"Because this is the first iPhone app I ever built, after taking a 6 week class on iPhone development in Atlanta".<p>You could have just said that, and people would have nodded and said "good on you". The rest of this post actually sapped your credibility.
"I was merely a web developer, not an iPhone developer"<p>Thinking that alone is a mistake -- there is nothing magical about iPhone developers, and ios programming can be learned quickly. If you're doing a startup, you can't believe anything other people are doing is impossible to master.<p>(that may very well be the case, but it always warrants investigation)
I agree with the 'release fast and often' approach. However, this is just an example of really poor testing. If a key button on your app causes it to crash, then there is no justification for that. You also pissed off a bunch of your users and many won't even bother to update.<p>It's all fine and good getting a very basic v.1 out to get feedback - but it shouldn't crash due to an easy to detect bug.
Hey. Kudos on shipping!<p>My honest feedback would be that your main point is lost in the story. Even though I read the whole article, the thing I was left thinking when I finished was that the root cause of your problem was 1) the failure of your contract developer to deliver and 2) you rushed an early version of the app out in 6 weeks without sufficient testing.<p>For what it's worth, leading with a clear apology to those affected by the problem would do no harm.<p>It would also help if you explained more clearly what _exactly_ you wanted to learn from the release that justified the impact of this bug on users. Eg, some key hypothesis or assumption in your business model or product roadmap etc.<p>Good luck with the next iteration :)
> <i>We are now well aware of the problem and have since submitted a version that fixes the problem for </i>the vast majority of <i>users</i>.<p>Well, you either found <i>the</i> problem and fixed it or you fixed something and now hoping it was what was crashing your app. Or you have multiple crash points in the app. If it still crashes - fine, you have more work ahead of you. Just don't try and twist words to make things look better than they are.