Yuck. For me her explanation just makes the situation worse: 'I forgot what I'd promised, but now that I've been reminded of it, buck up and just spend the $5 to get what I'd told you would be included in your original purchase. I'm not trying to screw anybody over and I'm offended you said I am.' Really?! Shockingly not customer-centric.<p>Not that this excuses the rude anonymous idiocy against her on Twitter and her blog comments - I never understand why people yell and say ugly things even before asking nicely. Really unpleasant and wrong. But her behavior certainly doesn't make me want to purchase anything she makes in the future, either.
I have no idea why the dev is choosing to take a major hit in her reputation that she clearly worked pretty hard to build through great design and code, for no reason other than "I don't want to spin up a separate build".<p>And for what? If you're gonna burn through your company's rep, at least get something out of it. Contrast this to what another Indie Mac dev did when confronted with the same situation:<p>"Free updates to the 1.x product will continue for paid customers of TapeDeck. It means a bit of extra maintenance on my part, but I will do my best to keep my existing customers happy."
Crazy- she could have scored points out of this! Price at $0.99 out of the gate, email the ENTIRE userbase explaining the situation. Say that there is no way to migrate existing users to the App Store, but in appreciation of their support she's pricing at 99 cents for the first week so they can upgrade.<p>Explicitly state that 'Even though I'll lose a bunch of money by pricing so low during the launch of the App Store, it's worth it to me to maintain the trust of my users'.<p>Boom. Crisis averted, you lose $5-10k or so on launch sales, but make very, very loyal users out of your existing customers. Cross-sell that email list more aggressively in the future. Money in the bank.
> If I thought of that license text I would have simply declared this new version 3.0.<p>Ouch. Despite what I think she's trying to claim, this statement shows that she clearly had no intention of keeping the "free upgrades til 3.0" promise.<p>Kind of a bum deal for her customers.
She has certainly lost my trust. She made a promise to help her business -- possibly impacting competing products like BowTie who did not make the same promise negatively -- and then fails to uphold it. Not only is this a breach of contract with her customers, it undermines our ability to find viable alternative products.<p>A promise doesn't mean "I'll do it if it's convenient." That people are rewarding her broken promise is just bizarre.
I understand the difficulties of running a small shop, but the right PR move here is to suck it up, apologize to customers, and do what you can to make it right. If that means having to take some time out to spin new builds until you hit version 3.0 then so be it.
The way this was handled certainly has an "ick" factor, but I wonder if it will matter from a pure business perspective in the end. Hell. It may even help. It's got a lot of people talking about her...<p>Here are some other thoughts/questions:<p>1) Users have been receiving free upgrades for years, meaning she received no additional revenues from them. I wonder many of the vocal unhappy users would upgrade to the app store version anyway if she just called this 3.0. How "valuable" is the livid segment of her existing customerbase?<p>2) The app store will allow her to reach new users that don't know or care about the developers. The Mac App Store is a black box where the developer reputation doesn't seem to matter much, unless its reflected in the reviews. Think about buying an iPhone app... Have you ever researched the reputation of a dev before buying a $4.99 iPhone app? My brother would just buy the app and be happy as a clam.<p>3) She has 70 reviews in the store so far. Only 1 mentions this and gives her 1-star. Many give 5 stars and some talk about how they are happy to pay for this upgrade.<p>Again, not condoning the behavior... Just thinking out loud.
I think it's pathetic to whinge about having to drop just $5 on an app store version when a lot of users originally got it through a discount bundle such as Macheist. Especially as it will update to any future version (3.0+) for free and the existing app isn't going to expire, as stated in the blog post.<p>Look at any other company, Apple isn't going to give you a free code to say, Aperture 3 just because you own the pre-MAS serialized version.
maybe it's because I'm getting old and crotchety, or perhaps it's because I didn't get a good night sleep last night (it's stinking hot here and we've no air-con), but my internet today is full of self-entitled whiners.<p>ffs people, cut the lady some slack. all this fuss over a $5 cover art app!?<p>Sure, she broke a promise, there doesn't seem much doubt about that, but don't we all? Who here has never broken a $5 promise? Who's never said they'd be home at 6, but didn't get in 'til 6:30? Who's never said they'd meet for coffee, but then couldn't make it?<p>And no, I don't accept the argument that this is the same as if Apple reneged on an Aperture promise or similar. It's not binary, it's a scale, but $5 is at one end and $100 is a lot further up.<p>I realise this is an unpopular position, but I just can't stand all this negative attitude all heaped on one person. would you behave like this if she was in the same room as you?