I’ll confess, I’ve been tempted to listen to all of the people who complain that FatWatch is overpriced. It was especially tempting in the first few days, before Apple began releasing sales information. I had no idea if anybody was buying my app at all, save for a dozen or so support emails and a handful of reviews on iTunes complaining about the price.
I’m glad I didn’t give in, though, because it turned out that FatWatch was selling very well. It turns out that most people take the reviews with a grain of salt, anyway. I made a decent bit of money, enough to encourage me to continue improving the application.
Developers who are charging less than $5 are actually giving up any incentive to update their apps. In a market where you can charge for updates, it makes sense to be aggressive initially, with the goal of getting as many people “hooked” as possible. The next hit, as they say, is going to cost them. But on the iTunes App Store, you are just giving a discount to people who would have paid more now, and giving free updates to people who would have paid more eventually. The developers may have good intentions, but once they find that their updates don’t bring in much additional money, they’ll have to turn to more profitable work.
By pricing FatWatch sensibly, I am able to make enough money to continue with improvements. As I improve it, more customers will be compelled to buy it. The cycle is sustainable.
I’m confident that FatWatch is worth $9.99 to people who are serious about tracking their weight. If you think it is overpriced, you probably don’t have any issues managing your weight. Good for you! You don’t need to spend money on a weight tracker.
I go with you. Most apps are sold too cheap. I can understand the devs because the AppStore sucks in terms of app visibility. I cannot understand the buyers who moan about an app costing less then they pay for two hours in a cinema.
Regarding the other apps for tracking weight you are the one with the most functionality and Weightbot is the best looking app. Regarding the upcoming Weightbot feature set it looks, that Weightbot will match the feature set Fatwatch has (and it’s cheaper). So I’m asking if FatWatch will get a design update :). FatWatch has a nice and fast interface using the default iPhone GUI elements, but it feels a bit clunky. It works and does its job, but the fun is missing. WeightBot has the fun… ;)
Oh, and please add a wordpress plugin to subscribe to comments ;)
I am working on an update to FatWatch and I will be tuning the design a bit, though I’m not going as far as to make it look like a little robot. I’m not a graphic designer, so I’d rather play to my strengths and work on functionality (e.g., computing BMI and tracking body fat percentage) that will keep FatWatch in the lead.
I’m watching Weightbot fairly closely — they have made a lot of promises but I’m wondering if they will deliver. I predict they will get one more update out, find out that it’s not making them any additional money, then move on to something else.
And, on your suggestion, I’ve installed the Subscribe to Comments plugin. Let me know if it works. :-)
Works :)
I now bought weightbot and it sucks in a big way. It looks great, but functionality is still missing and it’s buggy. My latest and greatest bug so far: I added a value yesterday and today. Todays value has been saved with todays weight for the weight view, but with yesterdays date for the graphical view. Great. That means the diagrams are now broken. Great. Fatwatch is still the best.
But I’m still using four different apps for tracking weight because there’s still no single app which does everything :(
I could give you a list of the features the other apps have ;). Most of the time it’s just data fatwatch already has, but doesn’t show to me in a nice way.
I agree, the Weightbot update was a little underwhelming. They had a really well designed app and I’m afraid they are going to mangle it by jamming in new features that they didn’t originally plan for.
If you seriously have feature requests, send an email to support@fatwatchapp.com and I’ll consider it.