Me, reporting bugs to small devs vs giant devs:
"I love your app! But when I click on "share" links, it sends folks to the Apple App store, even if the user is on Android. This might be sending a lot of users to the wrong place. Browser detection before routing would help!
Small dev:
Meh. We'll get to it.
Giant Dev:
On it today! Fixed! But... 🤔why are you even looking at this? And why now? Is this for I/O?! It's for I/O isn't it? Ha! Deny it, but you can't fool me! Do you need assets?
@mekkaokereke that rings true. As a small dev myself, I’ve responded “I’ll get to it” to some bugs. But I always try and send a “thank you for the support and report”. Be nice. That’s the least I can do with the time I have and I want people to come back with serious issues.
@mekkaokereke I don’t bother reporting bugs to small devs unless I know them personally. To them, that app is their child, to me it’s just software and the amount of message massaging I have to do to avoid hurting their feelings about their child is never worth it. There’s always an alternative app.
Yeah, I make a similar judgement call, on "hobby," vs "business." If it's a hobby, I usually don't report bugs.
But if it's a small business and they ask for help, I offer it.
A lot of times, the advice I give surprises folks, because they're expecting me to say "Use Machine Learning!" Or "Buy my cloud service!" Or "Advertising!" Or something. "Fix these broken journeys" or "Make sure you're not accidentally excluding X% of your audience." doesn't sound as cool. But it works! 🤷🏿♂️
@mekkaokereke I found a fairly serious bug once in a post-install script for a utility. I sent an email detailing the bug and how to fix it, literally “comment out this line in your shell script or do a check for a logged in user before running it” because this is causing problems for remote installs.”
I got told they didn’t support remote installs so it wasn’t a problem.
At the time I had a blog with some popularity in the MacIT world, so I posted about it there. I was less kind this time.
@mekkaokereke That was the moment I decided l dealing with indie devs was not worth the time. If their shit worked, great. If not, find a replacement and move on. The cost of the software was never enough to deal with that nonsense.
@mekkaokereke Lo, and being publicly embarrassed did convince them to fix the problem.
Like a year later, I’m on the third floor of the Moscone west being screamed at during the WWDC because the dev was all fuckin’ butthurt about my public post, which was again, my second attempt to get this fixed, and how clearly it was my fault because I used a support email address instead of creating an account and posting it in a forum like I was supposed to.
@bynkii@mekkaokereke I am a small Dev. I would love if you report bugs to me. Sure I might not fix them right I away but it let's me know my software is being used.
@dragnucs@mekkaokereke I’d loved not to have been lectured about my tone, the fact I used a (non-profane) word they don’t like in my bug report, the fact I considered something a bug, that I used the word “bug” so repeatedly over the decades that I no longer consider it worth the effort.
@mekkaokereke dunno which giant company you’re talking about. Nearly all of them just have a black hole for bug reporting (at least for anything I’ve ever filed).
Most small companies I’ve worked with have a really supportive handle, with actual humans replying to it.
Might be because I don’t have a google address, though :)
For the record, fixing broken experiences is not "for I/O." Seriously. I/O is just a few days a year, and is a very important event for the tiny fraction of the world's population that builds technical stuff.
Fixing broken experiences is for the people that use your app every day, including during I/O, so that they don't have a confusing experience. Please fix it for them!♥️🙏🏿
Add comment