http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/te...o_interstitial

By ERIC A. TAUB
Published: August 10, 2008
When Apple announced in March that it would open up the iPhone to outside software developers, it promised that the resulting applications would help create “amazing” and “innovative” applications that would transform the concept of a smartphone.

Last week, an application turned the iPhone into a megaphone to proclaim: “I Am Rich.” That is the name of a downloadable program that promised to do nothing except signal to the world that its buyer was wealthy enough to have spent $1,000 to download an image of a multifaceted ruby.

Created by a German software developer, Armin Heinrich, it was written pretty much as a joke. “I found that some users complain about prices for iPhone applications above 99 cents,” Mr. Heinrich said. “I regard it as art. I did not expect many people to buy it and did not expect all the fuss about it.”

The value of a consumer product aimed at the luxury market, after all, is rarely determined by the cost of its raw materials and fabrication, but rather by its perceived exclusivity.

Apparently his humor was lost in translation. As first reported by The Los Angeles Times, eight people bought the application, earning its developer $5,600, his 70 percent share. (Apple got the rest.)

But then Apple notified Mr. Heinrich that two of the sales were reversed. Some people apparently bought it by mistake, with at least one saying he hit the “one click” button, not expecting the sale to go through.

Mr. Heinrich was bombarded with e-mail and phone messages, “many of them insulting,” he said. “It’s O.K. to return the money. I did not want to harm anybody with my app.”

Apple declined to comment. But in the past it has said an application cannot be sold until Apple approves it.

There is also no way for a customer to try an application before buying it, a feature that could have further reduced the sales of “I Am Rich” — perhaps to zero.
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