• Nov 22, 2006

    Stupid users

    Up until my latest product, I typically wrote software that was a bit complex and not easy to setup. This is due to my slightly over active brain trying to solve a problem in what may not be the easiest way. So when I sold software, I could understand when people couldn't set it up and wanted a refund (I didn't like it, of course), so I put verbiage into my store that required people to confirm that the software was working before purchasing so I didn't have to deal with refunds. I thought that my latest product was different because my parents have been using it without problems (they're pretty smart, but sometimes have issues with computers), but a user today proved me wrong. Not only did the user not read my no return policy (uhhh, that's why there is a demo), the user never contacted me for support and his problems were quite minor with one being he couldn't delete a receipt (hit the delete key, more on this in another post) and he couldn't put receipts in collections; the mechanism for doing this is the same as iTunes and iPhoto and I don't hear people complaining about them. I gave the user back his money (minus the processing fee) as frankly, I didn't want to deal with him. For a product that is pretty easy to use and has a demo, I shouldn't have to deal with stupid users.

  • Nov 22, 2006

    Value of software

    The shareware software market has really changed how people value software. Many hobbyists create their shareware for $5 or $10 to make some spare change. This is fine and dandy, but with the sheer amount of shareware out there (a lot of it is junk), when a commercial product (not by Adobe or Microsoft) comes out for $30 or $40, people complain that it is overpriced. This is truly sad as software isn't cheap to create. The shareware market allowed me to personally get into software development, but I started my first product off at $15 and that was over a decade ago. Software also costs money to support and one support email/call can wipe out any profit.

    I've seen some recent rumblings from other developers about the same thing, so I'm definitely not alone in my feelings.

  • Nov 21, 2006

    Thanks MacUpdate, you slimy spammers!

    I've never liked these folks as they have been stealing (or used to steal) update information directly off VersionTracker. I had posted an update to a program of mine to VersionTracker once and made a spelling error. The same spelling error appeared on MacUpdate pretty quickly. Coincidence? Unlikely. Now the good folks at MacUpdate have decided that they couldn't make enough money on ad revenue, so they've sold their mailing list to spammers. How do I know this? For every different website I visit and give an email address, I create a new email alias in the form of website.com@mydomain.com. From the header of the spam, you can tell where it went and that it came from a spammer:

    Received: from transit-r1.garyzoom.com (pptpoe-pool-195-114-8-88.rustel-dsl.com [195.114.8.88]) by linux.gruby.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id kAMDbIFi023692 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT) for ; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 05:37:20 -0800

    With a title like "Subject: One free MAC title download: latest Ableton, Adobe, Corel, Extensis , Macromedia for MAC OS X" and coming off a DSL line, you can tell it is spam.

  • Nov 20, 2006

    Behind the technology times

    Yesterday I picked up a Motorola RAZR V3m on Sprint. While this phone has been out on every other carrier for ages, Sprint just got it. Normally I get technology stuff when it first comes out, but here's a case where I didn't have a choice (I don't want to switch carriers) and I'm happy about it. Instead of getting a half backed phone, I now have a phone that has had its kinks worked out by others. Why did I switch from my Samsung A900? The main reason is to be able to sync my contacts and calendars. There are some "hacks" out on the net for enabling this in iSync (hacks are just modifications of some text files to identify the phone), so I put one in and iSync happily syncs my contacts. Calendars are another story. I'm not quite sure the right mix, yet, but it would appear that certain types of events don't sync and cause the connection to barf. I think I'll figure out the right mix soon. While I understand that synchronization is hard (that's what I do for a living), I'd expect Apple and Motorola's software to be a bit more tolerant. Oh well. So far I'm pleased with the phone; others have complained that the screen resolution is less than that of the A900 and that the menus are slow, but I'm finding the phone a bit more useable than the A900. To each his own.