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why does this app cost $30,000? They should be able to get a high quality app like this developed for 1/10th the cost.



It costs $30K for the time and effort to gather and organize the data. If it was that easy to find all beach access points and identify false signs, it would have already been done.

The cost of an app isn't just the amount of man-hours*salary required to program an app. I feel that this is a trap that inexperienced engineers fall into often. Once you start building a business, there are many, many aspects that are a time-drain, and if you charge your customer solely based on the amount of time you spend coding -- rather than the amount of time actually working on the business -- you are short-changing yourself.


With 1/10th of the cost ($3000) you can pay a good programmer for something like a week at most. Do you think this app will be completely done within one week?


As someone who has written many GPS apps like this, once you have the data you could write it in a day. And since there is a free PDF with all the data in it, you just need to extract that data.


Sounds like you should have started a kickstarter and provided an app for whatever you felt was reasonable. Or even done it for free.

But you didn't.


You are right, but I can't do kickstarter because I am not an american. And I missed this issue. But I think these guys are having a huge laugh to the bank, getting such a huge sum.


How long could it take to make an App that says "All the beaches are public, don't believe their lies."?


lol - exactly


Exactly. You will find what public footpaths (that's public rights of way for leftpondians) there are marked on British Ordnance Survey maps. I believe the Ordnance Survey is the definitive source for these claims.


Do Ordinance Survey maps cover Southern California?


Do Americans not have maps or have forgotten how to read them?

What's this thing with having an app for every silly little thing? One would hope that the definitive map of public rights of way is kept somewhere, and the thing to do would be to get a copy.

Perhaps one could even draw a new map with just the public beach accesses and publish that. That would cost way less than 30 kUSD. But, no, in Silly Valley, everything has to be an app.


Drawing an accurate surveyed map would cost less than 30K? Really? I honestly had no idea that maps were that cheap to produce. I figured they had a pretty large initial cost that only was recouped due to the fact that only minor changes would be needed and they could be sold for years.

Also, Silly Valley is a bit north of Malibu, ~300 miles north.


FTR, the idea person is a local to the Malibu area.


Have you developed a similar app and know the amount of work going into it? Have you commissioned a similar app and know the cost? Actually why don't you do it if you are confident it can be done in $3000?


This is trivial to do as a web page; making it an app is pointless and 30,000 dollars completely wasted.


yes, actually I have. And the app was more complicated than this beach app.


And it costed $3000?


Coincidentally, yes, it did cost exactly $3,000. That includes 2 separate freelancers - a designer and a coder.


Because everything these days is a Kickstartr.

(Also, I hope developers don't sell themselves so cheap.)


It appears the development is being done by an agency. Overhead, profit and all that...


Or take a weekend and a copy of the data from the authority responsible and put it on a website using Google maps so everyone can access it from any device.


My assumption is for the inevitable legal battle when one of the homeowners tries to sue to app out of existence.


in SoCal that would be the $300,000 kickstarter follow on round.




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