is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
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Just a quick note: Verbs has been available on the iPhone for some time now. This release makes Verbs a universal app, allowing it to be used on both iPhone and iPad.
It may only be $0.99, but it should be noted that some important features are crippled at that price. An in-app upgrade of $4.99 is required to unlock push notifications and the ability to stay logged in for more than 10 minutes while the app is in the background. I suspect this helps defray the costs of keeping a server running on the backend to keep you logged in. So really it’s more like a $6 app, which may still be a good deal.
Yeah, I was pretty excited about the app, and bought it as soon as I saw the write-up… Then saw the $4.99 upsell. As David pointed out, it may be worth it @ $6.00, but it’s a bit crippled (and non-obvious) what you’re [not] getting @ $0.99.
You know how many gumballs and games of Dragon’s Lair I could have played for that $0.99┐!?А
=)
Great point folks. I should’ve paid more attention to the upsell, which on closer inspection is not that great. I was just excited to see a decent-looking IM client make it to market.
Disappointed to see people complain about a whole $5 in-app purchase. This developer has put in a ton of time making the best IM app out there, better than anything the big companies are doing.
I would suggest that the problem is not the developer’s pricing, but your expectations. If you want a free, terrible app then go ahead and use one. For those of us who appreciate quality design and engineering, we recognize that quality comes at a price.
@Pat – I think if you look at the complaint David and I made, it was couched in the conceit that this may be a perfectly good $6.00 app. I paid more for BeeJive IM, a very similar app ($9.99).
So it’s not the cost, it’s the fact that Verbs needs another $5.00 to be the “best IM app out there”, and it wasn’t immediately obvious until after buying the product. Shame on me for not investigating further – it was my fault to buy based simply on Khoi’s two cents (DAMN YOU TO HECK KHOI). Due to feeling a bit ripped off, I have no interest in the upsell. I can’t imagine the developer was going for this effect, because I’m not a cheap customer – just one who doesn’t like to be nickel & dimed for features.
So to balance this out, here’s my recommendation – buy Beejive IM – I’ve had it a while now (2 years?) it gets regular updates, and it works across a ton of protocols. It’s not cheap, but it does everything and is awesome. Read up on it here
Pat: I think EyePulp echoes my thoughts. It’s not that US$5 is a lot of money, it’s that Verbs doesn’t make it entirely clear that the full product costs more money. I don’t think they’re being deceitful here, I just think it could’ve been spelled out a bit more explicitly. Anyway, caveat emptor.