Existing users, 
User Name Laurence Harris
Member Since 2001-09-10
Total number of Feedback Posts: 17
Total number of comments: 8
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Laurence Harris [ Search for All ]
SafariSpeed 2.1.1 (Mac OS X)
"If you find this application useful, please register it."
I would normally e-mail this to the developer, but since the Developer Site link isn't working... "Please" is something you say when you want a favor. Paying someone for his product is only a favor if the product is overpriced. "Register it" does not mean "pay for it." Don't use euphemisms. Just tell people how much it costs: "SafariSpeed is $8." And skip the part about "If you find this application useful." It should be obvious that if someone doesn't find it useful he's not going to pay for it. ;-) Bottom line: If you're going to sell your work, don't beg. Provide a good product for a reasonable price and act like it's worth what you charge for it. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 2 users found this helpful
Sunday, November 11 2007 @ 10:35 AM PST
Temperature Monitor 4.0 (Mac OS X)
The developer is clearly not an experienced Macintosh developer. I'd guess that his background is in Unix development. As far as I can tell TM works, but the interface needs more and less work. More because much of the application does not have a polished interface that conforms to Apple's human interface guidelines. Less because the preferences window leaves me with the distinct feeling that the author thinks users will want to tweak every possible nuance in the application.
There are nine categories of preferences, for goodness sakes, in an application the just displays temperatures, and each category provides numerous preferences, for a total of over 50 preferences (more than that if you count each preference for each sensor separately). A well-designed Mac application shouldn't burden the user with the responsibility of designing the interface.
[alert admin]Read Comments (1) | More Info | 4 of 8 users found this helpful
Monday, December 04 2006 @ 08:33 AM PST
WebsiteStatus 1.0.2 (Mac OS X)
I tried this for a few minutes before it annoyed me so much with 10-second countdowns (my punishment for trying it) that I threw it away. All of sylvank's comments are accurate.
- When you launch the application, it displays the serial number entry dialog, and then immediately displays an alert that says "Please enter a valid name and serial number. (OK)" When you click OK, the alert goes away so you can click the Later button in the serial number dialog to start a 10-second countdown, and after the 10 seconds are up, you can use the program. Why is there a separate alert? Does he think that people can't figure out what two text fields labeled Name and Serial Num are for?
- The above even happens the very first time you launch it.
- The File menu has no items in it.
- The Preferences command is always dimmed.
- I added two web sites to the list and every time I clicked the Now button (to have it check them) I got the nag/serial number dialog and had to wait for another 10-second countdown.
Feature set is very minimal. You can list multiple sites to monitor, but you can only have one e-mail address to which the application should send an e-mail and you only have one checking frequency for all sites.
This may be a handly little application, but I didn't keep it around long enough to find out. There's no excuse in my mind for turning out something this unpolished, especially when it does so little. Seriously, Cut, Copy, Paste, Clear, and About WebsiteStatus are the only working menu commands. He could have spent another hour and made it noticeably better than it is.
Frankly, this is the kind of product that gives shareware a bad name. I couldn't even think about paying for like this. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 2 users found this helpful
Sunday, September 26 2004 @ 09:37 PM PDT
File Buddy 8.0b7 (Mac OS X)
Xeater and stoneman have expressed the feeling that charging an upgrade fee for File Buddy 8 to people who purchased File Buddy 7 4-6 months ago is unreasonable, and they are entitled to their opinions, but their feelings are not consistent with industry practice. I use Metrowerks's CodeWarrior for my development environment, and this is Metrowerks' upgrade policy:
- CW upgrades are $199-299 depending on the option you choose.
- Free upgrades are only available to people who bought the previous version within 30 days of the new version's release.
- There is no public beta.
- The average life of a version of CW < one year.
- Upgrading is only an option if you purchased the previous version. If you did not, it's full price.
Or perhaps we should look at Apple's policies on free upgrades to it's products, including Mac OS X. How many of us got a free upgrade to Mac OS X 10.3 because we'd only had 10.2 for four months? None of us, that's how many. And Apple doesn't even offer upgrade pricing for Mac OS X.
The fact of the matter is that most companies don't offer free upgrades to customers that far back. Is it to make more money? Of course it is. It's no secret that companies are in business to make money. It's okay for Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, and other large, profitable corporations with large cash reserves to have such policies, so why is it so terrible when a smaller company, with far less revenues, adopts the same policies? I can assure you that Bill Gates has no worries that anyone at SkyTag Software is going to threaten his position as the world's richest man from File Buddy upgrade fees.
File Buddy 8 required several months of work from the primary engineer, a few months work from a secondary engineer, and several weeks from a professional writer who produces our PDF documentation. An "upgrade fee" a reduced price for a full product. It is not a way to get something for nothing. We, as do most other software companies, charge people for the time and effort we put into new products, and we don't apologize for that. [alert admin]
Read Comments (1) | More Info | 3 of 4 users found this helpful
Saturday, June 26 2004 @ 10:11 PM PDT
File Buddy 8.0b7 (Mac OS X)
VersionTracker is not the place to report bugs
matthk,
Have you reported any of these problems to us so they could be fixed? Why do you come here to report problems? What's the thinking behind using beta software and commenting on problems here instead of to the developer? In fact, since File Buddy 8 has an E-mail Us command in its Help menu and provides a "Report a Bug.mailloc" link file, doesn't it actually require more effort to come here to comment on bugs than it would to report them to the developer, which would actually do some good?
"I look forward to the full, (working) version 8"
Let me see if I understand this: You aren't bothering to tell us about the problems you encounter, but you expect them all to be fixed for the final release. is that correct? I'm sorry, but it just doesn't work that way. You're using a public beta. If you want something fixed, tell the developer. That's how it works.
Folks, VersionTracker is not the place to report bugs in software. Period. File Buddy 8 has an E-mail Us menu command in the application and a e-mail link file in the application's folder. Either one will open a new message window in your preferred e-mail program with our address and a subject already filled in, ready for you to type a message. I can't imagine how we could possibly make it any easier to report issues with the File Buddy 8 beta, and still people come here to complain instead of reporting problems so we can fix them. [alert admin]
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Saturday, June 26 2004 @ 09:32 PM PDT
Apple iTunes 4.0.1 (Mac OS X)
Before making snide remarks about Apple making a million dollars the first week, people should look at the big picture. First, that was the first week, and I know I bought more songs the first week than I will in the next three months because I got a bunch of songs I'd always wanted but wasn't willing to buy the whole CD. Second, the iTunes Music Store isn't something Apple whipped up in weekend in someone's garage. There are multiple dimensions to setting something like this up, and none of it comes cheap. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that first million $$$ didn't even cover the cost of their attorneys' negotiations with those five music companies. And I doubt Akamai is providing all those server farms for free either. Are they making a profit? I would assume so, but I can't see their books so I don't know. If they are, that's fine because that's what businesses are supposed to do. But did that million dollars represent a million dollar profit? Not even close. For all I know, the music store may not even become seriously profitable until they bring it to Windows. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Friday, June 13 2003 @ 10:58 PM PDT
Apple iTunes 4.0.1 (Mac OS X)
First of all, when I was growing up, I was taught that if you take something that doesn't belong to you, it's called stealing. There were no exceptions for things the owner wouldn't miss or things you wouldn't have bought anyway. Geez, if it isn't worth $0.99 to own it, how much of a sacrifice is it not to be able to hear it from someone else's Mac across the web? Instead of bashing Apple, try to understand their position. The deal they struck with the record companies to do this was the first of its kind, and I suspect Apple has to police this kind of thing pretty carefully or the record companies could bail out or be less willing to provide popular titles. Apple isn't the only one involved in all of this. There are many areas in our lives where we're limited in some way in response to the inappropriate actions of others. Have you flown anywhere lately? Ever since we've had computers we've had people who apply their skills without regard to how they will hurt others. Does anyone really think the people who wrote the stream-stealers didn't think something like this would happen? Sure they did, they just didn't care, just like dishonest people never care. It's really not Apple's fault. If you want to sell your Mac and get a PC because you can't stream Music from playlists over the web, please, be my guest. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Friday, June 13 2003 @ 10:15 PM PDT
Adobe Reader 6.0 (Mac OS X)
What a dog (with apologies to dogs everywhere) 
Adobe just doesn't get it. Really. Reader 5.1 takes 8 seconds to launch on my 1GHz PowerBook G4. Reader 6.0 takes a minimum of 25 seconds to launch, and that's not even opening a file. v5.1 scrolls 2-3 times faster then v6. Everything Adobe makes runs like molasses in Mac OS X, but <i>this</i> takes the prize. Even Photoshop launches faster. <br><br> Items in the toolbar are too faint to read easily, their home-rolled help tags look non-standard, and many of their interface widgets are non-standard. They must be using one of those write once-compile for multiple platforms development frameworks that makes life easy for them but does a lot of stuff "by hand" so the same code can run on mulitple platforms. <br><br> For what it's worth, you can speed the launch considerably if you remove most of the plug-ins (v5 doesn't use plug-ins). I got the launch time down to 9 or 10 seconds by removing plug-ins and I was still able to view the PDF files I opened with it. But it's still going in the trash. [alert admin]
Friday, June 13 2003 @ 09:33 PM PDT
DivX 5.0.6 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
I'm kind of guessing here, but what's probably happening is that the installer is asking for your admin password so it can install to the main Applications folder. If you don't authorize it to do that, it probably installs into your user folder, where admin privileges aren't needed. So it's not a bug. [alert admin]
Friday, June 13 2003 @ 07:40 PM PDT
A Better Finder Rename X 5.5 (Mac OS X)
installer need administrator privileges? Any user should be able to install this kind of product for his own use. [alert admin]
Read Comments (1) | More Info | 0 of 2 users found this helpful
Wednesday, April 23 2003 @ 08:35 PM PDT
Last 10 Comments by Laurence Harris [ Search for All ]
If you have a support question or need to report a bug, contact the developer.
Original feedback item : Read More
Monday, December 04 2006 @ 07:56 AM PST
I know this is an old post, but just to clarify, to the best of my memory we did not "find something wrong" with File Buddy 8.1.4 or remove it prior to the release of 8.1.5. We don't control the links here, so I don't know what the problem was. That said, Version Tracker cannot really "pull the update." As I understand it, they maintain a single link to a disk image on a server…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, January 12 2006 @ 07:43 PM PST
Why are you posting a feature request here? VersionTracker is not the developer of File Buddy. Feature requests and bug reports should always go to the developer to be most effective.
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, August 20 2004 @ 10:11 AM PDT
Ten launches is giving you a break. File Buddy goes above and beyond standard practice by giving you at least 10 launches. File Buddy's trial period is for the greater of 30 days or 10 launches, whichever gives you more opportunity to try it. Most timed trials only give you the 30 days, even if you only launched the program once in those 30 days.
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, August 20 2004 @ 10:09 AM PDT
What does it say about someone who downloads a beta, sees a problem, and instead of using one of the many easy options to report it to the developer so it can be fixed, goes onto VersionTracker to warn people to avoid the product?
As for the Erase Unused Space warning, the potential consequences of not following that warning are pretty serious and outside of File Buddy's control, so take it seriously. As for it being…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Wednesday, June 16 2004 @ 11:45 AM PDT
The potential for experiencing a serious problem while erasing unused space is new in Mac OS X due to its heavy reliance on virtual memory and the fact that its memory management system was not written to robustly handle situations where there is insufficient disk space. This will be the case when erasing unused space with File Buddy, but it can also occur as a result of other actions as well if there is…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, June 03 2004 @ 02:39 PM PDT
I suppose most people don't think of this, but there is more than one kind of .plist file, so it would be better to say "Trash the preferences file." If you trash the plist file inside Safari, you will break it for lots of things.
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, June 13 2003 @ 07:45 PM PDT
Would still like to see it behave like OS9
It's not fair to compare LabelsX with the implementation of labels in Mac OS 9. In Mac OS 9, this was all part of the OS. In Mac OS X, LabelsX has to modify system-wide behaviors, and I'm sure there are limits to what they can do without compromising stability. As a rule, if you miss a behavior in Mac OS 9, tell Apple, because Mac OS X makes it a lot more difficult to…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Friday, June 13 2003 @ 07:28 PM PDT
