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Boy, there are a million reasons to hate on Color, but the fact that their 1.0 app crashes is the least convincing and the most mean-spirited. Everybody's 1.0 a

by spolsky 16y ago

Boy, there are a million reasons to hate on Color, but the fact that their 1.0 app crashes is the least convincing and the most mean-spirited. Everybody's 1.0 app crashes.

credo 16y ago
>>Everybody's 1.0 app crashes. No, that is wrong. My 1.0 apps don't crash (as per itunesconnect which says "No Crash Reports" for my last 3 iPhone/iPad apps which are all on their 1.0 version). One of them was recently ranked #1 on Apple's top charts for its category. So this isn't a matter of trivial apps with a low user base.
- gcb 16y ago
  Everybody's who is in it for a big exit pile of money 1.0 app crashs
  - gcb 16y ago
    *big pile of exit money i blame phone on-screen keyboards. Give me back my clickety keys!
- mikeklaas 16y ago
  iTunes crash reports aren't reliable. We launched our iPad app two weeks ago and have already fixed a couple crash bugs that were reported by users and didn't show up in the iTunes logs. There should have been quite a few, too, since we were the #1 iPad app for a while so I expect every crash report to mean 10x that many users actually experienced the crash.
- Zev 16y ago
  iTunes Connect is the last thing you should be using to know if your app actually crashes or not. I'd consider app reviews in the App Store to be more useful than iTunes Connect is to know if my app is crashing or not. iTunes Connect relies on people syncing their phone. Which doesn't happen nearly as often as you think. You should use something like PLCrashReporter[1] if you want accurate crash reports. 1. http://code.google.com/p/plcrashreporter/ http://code.google.com/p/plcrashreporter/
taphangum 16y ago
Not if it has $41,000,000 behind it
ekidd 16y ago
I think that people are hating on Color because of a combination of two different things: 1. They've got a buggy 1.0 application with no users. 2. They've got $41 million dollars in VC money. Either by itself might be understandable, but the combination is worrisome. For example, it's one thing if some angel investors invest $500K or $2 million in strong team with a half-baked idea. That's enough money to allow some hiring and a few experiments. Or coming from the other side, I can understand why investors might put $41 million into a promising social network with dedicated users and strong growth. But $41 million for a company which hasn't demonstrated product-market fit, and is still working the bugs out of their 1.0 release? I'm not sure what Sequoia thinks they see in this deal.
- spolsky 16y ago
  All I'm saying is that the "buggy" adjective is the last reason to hate them. $41m, lack of product-market fit, no users, these are all genuine reasons to be hating. But anyone with ten minutes of programming experience knows that bugs are just bugs. You fix them and they're fixed. Lack of product/market fit, however, can never be fixed. Focus on that.
solid 16y ago
>Everybody's 1.0 app crashes. Apparently 1.0 is the new beta
jchonphoenix 16y ago
A crashing app isn't a reason to hate on them. But when your app does not work whatsoever. Has a terrible UI. And continually force closes or crashes the entire phone if you click buttons too quickly, that's unacceptable. There's a reason that as of this writing, the android market has color rated at 1.5 stars. The current app on the android market could be written in 3 hour by someone who's never written an android app before. I just need to get a page to load 1/10 tries and have the app crash out the other 9.

by spolsky 16y ago

Boy, there are a million reasons to hate on Color, but the fact that their 1.0 app crashes is the least convincing and the most mean-spirited. Everybody's 1.0 app crashes.

credo 16y ago

>>Everybody's 1.0 app crashes. No, that is wrong. My 1.0 apps don't crash (as per itunesconnect which says "No Crash Reports" for my last 3 iPhone/iPad apps which are all on their 1.0 version). One of them was recently ranked #1 on Apple's top charts for its category. So this isn't a matter of trivial apps with a low user base.

gcb 16y ago
Everybody's who is in it for a big exit pile of money 1.0 app crashs
- gcb 16y ago
  *big pile of exit money i blame phone on-screen keyboards. Give me back my clickety keys!
mikeklaas 16y ago
iTunes crash reports aren't reliable. We launched our iPad app two weeks ago and have already fixed a couple crash bugs that were reported by users and didn't show up in the iTunes logs. There should have been quite a few, too, since we were the #1 iPad app for a while so I expect every crash report to mean 10x that many users actually experienced the crash.
Zev 16y ago
iTunes Connect is the last thing you should be using to know if your app actually crashes or not. I'd consider app reviews in the App Store to be more useful than iTunes Connect is to know if my app is crashing or not. iTunes Connect relies on people syncing their phone. Which doesn't happen nearly as often as you think. You should use something like PLCrashReporter[1] if you want accurate crash reports. 1. http://code.google.com/p/plcrashreporter/ http://code.google.com/p/plcrashreporter/

taphangum 16y ago

Not if it has $41,000,000 behind it

ekidd 16y ago

I think that people are hating on Color because of a combination of two different things: 1. They've got a buggy 1.0 application with no users. 2. They've got $41 million dollars in VC money. Either by itself might be understandable, but the combination is worrisome. For example, it's one thing if some angel investors invest $500K or $2 million in strong team with a half-baked idea. That's enough money to allow some hiring and a few experiments. Or coming from the other side, I can understand why investors might put $41 million into a promising social network with dedicated users and strong growth. But $41 million for a company which hasn't demonstrated product-market fit, and is still working the bugs out of their 1.0 release? I'm not sure what Sequoia thinks they see in this deal.

spolsky 16y ago
All I'm saying is that the "buggy" adjective is the last reason to hate them. $41m, lack of product-market fit, no users, these are all genuine reasons to be hating. But anyone with ten minutes of programming experience knows that bugs are just bugs. You fix them and they're fixed. Lack of product/market fit, however, can never be fixed. Focus on that.

solid 16y ago

>Everybody's 1.0 app crashes. Apparently 1.0 is the new beta

jchonphoenix 16y ago

A crashing app isn't a reason to hate on them. But when your app does not work whatsoever. Has a terrible UI. And continually force closes or crashes the entire phone if you click buttons too quickly, that's unacceptable. There's a reason that as of this writing, the android market has color rated at 1.5 stars. The current app on the android market could be written in 3 hour by someone who's never written an android app before. I just need to get a page to load 1/10 tries and have the app crash out the other 9.