Don't Worry About What The iPad Costs, You Can't Afford The Apps

One of the cool things about the iPhone ecosystem is there are nearly 17 quintillion apps available for it, and although many of these are crap, the good ones frequently cost only a dollar or two. Even the premium-priced “productivity” apps–things like note pads and to-do lists–rarely cross the $10 threshhold, which means you can load up your iPhone or Touch with a lot of cool stuff on a modest software budget. But if a leaked video of the iPad app store is accurate, you can expect to pay 200-500% more for simple things like 99-cent games, and PC-level prices for more robust apps, on your fancy new iPad.

Here are some of the apps on display in the video, compared to the current prices for their smaller iPhone siblings.

App
iPad
iPhone


 

Flight Control HD
$4.99
$.99
Flick Fishing HD
$2.99
$.99
Fieldrunners for iPad
$7.99
$2.99
Brushes – iPad Edition
$9.99
$4.99
Disney Fairies Fly on iPad
$7.99
$4.99
Bento for iPad
$4.99
$4.99
Touch Hockey Extreme: FS5
$3.99
$1.99
Real Racing HD
$9.99
$4.99


 

OmniGraphSketcher
$14.99
NA
OmniGraffle
$49.99
NA
Igloo Games Arcade
$6.99
NA


Leaving out the three apps for which there are no current iPhone equivalents, you’d have to pay $53 on the iPad compared to $27 on an iPhone or Touch for the list above.

There’s currently no iPhone version of OmniGraffle, and the OS X version of the program costs $100, so you’ll be paying half that for the iPad version. Still, if every useful productivity app runs between $25-50, you’ll have to invest a significant amount of cash to load up the iPad with useful third-party apps that you won’t be able to install later on a laptop or tower.

Interestingly, the two apps in the list that have been hiked the least are from Apple and Disney. It would seem that Apple doesn’t think supersizing an iPhone app justifies doubling or tripling the price, even if other software developers do.

I’m not saying iPad apps are overpriced, since that’s a flexible concept. Native iPad apps will offer better graphics and in some cases more functionality. But if these sample prices are indicative of what’s to come, you’re going to have to make a considerably higher investment compared to what you’d make with an iPhone or Touch, unless you choose to run only iPhone apps on your new iPad.


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