Interesting discussion on iPad content

[Rodney Somerstein]

Marian Petrides wrote:
>FWIW, this amateur (OK, near amateur) finally bit the bullet on 
>RevMobile when I got a special offer that dropped the price to 
>something like $550 because I REALLY want to be able to develop for 
>the iPad. 
>
>OTOH, my subscription to Rev Enterprise is paid up until 2016 or so 
>and I bought into On-Rev Founder, so I'm hardly a tight wad when it 
>comes to buying Rev products.  That said, even I agree that the 
>current _list_ price for RevMobile is prohibitive for anyone who 
>does not already have a product ready to be deployed on the iPad.
>
>Not sure what the answer is, just making an observation....
>

I just do this as a hobby. As an enterprise licensee, I have put a 
LOT of money into Rev over the years, including an On-Rev Founder 
account that has mostly been sitting dormant. Hopefully, two years 
after that purchase there will finally be some upgrades to that 
product in the coming months.  I would definitely consider 
relinquishing the On-Rev stuff I have access to for something that is 
turning out to be much more compelling to me. Especially since I 
suspect there is more likelihood of ongoing development and 
improvements on Rev-Mobile than On-Rev. That is money spent that may 
eventually prove worthwhile but so far not really.

As far as I know, I never got any kind of special offer for 
Rev-Mobile. If I had some kind of offer to drop the price of Rev 
Mobile, I likely would buy into it. I guess it takes a lot more than 
being a multi-year Enterprise license holder (I show licensing info 
from all the way back to 2002 or so - I'm not sure that it was 
Enterprise until 2004-ish)  and an On-Rev founder to qualify for that 
kind of thing. (Or maybe I somehow missed it?) So I'm not exactly a 
tightwad when it comes to purchasing things from RunRev either, but 
this one just seems to push a bit too far. I hate to think what you 
must have done over the years to get such an offer.

I REALLY want to be able to develop for the iPad also, but...

I don't really care about the conference access, but I didn't see an 
option to just participate in the alpha and release without all the 
conference stuff, unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, the conference 
would be great, but I would gladly give up live access to that for 
access to Rev-Mobile. I would love something along the lines of the 
On-Rev founder access to Rev-Mobile. Even the option to buy into that 
for several years of updates without the conference stuff would have 
been more attractive to me. More up-front money but better return for 
someone not doing this professionally.

But, I'm instead looking at $800 for an alpha with a potential 
release later this year and then the prospect of paying more for an 
upgrade license each year than I do for RevEnterprise. So essentially 
I would get a product with less functionality than Enterprise (other 
than deploying on the iPhone/iPad) with a higher cost than 
Enterprise. (In all fairness, there may be an early upgrade price for 
Rev-Mobile each year as well, I just haven't seen it mentioned). So, 
I'm looking at at least $400/year in upgrade fees between the two 
products. Again, not exactly something for the average enthusiast, 
but with a cheaper buy-in option more people would consider it. And 
it seems that RunRev would benefit from having non-commercial apps 
produced with Revolution to show off as well as the specialized 
commercial ones that they often won't really be able to talk about 
with other customers.

Anyway, I've hopefully made my point. The goal isn't just to 
complain, but to agitate a bit for something more reasonable as an 
option for people who aren't considering Rev-Mobile vs. spending a 
lot more money for commercial development. For that latter group, 
Rev-Mobile is probably worthwhile at the current price. They can 
probably write it off on taxes in many cases. Being somewhat locked 
out of participating in a very compelling enthusiast product due to 
an insistence on purely commercial pricing does chafe a bit, though.

(I'll try to keep future replies a bit shorter now that I've ranted a bit)

-Rodney