How To Preview Apps On The iPhone
March 29, 2009 by Ryan Ray
Happy Sunday to everyone in internet land. It’s a cold and rainy Sunday here, but thankfully no snow so far. I’m glad no one has helped me out on my previous post, seriously help me decide if I should jailbreak or not. All my experience will be coming right back here if I do jailbreak. Anyway, Sundays are a lazy day for me and with that I’ve been thinking. I ask myself what would I like to see from the iPhone that we don’t have right now. Sometimes it’s stupid features, like the iPhone webserver. Other times it’s in line with what a lot of other people want on their iPhone. So let’s talk about one of those things today.
I find myself more and more frequently browsing the app store and looking for a new and entertaining app. Some of which I’ll tell you about soon enough, but when I get to the paid apps I’m always weary of purchasing them right away. I work hard for my money and don’t want to just throw it away on an app and have it be a steaming pile of no fun at all. What can I do then to sort of “preview” an app before purchasing it. Well at the moment Apple does not allow the users to some how preview and app. Say it be for a week, 3 days, 3 hours, whatever it would be it’s just not possible. The developers have turned to a pretty nifty solution though.
Developers often offer a full paid version of their app, then right along side of the paid one they offer a “lite” version or “light edition.” Within the light versions you are often limited in comparison to the full functionality of the full paid version of the app. For instance to sell their games many developers have light versions of their games that limit you to 1-3 levels, certain weapons, certain tricks, etc.. You see where I’m going. They give you a little taste of their game. They give you just enough to where you may want to buy the game.
My question is this, why won’t Apple devise some way for EVERYONE to preview a paid app before buying it? It will save the developers time from creating a light version, and Apple from hosting the light version. I know you can technically do this by begging a developer for a code to test it out. That doesn’t cover all of the iPhone owners in the world though. I believe the developer can only let 50 people have codes, a strict limitation on sharing a preview of your app.
If you look at it this way, Apple could devise a clever scheme for a way to preview apps and in that potentially increase their profits. Not every app is created equal, and not every app has a light version available for us to test out. At the same time they can cut back on hosting costs and the developers will save time from making multiple versions of their app. If you are listening Apple take heed, I think this is a welcomed and great improvement to the already incredible app store. Now I turn it to you. What are your thoughts on the ability to preview an app for a certain amount of time before deciding if to buy or not? Good or bad, let me know.
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