Marco.org

I’m : a programmer, writer, podcaster, geek, and coffee enthusiast.

Angry users

You wouldn’t believe how angry many people are when they send Instapaper.app support emails.

People seem personally offended that they don’t understand how something works. They swear at me. They insult me. They taunt me. They throw the problem back in my face with no explanation.

You can see a lot of this in the negative reviews of nearly any app in the App Store, too.

They refuse to read documentation right above the support-email link, then they email me with a question that’s answered right there.

It’s incredibly discouraging. I don’t think people realize that app developers are regular people, too. We make mistakes, we’re not perfect, and we didn’t mean to confuse you.

I can’t even imagine what these people’s tone will be like when I start charging money for a pro version. I just hope that the negative people don’t buy it. Of course, it looks like I should probably expect a bunch of 1-star reviews saying things like “stoopid you can get this for free! too much money! not worth $10 but maybe I’d pay $3!”