by ·Comments Off on Palm Pre Launching June 6 For $199

Sprint will start selling the Palm Pre on June 6th, for $199.

Palm is taking a real gamble by not having the ability to run older Palm apps on this new device, and an even bigger gamble by waiting until just two days before Apple’s developer’s conference to start selling this.

I think it’s clear Apple is going to continue to dominate the market with the iPhone, and if they announce a new, lower cost version, the Palm Pre could end up being the big loser.

by ·Comments Off on Skype for iPhone


March 30th, 2009… That’s the day when Skype is going to hit the iTunes App store, and you’ll be able to use it on your iPhone.

The app will work only over Wi-Fi, but will be available for free.

There isn’t video available, so you won’t be doing any video chats on the phone, but you will be able to talk for free to other Skype users, and make reduced cost calls to regular telephones.

Skype is planning on a version for the Blackberry, which will be released in May.

More details at PC World.

by ·Comments Off on A Good iPhone Idea – but with problems

Seth Godin posts about an iPhone idea to create an app to transmit traffic information between users. This is exactly like Dash Express, which is a GPS that does all this for you.

Unfortunately for Dash, they are killing their GPS devices. Does that mean it was a bad idea? Not at all. It’s a GREAT idea.

Now, would this make a great iPhone app? Probably, but the problem with it is that if you’re giving routing information, you need to know where you’re going in the first place? Why not let the iPhone’s built-in map do it? Well, that’s against the iPhone rules.

Someone’s going to figure out how to do this properly, either through an agreement with Apple, after Apple loosens the rules up, or through a Dash-like device that does this in a way the company can keep going. (Maybe Garmin will buy Dash out?)

by ·Comments Off on Pricing iPhone Apps

Over on Safe From the Losing Fight, Andy Finnell posted about the wrong way to price iPhone apps, and I have to say that I agree.

If you look at the pricing for other phone apps on other mobile platforms, prices are much higher, enabling developers to at least stand a fighting chance to make a living. In particular, the apps on mobile phones usually are $4.95 or higher. On the Palm, a reasonably good Sodoku game runs around $9.99 or even higher. The same apps on the iPhone are either free or $0.99. How in the heck can a developer make a living doing that?

The real killer of pricing at $0.99 (or even $4.95) is that the support you can provide at that price is virtually nothing. Really the only thing you can do is write a web page with an FAQ. Answering that support e-mail actually costs you money if it ends up just being a “user error”, rather than a real bug.

Now, don’t get me wrong… You need to make sure your apps are as bug free as possible and getting reports from users is important, but at $0.99 answering questions for confused users that don’t understand how to use your application can kill a product, because you can spend all your time doing support, and not developing know apps.

Apple (and Sega) set expectations for what applications should be priced by making Monkey Ball $9.99. On any other mobile platform, a game like that would run between $19.99 and $24.99. I think developers are in the mindset, “Well, this thing isn’t as good as Monkey Ball….I have to price it lower”. But a year from now, how many of those people are still going to be around?