'I Am Rich' Goes Broke In Apple Store

Earlier this week the I Am Rich application went up, commanding a $999.99 price tag, the most a developer can charge through Apple's App Store. The program essentially loads a screen saver onto the Apple iPhone to remind users and alert others that the user has money to throw around willy-nilly. The "status symbol," once downloaded, does nothing but load a ruby red icon on the home screen, with the subtext "I Am Rich." When the user activates the program, a large, glowing red gem appears. That's all.

When I Am Rich first appeared in the App Store on Tuesday, the applications information page on iTunes read like this: "The red icon on your iPhone or iPod Touch always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were rich enough to afford this. It's a work of art with no hidden function at all."

Apple introduced the App Store last month to coincide with the release of the Apple iPhone 3G. The App Store is designed to let iPhone users download third-party applications and lets developers sell the applications they've created.

As of Friday, the I Am Rich application was no longer available in the App Store, much to the chagrin of Armin Heinrich, I Am Rich's developer.

"I have no idea why they did it and am not aware of any violation of the rules to sell software on the App Store," Heinrich told the Los Angeles Times in an e-mail.

The Times, however, said Apple was too slow to remove the high-dollar application. Eight people and#8212;six from the U.S., one from Germany and one from Franceand#8212; shelled out the dough for I Am Rich within the first 24 hours it was available.

Posts on several public forums and Web pages, however, call into question the validity of those purchases. In one instance, a screen shot of an App Store review, which has been circulating the Web, shows that one user mistakenly dropped the $1,000 for I Am Rich thinking it was a joke.

"I saw this app with a few friends and we jokingly clicked 'buy' thinking it was a joke, to see what would happen," the upset I Am Rich owner wrote. "THIS IS NO JOKE. DO NOT BUY THIS APP AND APPLE PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM THE APP STORE."