Thought Detox is now available for pre-order!
The app launches on the App Store on Monday, February 15th, but readers can pre-order it today at 65% off the launch price.
Yes — Thought Detox will be a paid app. I don’t think anyone believes that people shouldn’t get paid for their work, but some business models are harder to accept than others.
First, let’s agree straight away that supporting the app with advertising isn’t a good fit here. I just can’t reconcile “protecting your privacy” with “selling your data to advertisers,” and my personal stance is that privacy has to be protected at all costs in an app of this nature.
Second, “freemium” pricing —where the app is available for free, but some features are locked behind an in-app purchase— doesn’t make sense for Thought Detox. I didn’t build it to be half an app, and so it’d be a bad experience for users that decide against unlocking the full app.
Then there are subscriptions. Again — I just don’t see Thought Detox fitting this model. I have thoughts on subscriptions in general, and I do think they make sense for some apps, but not this one.
It’s a tricky thing to balance. The time and effort put into launching and maintaining an app isn’t trivial; it’s hundreds or thousands of hours (or more!) of effort, trying to build something that will improve someone’s life in some way. On the other hand, no one owes me a dime for building this.
If you check out the (free!) web app and decide that’s good enough for you, great! I hope you find it helpful. If you want a bit more, or just want to support my work in some way, I’d love it if you bought the app. ❤️
It’s available for pre-order now at a special price of USD$0.99, jumping to USD$2.99 soon after the official launch on Monday.
Another little bit of app-related news: HoneyJar, my first iPhone app, will be removed from the App Store next month.
There are a few reasons for that — it hasn’t gotten updated in years, the codebase is a mess, and frankly I don’t think there’s much of a market for it. There’s a recent one-star review for it that implies the usefulness of it isn’t clear.
That’s fair enough.
It was a great learning experience, but I don’t have the time or, frankly, the interest to update it. It’s made a total of $10 since it was released as a paid app in 2014, so I think it’s safe to say no one else has much interest in it either. 🙂
It’ll remain available on the App Store for the 2,736 users that have already downloaded it, but it’ll otherwise live as an archived-app page on the website.