The most common criticism I hear about utility apps is probably “there is a WebApp for that”.

What does it mean ? Basically many apps have their free counterpart as an (often iPhone-friendly) website and people feel no need to buy an app that they can replace that easily. This was a widely relayed answer to Wolfram’s new app for example (ok it was really expensive) but it’s also valid for free apps like Black Friday! Well, these times might very well be over.

The Bild, the biggest European newspaper, is very concerned by this Syndrome since all its content is available for free on Bild’s iPhone-friendly site. Well, instead of doing what most developers do and try to convince us how much better the app is, they simply decided to ban the iPhone from accessing their website.

They didn’t pull the plug yet but they’re planning to roll this out on a couple of their publications and they will later expand the measure against other Smart Phones as they receive their own apps.

Stepping backwards from free online content is being considered by many newsgroups at the moment