4 ms·

I wonder if he gets a lot of support email. Anyone on HN have an iPhone app out there with a low price point? It already takes a lot of time working on a desk

by hbien 18y ago

I wonder if he gets a lot of support email. Anyone on HN have an iPhone app out there with a low price point? It already takes a lot of time working on a desktop app and answering support emails. I'm wondering if it takes even more time with a low price product and tons of customers.

there 18y ago
do iphone developers care about support? it's not like anyone can try the program without buying it or ask for a refund. worst case someone leaves a one-star rating saying "this program sux!" which no one reads anyway.
- silencio 18y ago
  nobody reads those reviews, but those reviews drag down your overall rating, possibly making you lose sales to a better rated competitor. colloquy's reviews are pretty much like that..except for the insane people leaving feature requests (and rating accordingly?! on what world do these people think that'll make a difference?), the rest of our reviews are 4-5 stars with a handful at 1 from the people that, for whatever reason, decided to buy an irc client without knowing what the hell irc was in the first place, and another one that made my day wondering why the fuck we don't have ICB support in the mobile client while we do in the desktop client...but we didn't mention anything BUT irc in the app description in the app store. (Bonus: check out our latest reviews. the distribution is hilarious: http://img.skitch.com/20090214-df5e6ptrhqpmii4dy4yw8gbrhc.jpg http://img.skitch.com/20090214-df5e6ptrhqpmii4dy4yw8gbrhc.jp... ) And speaking of those people, we regularly get people on our support channel asking for where to find more chat rooms and what IRC was to the tune of at least a couple people a day, if we're lucky, and people who act like complete assholes for no reason and several more people asking what IRC is if we're not. You would be surprised. edit: someone else on the colloquy team wanted me to mention we have an actual button in the app to connect directly to the support channel and that most apps don't have something like that.
tienshiao 18y ago
I used to sell a PalmOS app for the Treo. My app for the iPhone is much different, but I find the support to units sold ratio to be much better. It's probably something like 1% of the users need support.
- marcus 18y ago
  Many many years ago I wrote a few apps for PalmOS devices and the biggest problems were small incompatibilities between different PalmOS versions and small quirks of each device. The fact that the iPhone has a very limited selection of handsets, means that the chances that something that works on your device will work everywhere else are much much higher... Plus the PalmOS emulator was never as good as the iPhone emulator.
transburgh 18y ago
I have a $0.99 app and we built in email support. If a user has a concern or issue they can email me directly.

by hbien 18y ago

there 18y ago

do iphone developers care about support? it's not like anyone can try the program without buying it or ask for a refund. worst case someone leaves a one-star rating saying "this program sux!" which no one reads anyway.

silencio 18y ago
nobody reads those reviews, but those reviews drag down your overall rating, possibly making you lose sales to a better rated competitor. colloquy's reviews are pretty much like that..except for the insane people leaving feature requests (and rating accordingly?! on what world do these people think that'll make a difference?), the rest of our reviews are 4-5 stars with a handful at 1 from the people that, for whatever reason, decided to buy an irc client without knowing what the hell irc was in the first place, and another one that made my day wondering why the fuck we don't have ICB support in the mobile client while we do in the desktop client...but we didn't mention anything BUT irc in the app description in the app store. (Bonus: check out our latest reviews. the distribution is hilarious: http://img.skitch.com/20090214-df5e6ptrhqpmii4dy4yw8gbrhc.jpg http://img.skitch.com/20090214-df5e6ptrhqpmii4dy4yw8gbrhc.jp... ) And speaking of those people, we regularly get people on our support channel asking for where to find more chat rooms and what IRC was to the tune of at least a couple people a day, if we're lucky, and people who act like complete assholes for no reason and several more people asking what IRC is if we're not. You would be surprised. edit: someone else on the colloquy team wanted me to mention we have an actual button in the app to connect directly to the support channel and that most apps don't have something like that.

tienshiao 18y ago

I used to sell a PalmOS app for the Treo. My app for the iPhone is much different, but I find the support to units sold ratio to be much better. It's probably something like 1% of the users need support.

marcus 18y ago
Many many years ago I wrote a few apps for PalmOS devices and the biggest problems were small incompatibilities between different PalmOS versions and small quirks of each device. The fact that the iPhone has a very limited selection of handsets, means that the chances that something that works on your device will work everywhere else are much much higher... Plus the PalmOS emulator was never as good as the iPhone emulator.

transburgh 18y ago

I have a $0.99 app and we built in email support. If a user has a concern or issue they can email me directly.