The weird world of free apps and services

It has been said that, if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product. Sometimes you are made feel that it’s not true, that even if you are using a service for free, you are treated like a paying customer. But now and then you are reminded that you also get what you pay for.

If you are not paying for their service, and their apps, you really don’t have much bargaining power. As in, they are not dependent on your money. All they need to do is to make the source of their economical support is happy.

Most of the time these companies, that only wants your attention and user metrics, do a good job at making their non-paying customers very happy. And down the line they discover they are somewhat dependent on their users, even if they are just using their product for free.

Which is why it was really interesting yesterday to see the reaction when 6Wunderkinder, creator of Wunderlist 2, announced they had just released their app on Android tablets.

When Wunderlist 2 was released, it was only made available on the iPhone, and they told their iOS users that an iPad version of Wunderlist 2 was still under development.

Fair enough. They work hard on their products, they’ve made them freely available and they are pretty good.

After being asked why they haven’t released Wunderlist 2 for iPad, yet had time to finish a version for Android tablets, their standard answer became, it’s coming very soon.

I can understand they are excited about their new app for Android, but I would dare to assume a better approach, looking at it from a PR perspective, that it would have been a better decision to release Wunderlist 2 for Android tablets and iPad on the same date.

About these ads

Three weeks with iOS

It doesn’t matter were I go, if I’m staying somewhere for more than a day, I always bring more than just my iPhone.

Before I bought an iPad I always brought with me a laptop.

Mainly the purpose for bringing a long an iPad instead is mainly for the screen size. Sure, reading and writing short emails is fine on an iPhone, but end of the day it is a bit more convenient to do that on an iPad.

Since I got the iPad I do most of my writing on it, like I am doing right now. iOS is the perfect distraction-free work environment. But final editing has most of the time happened on the MacBook – better resolution and multi-tasking is sometimes a bit more pleasant to work with.

When going to Norway over the holidays last Xmas, staying there for three weeks, I knew it would be a great test to only bring the iPhone and the iPad – no computer.

It was a positive experience, only using iOS to take care of email, browsing the web with Mercury and tweeting via Tweetbot.

Of course it depends what kind of work you do and how you do it, but as a journalist and a geek in general, iOS does a pretty impressive job. So impressive I can easily get all my work done by only relying 99% on an iPhone and an iPad.