BarMax: $1000 iPhone App?

January 18th, 2010

Ha…I am probably like most people in that I use about $5 a year on iPhone apps. Well…maybe I’m not the majority. I have no idea, but most of the pay apps suck, so I end up just taking the free ones for social networking stuff, radio, etc. most of the time. I did buy Bejeweled Deluxe 2 though and that is the only game I play on mine .

So…how about a $1000 iPhone App? Is there anything off the top of your head that you can think of you would pay $1000 for that is just software? Any software I mean. I’m not even talking about just an application that costs more than the actual iPhone you want to use it on? I’d have a hard time thinking of one that I couldn’t download a a free alternative for.

Certainly, I have been FORCED to buy corporate software for a franchise I used to own that was rather expensive in its day. Probably spent a good $5-800 just on the corporate garbage software that worked about as well as the opening day of a new Windows OS, but other than that I have never come close to it.

You may not have been big into the iPhone when this happened, I know I wasn’t (I just got one a few months ago), but back in 2008 there was a bogus app released for $999.99 to the iTunes store. It was called I AM Rich and showed nothing other than a picture of a red gem. OWNAGE to anyone that bought it. Apple quickly pulled the app. People thought we’d see more bogus apps like it, but it hasn’t been too bad. Of course the soft porn apps sure are clogging the place up now. Hormonal teenage boys are great targets to scams with half naked women if you weren’t aware of this .

So…what is this whole BarMax thing? Is it another bogus app with a huge price tag? No, no it is not. Nope…it isn’t a virtual bar with drink mix recipes. IT is in fact the other thing you probably think of when someone says “The Bar”. An application that is designed to help lawstudents study for their Bar Exams. Probably pretty useful for someone crazy enough to be trying to study for this while in their baby jogger city duds and taking care of a baby.

The reason the price is justified is because the company that is synonymous with this type of test prep, BarBri, typically offers it for $3,000 to $4,000. BarMax CA believes it can get away with the lower price because it’s just an app, there is no in-class element. Also, there has been some questions about BarBri’s pricing structure and anti-competitive behavior, which has been the subject of multiple class action lawsuits (hardly surprising when you’re selling these packages to future lawyers).

BarBri also offers an iPhone application, and it’s free, but you need to enroll in their program to access it otherwise it’s useless.

So what do you get for your $1,000 BarMax CA app? A lot, actually. The app is over 1 gigabyte in size, which is the largest application I’ve ever seen. It includes thousands of pages of materials as well as hundreds of hours of audio lectures. It’s all the information you could ever want for the two-month course. And again, it can be done all on your iPhone. That said, if you do want some more tangible paperwork for certain sections, BarMax will send you that electronically as well.