[jeffreyrogers]

It's not that apps want to be free, as much as apps that any reasonably competent programmer can make are driven down in price because many reasonably competent programmers do make them.

If you look at applications that require a large amount of domain expertise to build (CAD, audio/video editing, etc.) they're still expensive and have only recently begun to come down in price, in part because there are some free versions that, while noticeably inferior, are still useful to a substantial population of users.