Aptfolk

rdar://9596018: Bug Reports in iTunes and Mac App Store

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:27:43 -0400

rdar://9596018: Bug Reports in iTunes and Mac App Store:

Dave Wiskus, suggests an interesting and sensible change to the iTunes store. I think Aptfolk will be duping this request.

How Tumblr's support team uses Zendesk

Fri, 27 May 2011 09:58:00 -0400

How Tumblr's support team uses Zendesk:

Marc LaFountain shares how his support tools help him stay on top of a huge user base. Marc is one of my Support Heros, he’s helped me out with trivial and not so trivial issues a number of times. I can attest to his mastery over the job.

Storing and testing credentials: Cocoa Touch Edition

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:20:24 -0400

Storing and testing credentials: Cocoa Touch Edition:

If your app is storing user credentials, you probably ought to take a look at this. Your users likely won’t thank you, but you’ll have done a good job.

Toddler app user interface guidelines

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:33:16 -0400

Toddler app user interface guidelines :

Gabriel Weinberg does an excellent job giving some ‘TIG’ advice.

On supporting jailbreak users

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:08:00 -0400

(Note: This post is a response to, and in part a continuation of, a discussion that happened yesterday on Twitter. A few tweets from that conversation are linked here.)

It’s jailbreak season again, which means it’s time for iOS developers and jailbreak users to start arguing with each other on Twitter. To boil a fairly nuanced debate down to two bullet points:

Jailbreak users feel they should get support like any other users.
Many developers feel that voiding the warranty on your iPhone also voids the warranty on your apps, and they shouldn’t be required to provide support for jailbroken devices.

It’s true that jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad and installing certain apps and addons can make iOS behave in unexpected ways, but we at Aptfolk feel strongly that it’s good policy to provide support for jailbreakers.

Some developers argue that most jailbreak users are pirates, and probably haven’t paid for their apps. We haven’t seen numbers on this, but none of the jailbreakers on our team—there are several—pirate apps. Many users jailbreak because they prefer to have control over their own devices, and those users don’t deserve to be presumed guilty until proven innocent; we’ve seen where that leads, and we can’t get behind it. But even assuming that our experience is an exception, Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software has already explained why pirate users aren’t entirely a bad thing.

We provide support for users of great Mac and iOS apps, which means that we interact daily with both great developers and great users. It’s important to us and to our clients that users receive polite, respectful support—even when what’s going wrong is their fault. A response like “You’re causing the problem, so please stop bothering us” is never an option. Instead, there are several levels of support you can provide to jailbreak users, each better (from the user’s point of view) than the last:

Blame the user or ignore their question completely. This is the worst possible response. The user, who has likely paid for your app, rightfully feels unheard. They may very well badmouth you or your app on Twitter or another public forum. While this level of support may feel justified, it brings only bad feelings and bad press.
Provide a friendly explanation, in as much useful detail as possible, of what exactly is causing the problem. “A bug in $JAILBREAKADDON* (for example) causes Example.app to crash on launch; if your iPhone is jailbroken, please contact the developer of $JAILBREAKADDON for a fix.” is infinitely more useful to the user than simple ignoring them, and buys you their good will. Depending on who the user is, they may also go out and explain to the rest of the jailbreak community what’s causing the problem, and the issue may get fixed by the developer of the jailbreak software without any further intervention from you. (Aptfolk strives to provide this level of support on behalf of our clients.)
Provide a friendly explanation, in as much useful detail as possible, of what exactly is causing the problem, and express an interest in resolving the problem. “A bug in $JAILBREAKADDON causes Example.app to crash on launch. We’re aware of the problem and have contacted the developer of $JAILBREAKADDON. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time or resources to fix this problem ourselves right now.” This demonstrates that you’re aware that your user has paid for your app, that you respect their time and decisions, and that they need to respect yours.
Fix the bug. We believe in providing the best possible support and this is it. If there’s an easy workaround on the developer side, implement it. This doesn’t mean you should completely refactor your app to solve an issue for just a few jailbreakers, but if the bug can be fixed without breaking anything else, fix it. Your user paid for their device, they (hopefully) paid for your app, and they may even have paid for the jailbreak software that’s causing the trouble; they deserve to be able to use all three as expected.

Of course, providing any support for jailbreak users can be difficult in part because they tend to be quiet about their status. Very few jailbreakers end their support requests with “By the way, I’m running jailbroken iOS 4.3.1 on an iPhone 3GS”. This is often in part because they genuinely don’t think of it as an issue—after all, dozens or hundreds of other apps work just fine on jailbroken devices, so why shouldn’t this one? On the other hand, some users don’t report their jailbroken status because of the stigma that attends it: if they can get their issue resolved without mentioning it, why bother to bring it up when it might make the developer think “Pirate!”?

The stigma against jailbreaking is largely due to the pirates who give honest jailbreakers a bad name. We think the best way to eliminate this stigma is to treat jailbreak status the same way as any other device spec. Treating it this way tends to generate more useful bug reports for developers, which in turn lets them (and us) provide better support for users. And if a few pirates get free support along the way, well, that’s just good karma for the rest of us.

Remember: a user is a user is a user. Treat ‘em right.

*Update 04-09-11: Thanks to @chpwn, the developer of several popular jailbreak apps, who pointed out that MobileSubstrate is rarely a culprit. It was used here as a jailbreak ‘feature’ many people have heard of rather than as a specific example; to avoid adding to the mostly unwarranted concern about MobileSubstrate, we’ve switched in $JAILBREAKADDON instead.

Don't touch other people's keyboards

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:27:05 -0400

Don't touch other people's keyboards:

Garann Means on helping users.

The Audacity of Getting Paid

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 13:55:32 -0400

The Audacity of Getting Paid:

A wonderful essay on getting paid for your work.

Why I Happily Pay For Knowledge and Software

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:00:08 -0500

Why I Happily Pay For Knowledge and Software:

Brett Kelly on spending money for things he could do himself.
It’s probably glib to note how paying for time applies to hiring Aptfolk to help you. But I’m not above being glib.

Aptfolk Gives You Time

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:56:47 -0500

We’ve been advertising Aptfolk to clients by stressing one line: Less time doing support means more time for coding, which means faster releases and more money. But we aim to provide something even better.

Sure, after a massively successful 1.0 release, we hope developers spend some time reading our wonderful bug reports and snapping out a few 1.0.x releases. Maybe use the time to plot the roadmap to 1.5 and 2.0. That’s cool. We’ve got your back on that.

But to be completely honest, we’ll be even happier if our clients can spend the hours we save them every day with their family. Or learning to fly a plane. Or hiking the mountains of Nepal. (Extra points for flying your whole family to Nepal for a weekend hike.)

Aptfolk sells amazing customer support, wonderful documentation, and gorgeous videos. But what you get when you hire Aptfolk is time. And that’s a precious commodity.

entp, the people behind Lighthouse and Tender, interviewed us

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:37:06 -0500

entp, the people behind Lighthouse and Tender, interviewed us:

We liked them a lot, even before they started flattering us.

Well, Actually - Miguel de Icaza

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:36:16 -0500

Well, Actually - Miguel de Icaza:

Don’t ‘Well Actually’ your friends. And don’t do it to your users.

Reasons Why Software Is Not Free

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:07:51 -0500

Reasons Why Software Is Not Free:

Maybe it’s a little snarky, but I think it’s still a valuable in that it states something that many developers and especially support folks have trouble articulating.

How piracy works.

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:45:25 -0500

How piracy works.:

An interesting take on piracy and how it effects Minecraft. I wonder how he feels about support costs associated with pirated apps.

Tracking down my online haters

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:57:51 -0500

Tracking down my online haters:

This is about online commenting in general and specifically in journalism, but I think it has interesting parallels to online support.

Nick Bradbury: Some Customers Suck

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:43:17 -0500

Nick Bradbury: Some Customers Suck:

Nick is right on the money. But I gotta say, these customers still need support, jerks or not.

Manton Reece: Faster support response times

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:02:07 -0500

Manton Reece: Faster support response times

I wish it were a natural thing to walk up to your boss and say, “I’m...

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:37:59 -0500

I wish it were a natural thing to walk up to your boss and say, “I’m...:

rrrrred:

I I wish it were an expected thing to walk up to your boss and say, “I’m taking a month off to drive across America. I’ve never seen the mountains, not really, and I’ve never spent an entire day driving across a flat state. I won’t have my phone on me, but I’ll have my camera. You’ll lose me for a month but when I return I’ll be worth more.”

It is at Aptfolk. Our jobs are too hard to not have life building breaks.

Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: The Birdfeed Easter Egg That Never Was

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:50:45 -0400

Sci-Fi Hi-Fi: The Birdfeed Easter Egg That Never Was:

Buzz Andersen talks about the humanizing gesture that never was. I’m tremendously delighted by the (planned) implementation.

Why Aptfolk?

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:36:00 -0400

Developers have a job: shipping software.

Your users are amazing sources of inspiration and valuable criticism. Answering emails all day won’t get the latest release of your app in their hands, however.

Even if you have just a tiny trickle of email, that’s time you could be doing something else. Whether it’s making smashing your forehead into Core Data, coaxing a few more FPS out of OpenGL or even hanging out with your friends and family; it’s time we can free up for you.

If you want some free time, email me

marco: From the Tumblr staff blog: Marc gets email. A lot...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:14:31 -0400

marco:

From the Tumblr staff blog:

Marc gets email. A lot of email.

As Community Director, Marc manages Tumblr’s entire support infrastructure. From tackling general community issues to solving technical support requests, he’s personally read and responded to thousands upon thousands of email messages regarding browser cookies, forgotten passwords, and more.

Marc is special. And I don’t mean that as a euphemism for any sort of handicap or personality flaw. I mean that he possesses admirable and rare qualities.

Marc’s job is to deal with hundreds of support emails every day.

To most people in our industry, that sounds like hell. I can’t blame anyone for assuming that someone who handles support email as gracefully as Marc does couldn’t possibly exist in reality:

Yet, Marc wants to emphasize that he is, in fact, an actual human being. You see, a common misconception he encounters is that he’s a fake persona we created to make Support more personable. Emails addressed to “Whoever Really Reads This” and “Marc, Yeah Right” are a surprisingly regular occurrence.

He actually asked for this job, because he truly enjoys doing it. In person, he’s just as pleasant as you’d expect from his email responses. It’s not an act. He’s genuine.

Support is behind the scenes and underappreciated by most, but it’s a necessity, and there can be serious repercussions if it’s not done properly. And support for free web services is rarely done well.

In addition to the polite inquiries, Marc gets many emails every day from people who are angry about something, none of which is likely to be his fault. Often, he needs to deal with problems for which there’s no good solution, such as personal disputes or copyright issues, and he needs to be the bearer of bad news to at least one party.

His actions and demeanor help disarm people’s frustrations — with their passwords, their themes, their browsers, their phone company, their workplace’s IT staff, their content, other people’s content, politics¹, religion², or society as a whole³ — and make everyone’s day a little bit nicer. And as Tumblr’s support needs have grown past his (rather impressive) capacity, Marc has instilled the same positive attitude and guidelines in the other members of Tumblr’s support staff.

Tumblr is truly lucky to have such a pleasant, resilient, and talented person running our support and community management department⁴.

Really. ↩

Really. ↩

Really. ↩

I have no idea what to call this, so I’ll keep adding words. ↩

Marco’s tribute to Marc is apt and wonderful. Marc has helped me numerous times and always gives me the impression that he’s happy to help. Marc’s a great guy doing a great job.