I worked in enterprise software for a while, and I've seen people react more reasonably for a $20K app going EOL/Maintenance mode than for Sparrow.

I gotta say, Apple's App store model turned consumer software into a race to the bottom, and developers who want to price their software less than $10 had better be aware of what they're getting into from a customer expectations perspective.

Agreed. I actually think the App Store is Apple's biggest problem for future growth, because they're losing developers. I certainly don't want to write an app just to make $0.70 for a couple sales. Or if you're lucky, maybe charge $2.99. Seriously, what ever happened to software selling at $29.95? I'm hoping Windows 8 can bring some of that back.

Exactly, do you want to sell a hundred $1 apps to people who are a support nightmare or a single $100 app to someone who is potentially much more reasonable to deal with? I'll take the latter any day.

Because it's a tool, and people generally expect tools to last a while. No one was asking for free updates for life, but knowing that updates would come, fixes, and features they were talking about during the sale, even if you had to pay for it, is nice.

After all, isn't that the benefit of being the customer, and not the product? Isn't this what App.net is building itself on?

App.net is a subscription. What you describe makes a lot more sense in that context; A subscription automatically implies updates and support. Many consumers associate all purchases with support, but it really shouldn't be implied that spending money on something now implies commitments by its producer in the future. This isn't true because I'm pushing some notion of what rights user have or do don't have--its just not prudent to make assumptions about these kinds of things.