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Wolfram Alpha iPhone app drops from $50 to $1.99, gets iPad version
When Wolfram Alpha first launched its iPhone app, the powerful features were overshadowed by the massive price. $50 for an iPhone app?! Wolfram Alpha is like having a graphing calculator, plus a lot of other useful data, in your pocket, so the $50 price could have been seen as justified ... but not in a market where the majority of apps go for 1 or 2 dollars. Wolfram has reversed direction and dropped the price of Wolfram Alpha for iPhone to a very reasonable $1.99, as well as announcing an iPad version of the app. Actually, it's one two-dollar app that works on both iPhone and iPad, but with some iPad-optimized features.
On the iPad, Wolfram Alpha offers all the same computational abilities and data, while taking advantage of the bigger screen and features like map integration. The new version also does arithmetic right in the search field, and saves your results for offline viewing later (which is important for wifi-only iPads).
By the way, if you purchased Wolfram Alpha at the old price, you can get a refund here.
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsTheOneAndOnlyJHApr 3rd 2010 1:19AM
At least they offer refunds. This is actually an interesting business model idea... Charge a lot for your original sales to cover the startup costs, then when you have a large user base to offset costs, refund early adopters to make up for the new lower price.
I can think of quite a few other things I would like to see this apply to. (Video game systems, smartphones, and other quickly improving tech) The main issue is that with most physical devices the price would be less likely to decrease as much when refunds have to be accounted for. It would quell a bit of buyer's remorse though.
SyllepsesApr 3rd 2010 2:59AM
Awesome! I'm getting it now. I've been wanting to for a while, but $50 is very hard to swallow.
cmsb55Apr 3rd 2010 3:05AM
Meh. $2 is still too much when they have a perfectly good mobile site. The app doesn't add very much.
EdexApr 3rd 2010 11:14AM
You are just cheap.
cmsb55Apr 3rd 2010 1:05PM
Yes, but that has nothing to do with it. I have bought many apps that are more expensive than $2 before, but I don't see what this app adds that makes it worth even that. The mobile site gets the job done just as well so I see no reason to pay.