Friday, March 04, 2011

Worth Jailbreaking?

A recent post on El Reg (www.theregister.co.uk) points out that due to the hoops regular (ie: non-techy or can't-be-bothered-techy) mobile users (read: mobile phone and tablet users) have to jump through to get free apps or banned apps (those denied from stores like Apple's iOS App Store) most users are content with paying the low fee of US$0.99 or GB99p for an app on their phone or tablet.

Their article focuses on Open Source software, that of the wind of "Free". However, as a mobile developer myself, spending months working on an app and giving it away for free (especially the prospect that it would be installed via jailbreaking without charge) is rather underwelming.

Quote from El Reg:

"if an app is close enough to free and immediately available, with the added benefit of potentially being higher quality than open-source alternatives (because of the paid investment in developing and polishing the app), will there be any reason to bother downloading an open-source app?
Freedom matters a great deal to some, but arguably not to the consumers flocking to Apple's devices. And perhaps not even to the bulk of developers writing for those consumers."

1 comment:

  1. I totally agree with the views of the author,,,,,its a real embarrassing situation,,,,,,

    ReplyDelete