A friend of mine Twittered that the AppStore is relatively dangerous, to every iPhone/iPod touch owners. His suggestion that you browse the iTunes App Store when you are bored is very much welcomed, but beware that you might just spend unnecessary money out of this boredness! Why?
The App Store makes it so easy to browse for and purchase apps. What more, Apple licensed the 1-Click purchase methodology from big brother Amazon.com and have it built-in to the iTunes Store! And the App Store doesn’t just live in your Mac/PC within iTunes, you have it in your iPhone/iPod touch as well. It’s like having Walmart follow you wherever you may be.
If you find yourself addicted to the App Store and buying a lot of apps that you don’t eventually use, why not spend $0.99 (as of this writing) and get AppSniper by Manta Research instead? Read on to see my take on this wonderful application.
One of the missing features within the iTunes App Store is the ability to keep track of pricing. As we all already know, developers tend to drop prices of their apps for a few days (some do it for a few hours!) to get additional sales and reviews. Sites like AppShopper usually display these changes in its main page, thus giving the price-reduced apps an additional eyeball.
I found AppSniper thru browsing some forums, and picked it up immediately after a few rave reviews and feedback. And I’m enjoying it so far. AppSniper helps track the prices of apps in the iTunes App Store and informs users of apps that are currently on sale. Note that AppSniper only keeps track of applications that have been reduced in pricing. Apps that have its prices increased are not listed.
The application relies on your data connection (via EDGE/3G or Wi-Fi) in order to download data from Manta Research’s servers where the pricing details are kept. AppSniper allows tracking of applications that are On Sale (price dropped) as well as New Apps that just arrived in the iTunes Store.
The On Sale category keeps track of apps that have been discounted within the Last 24 Hours, 1 Day Ago and 2 Days Ago. There’s also an option to see apps that have been discounted to FREE. AppSniper highlights the percentage of discount that has been applied and also shows the variation in original pricing vs current pricing. Tap on an app to see a detailed description, which is the same description as it appeared within the iTunes Store. Six buttons are presented within each application’s description page: Screenshots, App Price History, Snipe, Ban Sellers and Buy. The App Price History button shows a graph depicting the pricing of the application within the last 90 days; helpful to identify developers who love putting their apps’ pricing on a roller-coaster. The Snipe button is where AppSniper helps to pay for itself. Click on the button and set a price which you would gladly pay for that application. AppSniper will inform you when the target price is hit. Ban Sellers and Buy buttons are self-explanatory. Check out this page on a certain developer who use SEO-styled keyword gaming. Now comes a good reason where the Ban Sellers button might come in handy.
Since many developers change their application’s pricing, the On Sale category might become very long. Not helpful, eh? The fact that AppSniper downloads each application’s icon on the fly may make the app feel sluggish at times, especially if you are running on EDGE. You can have the icons turned off, but let’s see the developer put in a caching mechanism in the next update.
Moving on, the New Apps category lists down apps that have just been added to the App Store within the Last 24 hours, 1 Day Ago and 2 Days Ago. Minus the highlights, this list basically mimics those under the On Sale category.
Next on is the Snipe category. Any applications that you Sniped appears here. A search function allows for easy adding of applications to be tracked, but take note that this function doesn’t search based on keywords. Searching for “tennis” will not yield “TouchSports Tennis” as a result. I currently track one particular game which has been priced at $9.99 since day 1; and it doesn’t seem to move at all. Grin.
Overall, AppSniper followed the basic good designs of an iPhone application. The Configuration screen allows for the app to filter out various genres from being displayed, good if you are addicted to only Games in the App Store, for instance.
One gripe I have with AppSniper is the duration in which an app’s pricing detail is updated. I am not aware of how fast Manta Research updates their database, however AppSniper will gladly inform you if a certain app’s price has increased. I have seen this happen in a few occasions and AppSniper basically saved my bacon from purchasing an app that used to be ‘free’.
Rating: 4.0/5.0 Taps
Pros: One-stop location for all your App Store addiction, pays itself in the long run
Cons: Sluggish when icons are turned on
AppSniper is currently available on the iTunes Store for $0.99 and weighs in at a mere 0.6 MB. Hit this link to check it out!
