Andy Finnell makes a lot of sense in How to Price Your iPhone App out of Existence.
Since the opening of the app store I’ve felt that the $0.99 (or thereabouts) pricing model isn’t sustainable - Andy lays that out in thorough detail.

He does make one point I’d argue with, however.  His assertion that developers should charge a price that’s high enough to keep them in business is backwards, in my opinion.  Developers should charge a price commensurate with the value of their software to users.  If I write an app that only appeals to 5 people and I need $50,000 a year to live, it’d be ridiculous to ask those 5 people to pay $10,000 / copy. If it’s worth $50 to them based on what it can do, then that’s what it’s worth.  If that’s not enough to pay the bills, then I shouldn’t be writing that application, or should look at changing something (the feature set, advertising, or marketing) to make it more viable.  Of course, we often don’t know the correct formula at the outset, but in the case of iPhone apps, it seems clear that charging $0.99 is not going to enable you to really support or update it long-term (where “long-term” is more than a few months).

We just released an update to HistoryHound!  If you’re already hooked on it, just go download the new version - it will automatically recognize your existing registration number.  If you haven’t tried it yet, this is a great time to take a test drive - let HistoryHound compile its index of all the pages in your browser history and bookmarks, and then you can do an instantaneous search for any word that appears anywhere on one of those pages.

The includes the ability to index web archive files - something that’s incredibly helpful for users that save web archives of pages for archival or offline viewing.  The cool thing about it is that when one of those pages comes up in your HistoryHound search results, clicking on it loads the page from the web archive into HistoryHound’s built-in browser, so you don’t even need an internet connection to search and browse the contents of your web archives.

This release also fixes a bug that could cause HistoryHound to mysteriously crash while indexing in the background on some users’ Macs.  So download it and let HistoryHound simplify that tangled web you’ve downloaded!

It’s out!  HistoryHound 1.9.5 has now been officially released, bringing a huge speed improvement, support for all of the latest Mac web browsers, the ability to search by date, and a host of other refinements and fixes to our browser searching utility.  Full details are available on the HistoryHound Release Page

Thanks to all of the beta testers, localizers, and HistoryHound fans that have supported and tested the various iterations along the way.  You guys have made this a great utility for all of us!

HistoryHound 1.9.5 is finally getting close to finished!  With the public release of 1.9.5b1 we’ve got support for NetNewsWire and other WebKit-based apps working well again, as well as further speed increases in downloading, indexing and searching. You can find things you’ve looked at before, no matter which standalone or embedded browser you were using at the time.

Existing HistoryHound users already know how powerful its targeted searching can be - for those of you who haven’t tried HistoryHound, get the scoop at http://www.stclairsoft.com/HistoryHound/ or download the beta directly from http://www.stclairsoft.com/HistoryHound/beta.html

Default Folder X 4.0.8 was just released, delivering a few bug fixes and enhanced tracking of recent folders.  Ostensibly this fixes compatibility issues with Bias Peak and QuickBooks Pro, but may also affect other applications, so you should update even if you don’t use Peak or QuickBooks.