What's $50 worth? According to the computational engine Wolfram Alpha, it's currently the same as 4535 Yen, 33.43 Euros or one Wolfram Alpha iPhone app.
The much-heralded, but little-used Wolfram Alpha is basically a search engine as designed by Rain Man. It answers complex mathematical queries with lovely graphs, can tell you the phase of the moon for any given day in history, and lets you see the population of Monaco as a percentage of the Vatican's over a 17-year period (type population monaco/vatican).
Now WA, the brainchild of genius Steven Wolfram, wants iPhone users to pay $50 to run the website inside a specialized app on their iPhone, rather than using the website for free in a browser. Getting people to pay for equation-solving software is not an odd jump for Wolfram, who made millions selling his Mathematica software for thousands of dollars a pop.
That said, $50 for an iPhone app might not compute for most people. In its defense, the company has told other reporters that the search experience is better, and $50 is about half the price of a graphing calculator (though you can get a graphing calculator app for about a dollar.)
Still, the site has its adherents. And its $50 price tag reflects that it has a niche draw.
And keeping an app out of the hands of the masses might be a good thing — to keep from disappointing people, until Wolfram Alpha turns into a service that's more than something that's handy for Wednesday's very exciting Homework Day.
A drop in price to something like free might make sense when it's computational engineers figure out that someone searching on "Johnny B. Goode" would almost always rather watch Chuck Berry play one of the best rock n' roll songs ever made, than simply be told, in a table, that it was released in 1958 and peaked at number 8 on the charts.
Nice to know, but hardly as good as hearing those first few guitar notes. Unless, of course, you are Rain Man.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
See Also:
