We’ve come to expect every app to have subscriptions and in-app purchases to unlock their full potential.
Gone are the days when looking at an App Store page gave you a clear understanding of the value of the offering and what the actual price of admission was.
Now it looks more like: Search → Find an app → See if it has in app purchases → Scroll down to see a mix of every subscription price ever associated with the app → Decide if you really want to find out what it costs today → Download the App and open it → Close upgrade popups → Maybe start a 7 day free trial then go back to the App Store to cancel it before you forget → Go back to the app → Hopefully try it without being disturbed by more upgrade popups → Maybe renew the subscription?
That’s a lot of work and while it might be the 2026 playbook, it’s utterly frustrating and difficult for customers.
I’ve even had experience at businesses where a huge portion of annual subscriptions are non-users: people who just forget to unsubscribe.
Honest Pricing and Features.
I set out to make My Bus SF 2026 a $0.99 app, with no subscriptions or in-app purchases. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do and it does it well. But Google Maps, Apple Maps et al are free. So why spend $0.99 on it?
- Personalization for you, not advertisers
- Modern iOS features like widgets and live activities that the big apps don’t support for this use case
- Support a small developer with a “way less than a cup of coffee” pricing model
The 2014 version was free and had a 5-star rating. We stopped developing it as real jobs and life got in the way, but with the advent of AI engineering, I was able to revive it and get it approved by Apple in under a week.