In a few short weeks we will finally have apps on the iPhone. What will the price of these apps be? How much would you be willing to pay for something that would increase your productivity? What about a game that would always be with you, waiting to distract you from the slower parts of your day?

For myself it depends on what the app can do for me, as well as the level of quality and polish in the app.

One app I can not wait to get my fingers on would be a simple to-do list. I feel like this is something Apple should have included on the iPhone from day one. Since they haven’t, I still have to resort to writing my to-do lists on post-it notes, which inevitably get lost half of the time anyhow. Now, let’s assume that I had to buy my own post-it notes (work buys them for me), I would probably spend $5 a year on these little yellow wonders! That isn’t much money, but I would gladly take the five bucks and spend it on an app that did the same thing on my iPhone. It is possible that I would even consider paying more if the app also integrated with iCal and the other apps on my iPhone, but anything more than $5, the to-do list app would really have to wow me.

What about an app that would truly let me be productive away from my computer. My work consists mostly of photography, designing and writing code. Since I doubt that the iphone has the power to deal with. A sweet text editor like Textmate or Coda should be well within reach of the processor though. Something like this I would easily consider dropping $40 on because it could save me from having to carry my macbook around all of the time. If the developer started adding features like FTP to the mix, I might even consider paying more, it would just depend on what value it added to me.

Games are a little tricky though. I love games, and think the iPhone is going to be a great platform for them. It has more power than either the PSP or the Gameboy DS, but at least to start will probably only see “casual games” developed for it. Generally I see the sweet spot to be around five dollars, at this price, I could easily buy a few to check out, and just replace them if they don’t entertain me. Any more than this and I have to question if it truly worth it, not because I won’t enjoy them, but more because they aren’t something that I need. Truly good games, like Spore perhaps, I might be willing to go up to $20 though. When the price get’s higher than this, wouldn’t it be better to just buy the console version?

The price of the different apps will probably be all over the place. I am sure there will be versions of sudoku that can be had for free, as well as specialized sales tools that will probably be closer to $100+ to have. One thing is certain, we only have a few weeks left, and I for one can hardly wait to get my finger swipes on them!

Shawn Cope - photography | design | motion