I get annoyed by these things too based on some sort of perceived cost/value of the feature being available and implemented, but paygated.
Id rather just have a “donate $6 to help dev” in app purchase as it seems more authentic.
However, maybe there are really people who think dark mode is worth $6. Kids raised on Roblox seem to have no ethical issue with paying $5 for a digital hat that is just flipping a bit.
It isn’t flipping a bit, it’s designing an entire free to play game, getting millions of users, designing a hat, then flipping a bit. And about a million other things not mentioned.
Not to mention pretty much anything these days can be reduced down to "flipping a bit." As a software developer I flip bits for my employer, and in exchange, they tell my bank to flip some bits in their DB.
Indeed, the sort of reductionistic argument that the GP is making is simply too simplistic to be useful. It's like saying making a chair is just rearranging atoms and therefore it should be free as well.
The difference is that making a chair involves labor and atoms. Enabling a digital hat involves neither.
If a wizard could magically duplicate chairs, I’d have the same argument. Why charge $5 for something that costs $0 to replicate.
The design of the hat and the system to run it costs something. The design of the chair and the workshop to build it costs something. Those are fixed costs. It’s the marginal cost that is very different.
I’m not even against charging people for digital hats (I paid $5 after all), I’d just rather companies be more straightforward. Id rather pay $60 for a game once and not be microtransactioned.
Id rather pay $6 (or not since I don’t like this app) once than pay to enable features that clearly cost nothing or very little to implement.
App makers can charge whatever they like. And potential customers can complain about how much it sucks trying to convince app makers to build in a way I think is better for society (ie, straightforward prices for things rather than income streams from payments). But I could be wrong.
That particular hat is flipping a bit. Designing the game is a separate cost.
I played many a game that cost $20 and had thousands of hats so there’s many successful business plans that don’t involve free to play and then charging $5 for flipping a bit to enable my character to have a hat.
Agreed, no one who sells chairs will make them for free then ask for a $X "donation." But somehow people think devs should make their own stuff free too and ask for donations. If you like the product at a given price, buy it, and if you don't like either, don't buy it, same as any other good.
And people will pay $60 for physical items but balk at $0.99 apps and digital goods, it's strange.
Id rather also pay for the software. My point is charging $6 for dark mode is still “begging.”
I like the shareware model where people pay what they can, or what they perceive the value to be. I don’t think this is begging.
Programming is kind of unique because the marginal cost of production is near zero. I think this is a feature, not a bug and why it’s possible to have single person dev companies that are quite lucrative.
People who offer their labor as shareware will tend towards making 0 dollars. That's just the reality of it, if people don't have to pay, they won't. If you want to make money, you should...charge people money.
The bit is flipped at runtime or compile time. In the old days you'd pay for an upgrade and get a new binary with the feature compiled in. Nowadays the feature is compiled in and gated at runtime. In the end it's the same.
I’m not complaining about a free/cheap app from a small developer but the guidelines say you’re not supposed to gate OS or hardware features behind in-app purchase, so it may lead to refusal at any time.
I'll think about a better approach of monetizing the app. I always struggle when trying to choose what should be behind an in-app purchase. In this case I just picked the least restrictive option of what the popular competitor apps do (you can still use the dark mode, but it gets switched back when the session ends). Judging from the feedback on these apps I assumed that people are fine with it.
I think you made a good call. The counter-suggestion is “make a donate option” which generally is ignored by most and I doubt will pay you for your time. At $6 for dark mode, this is essentially a donate option anyway. People like free stuff.
It's fine. Not all complaints deserve a response, some people just like complaining. The other thing is follow through is non-existent. Outside of a signed business contract, when an individual says "I'd pay if only X", assume they won't have the patience to wait for X to be implemented, and then find you again to pay you. It's far more likely they'll just deal with their problem a different way.
Agree. Apps using AppKit support dark mode by default, with zero input from the developer. This isn't even a matter of preference, but basic accessibility.
If the author really wishes to put this feature behind a purchase, "follow system settings" should be the free default.
It does not work by default and it does require input from the developer. The UIKit API allows you to detect that you have it enabled but it doesn't magically redefine all the colors for you.
Not quite. If you use the UIKit system colors, it requires no work from the developer. The colors are semantic and automatically adapt to light/dark mode and high contrast mode. It only requires manual work if you have custom colors, or you do your own drawing.
Dark mode is not a platform-default available feature. It's a setting in the OS that tells apps that you may prefer a darker variant, but it's still up to the app to implement the work required to make that happen. That is a feature of the app and can be charged for, hence why he does it and the app is still in the app store approved.
Id rather just have a “donate $6 to help dev” in app purchase as it seems more authentic.
However, maybe there are really people who think dark mode is worth $6. Kids raised on Roblox seem to have no ethical issue with paying $5 for a digital hat that is just flipping a bit.