Coming form android the apple app store is painful. There is absolutely no excuse or argument to not have a trial period for all app purchases. This is the Android market’s main advantage over the app store. Android gives any app purchase a once off 24 hour cooling off period. Your transaction is left pending and not transacted until the end of the trial period, and at any time during that period you can uninstall and obtain a full refund. This can only be done once for each app. Clicking to buy again locks you into the purchase, which is fair and avoids people buying and refunding an app only when they need it.

Apple fanboys boast about their store being larger, but what is the point of a larger store if you can’t try before you buy. You just sit confused, lost in a sea of apps, relying upon websites such as this to work out what’s best, and even then you could end up with a dud. Then what? You have to buy another. It took me a whole 2 days of research on my iPad trying to work out what the best rss feed reader was for me, and at $6aud a piece, there was no way I was going to be buying two or three of them. I only need one, and I want to choose the right one from the start. It would have been much quicker for me to download the main couple I was interested in and tried them first hand, then refunded all but the one I was happy with. Instead i had to rely on the opinion of others, and those opinions don’t always lead you to what you want…

This problem is further excentuated by the fact the majority of apps in the app store are paid for.

As the apple platform is supposedly more secure than the android market, there is literally no excuse to not have a trial for everything. The only reason I can see against it is apple wants to catch you out and have you spend more money than you need in order to work out what you really want.

-Joel

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