Linked List: December 29, 2008

Monday, 29 December 2008

On the App Store and Free Markets 

I like Brent Simmons’s angle here:

But let’s set aside Apple’s ownership — it’s still not a free market. It’s a market that has a certain shape (with hot-lists but no demo versions), and that shape rewards very cheap apps over higher-quality, more expensive apps. It’s a guided market.

The App Store Effect 

Thought-provoking piece by Paul Kafasis on the App Store, comparing it, more or less, to Wal-Mart. (Paul makes reference to the aforelinked story regarding Snapper lawnmowers.) The important thing to remember is that most arguments, including this one, are not about black and white. They’re about shades of gray. It’s not that the App Store “sucks”, it’s that there’s something not quite right about the way it’s currently set up.

There are plenty of counter-examples showing that high-quality iPhone apps, which are priced accordingly, can thrive in the App Store. The Omni Group’s Ken Case announced last month that they’d sold 40,000 copies of OmniFocus for iPhone, a $20 app. And, in the same “productivity” category, Things for iPhone ($10) is, at this writing, #3 in the App Store bestseller list. But perhaps they’re thriving despite the App Store’s current setup, not because of it — in the same way that there are exceptions where high-quality, accordingly-priced items sell well in Wal-Mart stores, like, say, the iPhone itself.

The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart 

Terrific story from Fast Company about how Jim Wier, then the CEO of high-end lawnmower company Snapper, went to Wal-Mart’s corporate headquarters to inform them that he was pulling Snapper’s entire product line from Wal-Mart. He concluded — correctly, it seems — that it was incompatible with Snapper’s high-quality strategy to sell their products in a store where the only important factor is price. (And it ends up when you visit with a Wal-Mart vice president, you sit in a cheap lawn chair left behind by a previous vendor.)

Software Alex Payne Paid for but No Longer Uses 

Interesting idea for a list, especially the “do I regret having paid for it?” question.

Digital Simulacrum of John Lennon Promotes XO Laptops in OLPC Ad 

Creepy as hell. See for yourself.

NYT: ‘Skaters Jump in as Foreclosures Drain the Pool’ 

Interesting NYT piece on the upside to the wave of home foreclosures in places like Fresno, CA: the empty swimming pools are attracting skateboarders from around the world.

Mobile Carriers and the SMS Gold Mine 

Randall Stross in The New York Times on the cost of text messaging:

Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and the chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, wanted to look behind the curtain. He was curious about the doubling of prices for text messages charged by the major American carriers from 2005 to 2008, during a time when the industry consolidated from six major companies to four.

So, in September, Mr. Kohl sent a letter to Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, inviting them to answer some basic questions about their text messaging costs and pricing. All four of the major carriers decided during the last three years to increase the pay-per-use price for messages to 20 cents from 10 cents.

Smells like price-fixing to me.

VHS, RIP 

John August on the death of VHS:

Still, I have almost no nostalgia for the VHS format itself. With its springs and gears, each tape was built to fail. I can’t think of another technology that seemed so inelegant even when it was new.