When Apple first launched the App Store, they took an unusual move of not allowing vendors to sell evaluation versions of their apps. Given that for two decades shareware had actually been a thing, this was an unsual move.

The result of this was that the only option way for vendors to get their apps moving was to offer the apps at such a low price it effectively “de-risked” the sale from the customer’s perspective. Hence the $1 app market — buying an app for $1 and it being rubbish ended up be...