousands of Mac users who've asked to receive the deals each Tuesday. We have a phenomenal open rate (last week was over 80%). MacUpdate, MacZot, etc., all have the same kind of thing going. Thousands of Mac users eager for discounted apps.

- Cross promotion. Someone looking for a discount on a different app might discover your app through TDT.

- The "limited-time effect" -- people are more likely to pay $1.99 for something if they know they only get one day to get it at that price. Were the price always at $1.99, you lose the sale/impulse buy effect.

We're doing one next week, and it should be great too. :)

The impulse buy thing is a really important reason this works.

For example, I adore Transmit and have no need for any other FTP app. I bought Forklift anyway when they discounted it to $1. Haven't even launched it yet.

You may be right, but another thing to keep in mind is the volume needed to maintain the same amount of income at a lower price point.

Staying higher in the rankings isn't worth it just for the sake of the rankings if you're only making the same amount of money.

Plus, there's the additional support cost.

Well he was in the #2 and #3 spot in the U.S. App Store, he was selling more than almost anything else there. :)

I'm actually the maker of Two Dollar Tuesday. You can click go to developers area on the site if you're interested in featuring an app and we can talk. :)

Right, this is a very good point. Many one star app reviews are there because the user is frustrated and doing something wrong.

I have one review in which a person said my app only allows 10 entries (it allows unlimited entries). One-star review, and I can't contact them to fix the problem. If I had a system like this implemented, likely they would have gotten in touch with me, I could have figured out what they were doing and solved their problem.

In that case, it would have eliminated bias by preventing an incorrect negative review. And helped resolve that person's issue.

I'm also not convinced this is unethical. I think the Appsfire example could be unethical, IF it tried to trick users into thinking they were leaving a review in the App Store, when in fact that were not.

However, after reading the blog post, I installed the Appsfire app to see how it worked. In the interface, the link that brings up the feedback page is labeled Send Us Feedback. I think that's clear enough that it's sending feedback to the developer.

In some cases, negative feedback can be resolved if the developer knows about it. The important thing to the user is that their voice is heard.

So I don't think Appsfire is tricking people. Subsequently asking people who like the app to review it doesn't seem unethical to me. For example, I often get e-mails from people telling me they love my app, and I suggest to them they leave a review in the App Store. I don't think that's unethical.

Interesting, if only because I've always been fascinated by the time period and events surrounding the adoption of electricity.

A really interesting book about Edison and Tesla is "Empires of Light" by Jill Jones.

I agree with you. A good example of this is what we experience when driving. If someone cuts me off, my instinctive reaction is to think, "What a moron!" Which is unfair, of course: it may have been a one-time stupid mistake.

Even if you think you see a pattern, someone who seems stupid at something may just be outside of their comfort zone/talent area. In another field, they may be quite smart.