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I have been in the software development business for over 30 years.

I have always been paid well and sometimes I have been paid extremely well.

that is ….. until now.

It seems that consumers put little value on our skills and you gotta think that at some point its going to cause some issues.

Let me explain.

My daughter was complaining to me the other day about the Angry Birds game… one of the most popular games ever…..She couldn’t understand that they wanted $6 for it.

I almost lost it right there. I looked at her in her designer jeans and $150 shoes….. and I said in as controlled a fashion as possible…

WHAT!!!!!! Have you any idea how long it takes to make something like Angry Birds function. Have you any idea how many software developers are going broke these days because people like you refuse to 99 cents for an APP they spent the last 6 months developing.

She looked at me…. texted something to one of her friends…. probably about how her father had finally lost it…. smiled and left the room.

I have heard all of the stuff about how you need to sell in volume and find other ways to make money off of your APPs…. and I guess that’s right but you’d think that something that I have spent the last year developing and testing and documenting would be worth more than 99 cents.

I’m just sayin…

Dave

The other day I had the opportunity to do a favourite Canadian passtime.

I went to the Cottage. Actually my son-in-law invited me to his new cottage to help him build a deck. Sort of the same thing …. Right?

Well… I don’t do this sort of thing often, and being the old nerd that I am I wasn’t going to get caught totally isolated, so I packed my Samsung Tablet …. and of course hoped for a strong enough signal so that I could use it.

First, I locked the location of the cottage into the Samsung….it took there…great turn-by-turn directions.

So….we kinda figured out how to build a deck…who knew it would be that complicated…

and

at about 6 p.m. I wanted to watch the news…. he has no TV….

I took out the Tablet… got a relatively good signal…. and locked into to my slingbox…and watched the news on the new deck. then went through my email then made a few phone calls using Skype then went fishing…using the GPS…don’t know the lake…my son-in-law caught a nice bass then checked the weather for tomorrow then decided to stay an extra day to help him put up the deck railings then looked up how to make a railing

This roughing it… isn’t so hard

So…. I said all of that to make a simple point. The folks at Samsung, get it. They built a device that not only has a great screen and is easy to use. The thing is actually useful…. not because of the hardware, but because of the Apps.

I also had the opportunity to use the Blackberry Playbook recently. From a technology point of view it is quite a bit superior to the Samsung Tablet…faster…great screen..solid

but

It can’t run Skype, has no SlingBox app and currently must be tethered to my Blackberry in order to even use the Browser.

So…

RIM if you are listening…. believe it or not… this is not rocket science…

Do what you have to do to make your stuff consumer friendly… others have and they are succeeding. Technology and Operating Systems are important, but the Applications are ultimately what sell devices.

Dave