Yesterday, the guys at Tapbots announced the official Tweetbot app for Mac. To fans of Tweetbot, this was fantastic news, but there apparently exists a vocal group of people who felt the need to make it known that they weren't about to put up with the $20 price tag.
The comments section of that blog post is riddled with people complaining that the app is too expensive and that they won't be purchasing, or even going as far as saying Tapbots has "lost a customer." This is utterly ridiculous behavior and it needs to stop.
First of all, no one cares if you don't have $20 to spend on something, or even if you have the money but have some kind of moral objection to spending it on a piece of software. iOS engineer Alan Zeino put it best:
People complaining that they can’t afford Tweetbot on their blog: do you walk up to staff in shops and yell about stuff you can’t buy?
— Alan (@alanzeino) October 19, 2012
Secondly, the only reason people have this kind of opinion is due to the race-to-the-bottom mentality engendered over the years by the iOS App Store. No one wants to pay any amount above a couple bucks even for the best apps anymore, now that people are selling entire games for only a buck. And don't even THINK about coming out with a paid upgrade for an existing app (like Loren Brichter did for Tweetie 2 back in 2009) or people will riot.
"Pfft, your competitors are selling their Twitter client for two dollars, why can't you?" This kind of attitude absolutely reeks of self-entitlement. You don't get to set the price for an app, the developer does. If you don't like it, go away.
Heaven forbid a group of people who worked long and hard to produce something great actually asks to be nicely compensated for that work! They probably don't have families to feed or anything.
