Apple is retro
Aug. 12th, 2009 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apparentparadoxI recently got an iPod Touch, with the hopes of making it my PDA.
I realized the other day that buying software for the iPhone/iPod Touch is a lot like buying software from 20 years ago -- you do some research, can't really figure out how the features of this product compare with the features of their competitor, look at ratings and reviews possibly salted with responses by competitors or family members, cross your fingers and buy the software.
I had forgotten all that because lately almost every software product I have bought for a computer (including my Palm Pilot) in the last 15 years was "try and buy", giving you 30 days or so to actually try out a fully featured version of the product. There are definitely products I've downloaded & tried out, and then decided that they weren't right for me, as well as products that I might not have purchased if I had been required to plunk down the money up front, but once I tried them out, I realized that they would be useful.
Sure, some of the iPhone apps have "free" versions (they all seem to be crippled versions, not ones that will stop working after a given number of days), but all that seems to do is to bloat the number of entries in the "app store", making it even harder to find a product that you would like.
So far, I'm not overly impressed and am somewhat amazed how much people rave about the iPhone/iPod Touch.
I realized the other day that buying software for the iPhone/iPod Touch is a lot like buying software from 20 years ago -- you do some research, can't really figure out how the features of this product compare with the features of their competitor, look at ratings and reviews possibly salted with responses by competitors or family members, cross your fingers and buy the software.
I had forgotten all that because lately almost every software product I have bought for a computer (including my Palm Pilot) in the last 15 years was "try and buy", giving you 30 days or so to actually try out a fully featured version of the product. There are definitely products I've downloaded & tried out, and then decided that they weren't right for me, as well as products that I might not have purchased if I had been required to plunk down the money up front, but once I tried them out, I realized that they would be useful.
Sure, some of the iPhone apps have "free" versions (they all seem to be crippled versions, not ones that will stop working after a given number of days), but all that seems to do is to bloat the number of entries in the "app store", making it even harder to find a product that you would like.
So far, I'm not overly impressed and am somewhat amazed how much people rave about the iPhone/iPod Touch.