True, and you're not the first person to tell me how clear it is that I
miss the obvious.
A few subtle distinctions though. I was responding to people who were
making blanket statements that you can't support on going costs with a
one time fee business model. DVD Audio Extractor does provide me
upgrades and customer support at no charge. Obviously, they incur a
request every time I contact customer support.
TiVo does much more than provide the chance to record a movie. They
provide access to an ever changing variety of streaming content. I would
assume they have incurring costs with respect to interfacing with the
various sources of content they provide. They also have incurring costs
when it comes to keeping up with new users signing up for their service
and accessing newly available content, such as maintaining the necessary
network bandwidth, keeping up with server storage and so on. I'm sure if
I watch TiVo for 100 hours a week, I'm putting more of a strain on their
infrastructure than if I just watch TiVo 1 hour a week. I also wouldn't
be surprised if they have to make licensing payments to their content
providers based on customer usage. TiVo traditionally has a subscription
service, like NetFlix for example, but they do or at least used to offer
a lifetime flat price option.
You're right, Tap Tap See incurs a cost every time someone sends them a
picture, and there's probably no flat price that people could stomach
that would give them the revenue from new users to keep up with the
picture recognition demand, which is what I meant when I said it's not
just that they have incurring costs but that those costs are relatively
high and their number of new sales they can count on is relatively low.
BTW, The scenario you point out can also happen with the monthly flat
rate. If I pay $10 a month, Tap Tap See will incur a much greater cost
to support me if I send in 1000 pictures then they will if I send in 100
pictures that month. They figure $10 a month will work for them though
in spite of this. I suppose Tap Tap See could offer a $1000 price for a
lifetime subscription, but it's probably not worth it to them to come up
with a way to administer such a model for the few people that would
actually pay this much up front for such a life time service.
On 11/11/2013 01:50 PM, Steve wrote:
Clearly, Christopher, you don't understand the difference. You are
comparing apples to oranges.
DVD Audio Extractor nor Tivo incur any costs when you extract audio
from one of your DVD's or record a movie. All that activity takes
place locally, it doesn't matter to them whether you extract one or a
thousand DVD's. They don't have any additional costs whether you are
a light or heavy user of their program. The only thing they are
providing you are free software updates when an update is released.
Provisioning this to an existing user is not really incurring an added
cost to them, except for you getting the program from their server, I
suppose. The update enhances the program and hopefully makes it
marketable to new buyers, which is where they derive their continued
revenue growth.
This is not the same model as TTS App uses. In the case of Tap Tap
See, every time you send a picture to them, they are incurring a cost
to have someone identify it. Therefore, if you recognize a thousand
pictures, you are costing them a hundred times as much as someone who
only recognizes ten pictures with it.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Christopher Chaltain <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Sunday, November 10, 2013 1:03 PM
*Subject:* Re: Tap Tap See
There are plenty of business models where paying a one time fee goes
towards supporting an ongoing service. I paid a one time fee for DVD
Audio Extractor and now I get updates and support for life. You can
purchase TiVo for life with a one time fee. I paid a one time fee for
my iPhone and now I get updates to IOS for no charge. I don't use this
MLB app, but I'm not sure there aren't ongoing costs, such as support,
upgrades, licensing fees and so on.
I suspect that it's a combination of the high cost of image
recognition combined with the relatively low volume of sales such an
app targeted at the blind would generate.
On 11/10/2013 11:14 AM, Steve wrote:
I wish someone would put a stop to this insanity. This is a free
market, you folks have a choice. Pay the price, or don't use a very
useful app. Only a few people seem to understand that the developer
has to pay the people that recognize the images on a per-image
basis. Therefore, paying a one=-time fee for the app has nothing to
do with a reasonable pricing model in this case. It is not the same
as paying for a season's access on MLB where there are no ongoing
costs once you pay for the app.
Also, I take issue with another comment about other developers taking
the blind into consideration in their image recognition program. As
far as I can tell, that particular program requires the assistance of
a sighted person to set up a database, so this is in no way at all
comparable to what Tap Tap See is doing.
Of course, your other option is VizWiz, but it is all dependent on
the type of quality response you get and how long you are willing to
wait before getting a response from volunteers.
As economist Milton Friedman famously said "There ain't no such thing
as a free lunch".
Personally, I don't use Tap Tap See that often, so I am going to be
paying for 100 pictures because it is responsive and generally
accurate. I do hope they can add either some checkboxes or a textbox
to help us tailor the response we get from the Terks.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Peter Logan <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* Vi Phone <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Sunday, November 10, 2013 8:35 AM
*Subject:* Tap Tap See
It saddens me that the developers have decided to move to what I
consider to be price gouging, just my opinion. It also amazes me that
this community doesn’t seem to mind this time. However, wen the
Seeing Eye GPS came out with their model many on this list were outraged.
Am I in no way asking for something to be free, however if you are a
heavy user of the product and go with the monthly subscription, you
will be paying $120/year, as far as I know that would be the highest
price of any blindness specific app. I would have rather they just
go with a $4.99 or even $6.99 price for the app and call it good. My
most used app, MLB At Bat only cost $19.99/year and I use that
multiple times every day. I would have rather seen a yearly
subscription in that range.
Hopefully they will reconsider the pricing model in the future. It
is an awesome product, however I believe it could be priced better.
Thanks for listening.
Peter
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