May 1st, 2009
Shock, horror, I didn’t win the PublisherChallenge April contest. No big surprise really considering the amount of effort I put into it, life has a way of rewarding you for what you put in. Anyhoo, seeing as how I didn’t win the MacBook I decided to go ahead and buy one anyway (what’s £1200 between friends?) – I feel like writing a few iPhone apps and whilst I’m sure I could bodge together some sort of Apple Emulator on one of the many PC’s I have around the place I thought it would be easier just to buy a proper one, besides we need a new family laptop and Laura loves Macs from when she used them at school. It’s going to be a bit of a learning curve for me, I haven’t used Apple technology since I left school 16 years ago! Do they still only have 1 mouse button?
Secondly, I found out this morning that one of my old friends is due to inherit several million pounds. Remember what I just said about fate rewarding your effort? Well forget it. This lad bummed around at university for 8 years (jumping from one course to the next) before finally getting a bog standard office job. No aim, no drive, no ambition – just plod along. He should pay of his fees sometime in the next century! Well that would be the case if he wasn’t due an inheritance that’s come about from some land being sold from an extended family. So the way to get ahead in life seems to be do as little as you can get away with and fate will look after you. Not that I’m bitter of course, good luck to him I say!
October 30th, 2007
If you are a sensible Mac user you might want to put your fingers in your ears and close your eyes now.
I’ve got a problem with Mac users at the moment, they are damaging my reputation, not on purpose I think but just because so many of them will not read instructions and will not face reality. I sell software, nothing remarkable in that lots of people do the same thing, in order to sell that software I use a service that tracks my sales. As part of all this it also tracks my returns/refunds rate. I should probably add here that my “genuine” return rate is stupidly low (2 in the last 6 months), here comes the big but, but 1 group of users is constantly pushing it up. Mac users.
After the first 3-4 returns from Mac users (“Your software doesn’t work”, followed by days of e-mailing before they actually reveal they are using a Mac) I upped my efforts to turn them away. Requirements went from being “A Microsoft Windows Based PC” all the way to “A Microsoft Windows Based PC (Not for Mac/Linux Users)”. Even my pleas for people to use the free trial (which would highlight such problems) is completely ignored. Arrogant Mac users just assume that every piece of software is written for them, buy the software and then waste my time answering stupid e-mails all to have to waste more of my time processing a refund because they won’t bloody read what is clearly stated on the page that they bought the software on. I wouldn’t mind honest mistakes, I can handle that, it’s the whole “well it should work on my Mac” attitude that really gets on my tits. Why should it work on your Mac, it was written with a popular OS in mind!
There are very good reasons I don’t write software for Macs
- The amount of time to learn the ins and outs of the OS for the type of apps I write would never give me a return
- Very low user base
- Mainly used by kids with no buying power
The truth is that if you’re using a Mac to browse the web you are in a minority. When looking at downloads free or otherwise you should be checking to make sure that they are Mac compatible (again, you are the minority). Don’t assume that things will just work, assume they won’t and look for something that tells you it is Mac software.
If you’re a sensible Mac user then don’t take any of this the wrong way, each to their own and all that. If you’re the sort of Mac user that enjoys buying software that you know won’t work just to kick up a fuss then please take a moment to think about the person at the other end who has gone to the trouble to write the software. There are days that I just want to bang my head against the wall and cry. Thank you.
