Before the app store everybody was comfortable with the idea that software was not a generic commodity sold at a fixed price. Discovery is also a big problem in the app store, but it's orthogonal to price expectations.
Discovery of free apps can be accomplished by downloading all of them and finding out which ones (if any) suit you.
This method sucks, but it sucks much less than paying $2 for each of them and finding out which ones (if any) suit you. That's why they don't seem like orthogonal problems to me.
This method sucks, but it sucks much less than paying $2 for each of them and finding out which ones (if any) suit you. That's why they don't seem like orthogonal problems to me.