Mission Accomplished.
iDrum for iPhone shipped a week ago, and the initial response has been fantastic, but for me, nothing tops this video.
Soundcloud. Invite?
In Uncategorized on July 18, 2008 at 1:25 am-1 for using ‘cloud’ in their company name, but +1000 for what looks like an *awesome* service. Check out this blog post at SvN: Soundcloud Expands The Audio Player
And the site itself: Soundcloud
For anyone that participates in far-flung collaborations over the internet that don’t involve a webcam and a towel, this looks like the business.
Registration is closed, so if any of my dear readers are already members please invite me!!!
A tale of two support incidents
In Uncategorized on June 25, 2008 at 9:30 pm
I’ve had two occasions to contact a software company for support in the past week–two occasions remarkable in how different they were from each other.
First, I had need for Xendai’s Bellhop to automate some FogBugz typing. I downloaded it, wrote some scripts, and found a pretty serious bug. Not a showstopper, but definitely annoying. I fired off an email, not expecting much–Bellhop is donationware, after all. Well, the author got back to me in a couple hours, thanked me for the bug report and told me he wouldn’t be able to get to it until the weekend.
First thing Saturday, I get an another email from the author telling me he’s reproduced the problem and that he’ll have an update ready shortly. He thanks me again for taking the time to send in the bug report:
As far as I’m concerned, your bug report is donation enough–thanks for reporting it.
Wow. I’d be blown away with this level of support from any company, but from a part time indieware developer on a donationware product? Just try to stop me from donating. Sure enough, an update was available a few hours later and now Bellhop works perfectly.
Cut to my other support experience. This one for Digital Performer, a $500 application developed by a company with a full-time support staff. Digital Performer 5.13 just refuses to run on my new Mac. I tried everything, repairing permissions, uninstalling, reinstalling, installing an earlier version then installing the 5.13 update, etc.
So I give up and sheepishly create a new support ticket on MOTU’s site Sunday afternoon. Well, check the screenshot above: it’s Wednesday and the ticket is still ‘Unread’. This would have pissed me off anytime, but in light of my experience with Bellhop, well…
And yeah, I have Jim Cooper’s number, so I could call the batphone and get this sorted out in a jiffy. But you know what? Good support shouldn’t just be for insiders. So fuck you, MOTU. I give up on you and my favorite music software. I’ll spend my $195 for the DP 6 update on something else. I’ll also take the $3,500 I had earmarked for HD192 interfaces and spend that somewhere else.
Can anyone recommend a music production application with passionate user support?
And special thanks to Faizel at Xendai for raising my expectations.
