Hockenberry notes--as a lot of App Store developers have, almost since the day the App Store opened--that developers feel pressured to lower the prices on their products in order to secure favorable placement on the App Store's Top Paid Apps lists.

Hockenberry goes on to explain The Iconfactory's business model, and paints in broad strokes the development costs of the kind of apps that his company has made, such as the and . The development cost of applications like this, he says, preclude the ability to sell them for 99 cents. And that puts such programs at a disadvantage with what Hockenberry calls "crapware" priced less than these products.

Hockenberry may be correct when he suggests in his letter to Steve Jobs that it's incumbent upon Apple to make the App Store a better place to shop, but I think he's missing the bigger picture. As , developers who want to get ahead on the App Store can't take the approach used by Ray Kinsella, Kevin Costner's character in the movie "Field of Dreams": Build it and they will come. Developers need to be much smarter than that.

Neil Young, the CEO of iPhone game maker Ngmoco, the App Store as "like going to Wal-Mart or Best Buy without any racks or meaningful merchandising--like being handed a list when you walk in the front door and seeing a big pile of software." I think he's absolutely dead on.

I was astonished at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June when I'd ask iPhone developers about their marketing strategy for iPhone apps. And they'd respond to me with blank stares, or tell me that they were expecting "viral marketing" to work for them--to wit, getting people to talk up their products.