iLounge

1

Now that’s a reasonable price for one of the best iPhone navigation apps out there.  I know iLounge’s editors much prefer dedicated GPS devices (I have them too), but navigation software on the phone has its uses as well (not the least of which is that Navigon software routinely outperforms my $200 Garmin GPS devices in terms of routes).  I bet Navigon picks up a lot of customers with this.

Posted by Dyvim on March 17, 2010 at 11:43 AM (PDT)

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Suppose you install the Navigon app on two or more phone.  Then do an in-app purchase for an additional region.  Do both phones get the second region?

If not, this is less of a deal than meets the eye for families with more than one iPhone.

Posted by Chris Adamson on March 17, 2010 at 11:46 AM (PDT)

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At some price point (particularly free with the iPhone’s Maps application), iPhone-as-GPS sort of makes sense. That price isn’t $90 or $100, and it’s not a recurring charge. Roughly $20-$30 as a one-time fee is about as close to “right” as it gets, and CoPilot Live’s $30 full North America pricing is there.

Posted by Jeremy Horwitz in East Amherst, NY, USA on March 17, 2010 at 11:54 AM (PDT)

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#2: Since in-app purchases are managed by the App Store, I suspect this would work the same way for Navigon as for any other app, which means that any in-app purchases will be available to all devices that are using the same App Store account.

Posted by Jesse Hollington in Toronto on March 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM (PDT)

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@Jesse:  That’s what I thought, but I’ve learned never to assume.  BTW, MotionX Drive requires a separate subscription for each device, according to their FAQ.

Posted by Chris on March 18, 2010 at 2:22 PM (PDT)

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The in-app purchase system is managed by Apple, and not by the developers. One-time in-app purchases follow the same rules as applications do: Namely that if you’ve already purchased an app on a given iTunes Store account, you’re allowed to repurchase it again for free. If you go through the “buy” process on an in-app purchase process again with the same iTunes Store account, even on another device, the iTunes Store will not charge you again for that purchase (you’ll actually see the second purchase as a $0 charge in your purchase history).

The only exception to this is for in-app purchases that work as subscriptions, since presumably you would need to re-purchase (and re-pay) for the same items on an ongoing basis.

This is how MotionX works around this, since their upgrades are subscription-based rather than one-time purchases. If you try to purchase the subscription on another device, you get an iTunes Store popup that tells you that you’ve already purchased this subscription and asks you if you want to “renew or extend” it. If you actually tap the buy button, you get a month of service on the second device rather than an extension of your overall service, since the expiry of the service obviously is controlled by the developer. MotionX’s own FAQs aside, the misleading in-app purchase dialog box (which clearly uses the words “renew or extend”) suggests that there may be something here that doesn’t quite jive with Apple’s policies.

Note that MotionX only gets away with this because their offering is subscription-based. What they’re essentially doing is telling the App Store that you want to purchase another month of service (which isn’t technically incorrect), so you’re billed for the additional month in the same way as if you were extending or renewing your in-app subscription on the same device. This, however, is also why the only way to restore your purchased subscriptions is to actually restore your device from backup.

Navigon doesn’t play this trick, and in fact since they don’t offer subscription-based services, there’s actually no way they could even if they wanted to—as one-time purchases they can’t tell the iTunes Store to bill you again when you attempt to repurchase. Further, the Navigon app actually includes a “Restore” button on the Extras screen that will restore all of your in-app purchases from your iTunes Store account automatically, so purchases made on one device can be easily activated on any other device without having to even bother going through the re-purchase process, which may otherwise mislead users into thinking that they have to pay for the in-app upgrade again.

Posted by Jesse Hollington in Toronto on March 19, 2010 at 12:03 PM (PDT)

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Thanks for that very useful followup, Jesse.

Posted by Chris on March 29, 2010 at 7:18 AM (PDT)