FatWatch Reviews #1 and #2

[benzado]

I react to the first two reviews of FatWatch:

mangaphreak complains, in a condescending way, that it should include metric units. This is frustrating to read, because it does. In fact, I worked pretty hard so that a user can switch between pounds, kilograms, and stones instantly.

Brent Wood says nice things about it, but that it is overpriced

Comments

[markd2]

Woo! It's out! I'm all over it (and $9.99 is fine by me)

[benzado]

Thanks! If you think it's worth a nice review, please write one!

[kaitl]

People are seriously idiots...

I can't stand when people ask me questions about stuff that would be completely obvious if they just took the 5 seconds necessary to read about something...

*I* knew FatWatch had metric units and I just glanced at the webpage about it...

geez louise

[benzado]

It definitely was buried away in the app description; though. Since that message went up I revised the text and replaced a screenshot for one that showed the unit selection.

People may be idiots but I need their money, too. :-)

[eggfoam]

Is there a facility to respond to reviews on the app store? I kind of like that aspect of Yelp, and this is a similar situation in that a lot of small businesses might want to counter misconceptions if their reviews are their lifeblood.

Missing the settings for metric units is annoying, but if people are unhappy with the price, that's hard to argue with. It's worth to them what it's worth. (Though granted a lot of people want a free lunch and don't know the first thing about time and effort in software development.)

Congrats on getting your apps up there! Wish I had a touch or an iPhone to check 'em out.

[benzado]

The most you can do is "Report a Concern", which goes to iTunes staff and not the commenter. I did so for the "no metric" guy because it was just plain wrong and misinformative.

The "overpriced" guys are just a fact of life; I'm just hoping in time there are enough positive reviews to balance them out.

[sui66iy]

The App Store in general seems to have a plethora of "I wouldn't pay XXX dollars for something that just does YYY!!!" comments. Mostly from people who have, of course, not paid XXX dollars to do YYY, and therefore have no way of actually evaluating the thing that they are purportedly reviewing.

A future feature request that you've probably already thought of: what about allowing me to track N user-defined variables? I don't particularly need to track my weight on a daily basis, but there are other things (both physiological and non) that I could.

[benzado]

I don't feel as bad about the reviews now that I have received a few emails from people, all positive. This has got to be a general psychological phenomena: a lot of the public comments have been negative; but all of the private comments have been positive. It's a little frustrating, but I think I was right to hold my ground on the price.

Of course, I won't know that until Apple tells me how many sales I've had, at the end of the month.

"Tracking N variables" is the sort of thing that a programmer would suggest, because it is an obvious generalization of the program I have written. I think that would be reasonable, but as a separate app from FatWatch. It would be tricky to market: because it is so general, it would be hard to explain what problem it solves in a concise way. Also, designing a good UI would be a little tricky.

I'll let "XWatch" rumble around in the back of my head for a while. (Unless you want to hire me outright to write it...)

[sui66iy]

I wonder if one way to finesse the over-generalization issue is to provide a laundry list of "pre-made" variables. I agree with you that there are going to be UI issues.

And no, I don't think I can fund you to develop it ;-)