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National Rail's iPhone app: what's it worth?
The National Rail website is rather good. In the old days of Railtrack it was quite hard to get any useful information on train running times from the web, but the current site, which is run by train operators' group ATOC, is easy to use and well designed.
Now, it's not too hard to access the site from a phone, particularly as newer phones have full HTML browsers that can cope with the design. But ATOC has released an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that makes it even easier.
It's been quite a PR success - there's been plenty of good coverage for the app on the web.
The problem, though, is that the application costs £4.99, quite a lot by App Store standards, where many titles cost just 59p. We wouldn't go so far as to use the phrase "rip off", but the program is going to have to do quite a lot to justify that kind of cost, particularly when it's only a couple of clicks on the phone to get into Mobile Safari and browse the main site.
Admittedly the app makes use of the phone's location finder to offer relevant information, and admittedly we haven't used the app (we're too cheap to stump up the fiver), but we're not convinced.
We asked ATOC's press office what the justification was for the cost. Its representative said: "The price justifies both the development cost and the application's functionality," adding that updates, adding functions, would be free to buyers.
I disagree, their site isn't good. the large number of flash adds seem to kill every computer I've used it on and make the site slow. It times out, annoying on this type of site as useful to go back to.
generally too slow and tedious to use. (and railtrack had a not too disimilar service right back in the late 90s).
And regarding the Iphone, if they opened up their data then others could develop services like this, so they wouldn't need to have 'development costs'.
Though they like to charge for using the (timetable) data and I think we all know there's more to this than development costs (they don't charge for their wap service).
Open up the data and many useful apps would appear.
posted-by Chris Keene | March 23, 2009 9:13 PM
I agree, the website is very slow for me and it actually made my firefox time out :@!
Mirrors
posted-by Robin Solution | May 3, 2009 5:26 AM
Wow! I haven't used this app before, but at first I read it as $4.99 and I thought that was a lot, but it's in pounds. That's way too much. It better wash my car for me at that price.
illmill
posted-by illmill | May 16, 2009 6:27 AM
Hey guys, just so you know, it's fairly easy to just go to http://pda.nationalrail.co.uk for a light weight - free - version of the info too!
posted-by Steven Mileham | June 2, 2009 12:19 PM
The price is ludicrous, especially for an app you only need occasionally. The Trains app is genuinely useful and a lot cheaper. A quick poll of the iPhone users I know (5) showed that no-one would buy it at £5, but would at £1-£1.50. NationalRail have to understand the economics a bit more; they'll get their dev costs back, but you have to set the price to capture as many users as possible. There are plenty of more complex, niche apps, that successfully recoup their costs at 59p, so NR are just embarrassing themselves....
posted-by Al | June 14, 2009 11:24 AM
Just bought this app. Looks great, but I'm getting unable to connect to data provider. Without a reliable data feed this app is useless. Also there is no support apart from the useless FAQs. Unimpressed !
posted-by Kieron Howard | April 13, 2010 11:56 AM