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Boinx Being Smart Re: Mac App Store

January 11th, 2011 No comments

I received the following email from Boinx Software and  because it, and Boinx in general, are a great example of a company behaving in the ways I advocated in my yesterday post about the Mac App Store, I am posting it here by way of example.

Expect this kind of behavior and transparency from the companies whose products you buy and accept nothing less.

Note their transparency, their careful walking of the line regard’s Apple’s policies and confidentiality without taking all the heat for limitations imposed by Apple. Go look at their web site. Note also their decision not to forego direct distribution even as they expand into the Mac App Store. Note that they were able to contact me because they maintain a relationship with their customers and while they do announce, they are not spam-like in their frequency of broadcasts. (I could wish for some tweaks to their emailing methods like a text only option and not using a third party provider but that’s a topic for another day.)

I’m going to hope they decide their forthcoming “App Store Exclusive” experiment goes well for them but that they elect to sell the forthcoming product directly too.

————-Email From Boinx Below ————

Questions regarding the Mac App Store
Dear [customer name],
2011 is off to a good start with the launch of the Mac App Store.Steve Jobs even quoted me in his press release!
Many of you have contacted us with questions regarding the Mac App Store. I decided to write this email because the answers to your questions are probably of interest to all of our customers!
Here are some of the questions we have received from customers:
Q: Are you going to continue to sell your products outside the App Store?
A: Yes. All currently available products will continue to be available through our website. However, we are going to announce an exciting new product soon which will be available exclusively at the Mac App Store to begin with, because we want to try out this path of action.
Q: I noticed that the apps in the store are newer versions. Are you abandoning customers who bought the apps the traditional way?
A: No way! For the launch of the App Store, we had to submit new versions of our products. Those do not have new features except for the licensing stuff that had to be added for the App Store. The versions available from our website will be updated ASAP. In the future, because of the App Store approval process, it might be that some versions are released first outside the App Store, some will be released simultaneously, but overall the goal is to keep everything in sync as much as technically possible.
Q: Why are the prices different between the App Store and your website?
A: The Mac App Store does not allow us to set the prices arbitrarily. We chose the “tiers” that are closest to the pricing on our website. Over time, we will harmonize the pricing.
Q: I bought FotoMagico Home on the App Store. Can I upgrade to FotoMagico Pro?
A: No. Unfortunately, the App Store does not allow for cross- or upgrades. For the time being, this remains an advantage of buying the apps from our website instead of through the Mac App Store. The unofficial way is to request a refund with Apple and repurchase FotoMagico Pro from our website.
Q: Why is FotoMagico Pro not available on the App Store?
A: Currently, FotoMagico Pro comes with plugins for Aperture and Final Cut Pro. The App Store submission guidelines prohibit an app from installing plugins anywhere on the system. Until we figured out a solution for this, FotoMagico Pro will not be available on the App Store.
If you have further questions, please feel free to  tweet, post on our Facebook wall or send them by good old email.
Due to the great efforts by the Boinx team, there are currently four Boinx products available for you to purchase on the Mac App Store:
———————————–
List of Boinx Products Goes Here
———————————–
This is an exciting new beginning. Sales are going really well, both on the App Store and through our traditional channels, making sure that we can continue to develop cool Mac software.
Happy New Year!
Oliver Breidenbach on behalf of your Boinx Software crew
————————————
Legal and Good Practice Compliant Information, send to a friend, address and unsubscribe info in footer here.
————————————-
End Boinx Email

DISCLOSURE: I have been given NFR licenses for a subset of Boinx products as a promotional gift for my participation as Macworld Expo Conference Faculty in past years. I have also met and spoken with Oliver and Achim at some length at several Macworld events. I l like them, I like their products and I like the way they run Boinx. I have bought, specified and used several of their products on various personal and professional projects. I am not, and never have been on the payroll. I do not own any stock.

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When your protection tools can’t be trusted: Intego

January 2nd, 2011 4 comments

****** See Updates at bottom******

I bought a bundle of apps sold under the banner of ‘Mac Promo’ that included a number of terrific tools I’ll probably talk about later but I also discovered things I now find very disturbing.

First, “Mac Promo” was a promotion run by Intego. It’s not Mac Update Promo. The, I think, deliberate ambiguity in the branding was mildly troubling but that’s hardly a major issue and, to be fair, the design and appearance of the promotion was clearly different from Mac Update Promo. Intego did, in the small print, say the bundle was being offered by Intego. (That the clock ticking down to the end of the offer period silently reset and extended the time limit is cheesy but not exceptionally weaselly. It’s standard issue marketing weaselly.)

Included in the bundle was a product called Personal Backup by Intego. When I initially looked into the Personal Backup product a few days ago prior to purchasing the bundle, the only documentation for Intego’s Personal Backup on their web site was Mac OS 9-era information including Classic UI elements. Personal Backup was not then, and is not now listed as a current Mac product on Intego’s site. That’s, at best, amateurish. At worst, it’s creepy.

The creepiness just got worse.

  1. The creepy behavior goes all the way down to the license and getting started documents on the disk image for the application. They appear to be documents and are badged PDF and HTML respectively. In fact, both are applications, executables, programs, things that run code on your Mac. These executables appear to be as benign as wrappers that check what language your Mac is localized to and then open the appropriate documents. This is deliberately misleading the user, badging the document icons PDF and HTML respectively. Users lulled into trusting these things, apps masquerading as docs are, absolutely an infection vector for malware. That Intego’s faux docs aren’t literally malware doesn’t change the fact that to imply they are delivering documents when, in fact, they are delivering applications is bad behavior at best and, at worst, creating the kind of problems they then want to sell you products to avoid.
  2. Intego’s Personal Backup product required online activation. The need for online activation is not warned of prior to purchase or installation and the installation experience is ambiguous as to what’s really going on. Don’t run LittleSnitch or the like and you’re likely never to even know it does it without looking closely. The serialization documentation on their web site doesn’t tell you that their products online activate and is, in my opinion, written to obfuscate the fact that they do. A developer is obligated to tell the user at least when you do the online activation that you are doing it. If they’re remotely polite, they should warn their customers prior to purchase that their product requires online activation.
  3. Installing and using the product demands you run an installer as opposed to being a drag-install. This should usually raise a red flag because, if you run your Mac without administrator permissions (as you should), you will need to enter an administration-enabled user name and password  to allow the installer permission to run. Think about, for example, BBEdit. When you install BBEdit, you drag the application to your Applications folder (or wherever else you want to). When BBEdit needs additional functionality that demands it place executables outside it’s app package (the command line tools) it asks you first.
  4. The Intego Personal Backup installer installs, at least: Two Applications to the Applications Folder (NetUpdate and Personal Backup), two Dashboard widgets, a daemon to handle scheduling of automated backups (necessary for automation functionality but they should tell you), a prefpane, a menu bar item and, on launch, a goody pile of plists and app caches. It’s simply excessive. To run a personal backup application with the functionality they include, you need an application that can, with the users’ permission, escalate privileges to access certain files to back them up. You optionally need to allow a daemon (background application) to be run at every startup to allow the app to start itself and run a scheduled backup. If you don’t schedule automated backups, you don’t need the deamon. If you do schedule automated backups, the app should ask to install the deamon. Intego’s documentation for NetUpdate or the Personal Backup application it payloads onto at install doesn’t tell you what, specifically, is installed let alone what is not removed by their uninstaller. A developer is, in my opinion, obligated, when they install anything more than the App and generate a prefs file, to tell the user what they are installing. If not in a ‘read me’ available at installation, at least on your web site in a clearly discoverable place.
  5. The installer’s “Uninstall” option does not remove all of these things or warn you that to remove that portion of cruft it does uninstall, a restart is necessary.
  6. Finding all the crud (including still running code after a post-uninstall restart) demands you know how to look for it. OS X spotlight won’t find it all. DEVON Easy Find (Free, yay DEVON Technologies) is one method, there are others. If you sell anti-malware software, installing faceless and fairly deeply buried things that run every time you start your Mac is tres uncool.

Now, why is all this so creepy, so utterly unacceptable,  in this case when all sorts of apps behave similarly badly? Intego is in the business of selling tools that are all explicitly about keeping your Mac safe.

They sell:

  • AntiVirus Software
  • Software Firewall/Internet Security Software
  • Privacy software to clean your Mac of browsing history.
  • Backup Software (not that you’d know they sell that product from their product listings and there’s no press release for Personal Backup more recent than July of 2008).

If Intego expects their customers to trust them to help keep them safe from malware, they shouldn’t behave like malware. If they are actually interested in controlling the spread of malware on MacOS, they should behave in a manner beyond reproach. If they want to have users learn basic habits that inherently make them safer from malware, they shouldn’t acculturate users to do exactly the sorts of things that lead to spreading malware. Intego is, without major changes in their behavior, not to be trusted. Period.

**************Update**************

The Mac Promo bundle mentioned above  also includes “Personal Antispam” from Intego. It too has faux HTML and PDF ‘documents’ and, it too installs a similar suite of cruft. The habits described above seem to apply to at at least two Intego products.

**************Update again**************

The text:

“You must provide a valid e-mail address when serializing the Software, which will then proceed with the activation procedure. At the end of the Period of Use, the Software will no longer be active, and to continue using the Software You will need to purchase a new license or subscription for a new Period of Use.”  does appear in their License. The license is included the collection of ‘masquerading as documents’ applications on the installer disk image and here: http://support.intego.com/kb/index.php?x=&mod_id=2&id=70

Why do they want an email address? “6. Communication and Personal Information. By accepting this license, You grant to Intego the right to send You occasional e-mails or postal mailings regarding security alerts, new software, software offers, as well as reminders that Your Period of Use is due to expire. Intego will not sell or lease Your e-mail address or other personal information to third parties.”

In other words: In order to use the product you paid for, it is a condition of the license that they be allowed to email you ‘offers’. You can’t use the product you paid for unless you give them permission to spam you. Conversely, if you ask to be removed from their promotional email lists, you forfeit the license you paid for. How do you like them apples?

**************Update again…again**************

Email sent to support@intego.com:

Subject: License disclaimer and removal request.

Please remove my email from all of your distribution lists. As a purchaser of your products, I do not consent to this license term:
“6. Communication and Personal Information. By accepting this license, You grant to Intego the right to send You occasional e-mails or postal mailings regarding security alerts, new software, software offers, as well as reminders that Your Period of Use is due to expire. Intego will not sell or lease Your e-mail address or other personal information to third parties.”
I urge your legal department to review, at least, the following:
– Jon
****Update 1.5.11****
No reply to the above email other than automated response. They’ve had three business days. Now I have no problem being a bit louder about this.
****** Update 1.6.11*****
An anonymous Macintouch reader points out: “One person’s crud = useful components to another.” and yes, I agree in principle but still see the Intego payload as beyond excessive. I freely admit I may be unique in my distaste for Dashboard Widgets for example but I think, as they also say in their comment, that the installer should tell you what goes where.
*******Update 1.7.11*******
Peter from Intego posted a comment I didn’t notice for a some unknown period of time and it was held for moderation longer than I’d like . It has now been posted (unedited) and replied to.  I want to be clear about something. I believe the Mac community needs anti-malware and security tools. I believe Intego is capable of providing good ones and making a good living do it. I just don’t believe, as of now, they are acting in a way that embodies good practices. I would hope they would take this feedback to heart,  reflect and come out with revisions to their products, polices, UE and documentation that would make them better and, if they do, I’ll buy their products again. I’m not and never have been, seeking a refund. In fact, I have asked them to cancel my license because I can’t agree to a license term  but did so without asking for any kind of refund since the rest of the bundle was a good value for me. So…  for the rest, read the comments.
*******Update 4.26.11*******
Telling screenshot and citation of Mac App Store Guidelines. Seems like we have a double lesson here. Mac App Store concerns for both Devs and Users and Intego not seeming to have learned a thing in 4 months.
*******Update 9.23.11************
Oh look, a malware app being delivered as faux .pdf.  I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/09/mac-trojan-poses-as-pdf-to-open-botnet-backdoor.ars

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Missed Opportunity- Acura

December 10th, 2010 No comments

I have owned Acura cars for twenty-some years now. The first, a first generation Integra, the second, a third gen Integra and now a TSX. There are some concrete tangible reasons I’ve chosen them and some admittedly silly ‘branding victim’ reasons.

The concrete reasons:

  • They are reliable resale-value-holding japanese cars. Say what you like but, bottom line, Japanese cars are simply more reliable on average. Remember, not saying only Japanese built, most japanese cars for sale in the US are made in the US by American union workers just japanese as opposed to American, Korean, German or Swedish cars. I can’t afford Italian ones and if I could, reliability wouldn’t be my first concern. (As it happens, quirks of Honda’s business have meant all of my Acuras have been built in Japan but the point is, it’s not the labor that has made Japanese cars more reliable in general over the last twenty-some years than the comparable alternatives.)
  • They are comparatively safe cars.
  • They offered real, as in has a clutch, manual transmissions.
  • They have high revving four bangers. They’ve all had, to a declining extent as they’ve been revised, peaks in the power curve toward the higher end of the rev range make them fun to drive for me. What others have seen as a flaw, that you have to wind them all the way out before you shift, is my idea of a grand old time. The little buggers feel fast even when I’m behaving myself and are fast when, long ago before the statute of limitations ran out, I wasn’t.
  • They’ve been smallish. Not tiny but at the small end for my needs. I like a smaller car. As I’ve grown older, my desire for comfort has moved me toward larger and and now to a four door sedan, but I still prefer to be on the smaller end.
  • The models I have chosen have been toward the higher fuel efficiency and low emissions end of the spectrum. No, they aren’t the best you can get, but all things in life include compromise.
  • The Honda equivalents of the models I’ve chosen don’t exist in the US or I’d have just as happily saved the money and given up the branding.

Then there’s the brand victim stuff.

  • I like the marketing personality of the Acura brand. I won’t deny it. I like the logo, the type face and the “luxury car for the smart cheap bastard” placement in the automotive branding food chain.
  • I like, mostly, the aesthetics of the cars. Excess grill and excess chrome and too many damned curves is a blight on the current models but, relative to the brutalization of classic lines recent BMW’s embody, I prefer the Acuras. (the 318 is kinda the exception in the range of remotely affordable bimmers but even that has suffered some aesthetically in the recent changes to the BMW look.)
  • My dealer, Acura of Boston, has never screwed me or jerked me around.
  • They do a minimum of things that piss me off. They don’t have a ‘track me everywhere’ OnStar system. They don’t make it hard for me to change my own oil or do other basic maintenance myself. (Yes, I do occasionally do these things and I like knowing I could.)
  • They don’t have so many byzantine over complicated choices to make that your Subaru $25,500 WRX cost $41.500 by the time it’s an STi Limited with the same basic features as the TSX I bought for much less. (yes, I know, different class and type of car but still, go play on the web sites and remember, the WRX was on the short list of other cars I considered when I bought my TSX. It was a missed win for Subaru.).
  • They, Hondas and Acuras in general, have good user interfaces. Switches, knobs and buttons are usually where they belong and behave as they should.

Now, all of these aren’t accidental choices. Honda decided they want guys like me for a customer and they’ve made some good choices to pry my money out of my wallet. I have been successfully manipulated err.. marketed to by Honda.

So that’s plenty of ‘setup’. What’s the missed opportunity? They, after more than 20 years of me owning their products in a context that they know I own them, they should have figured out how to make incremental money off me.

They have never failed to accurately remind me to go in for a service or mention my current car when they try to sell me a new one. They just don’t know how to wring out every dollar from me they could.

Hell, they haven’t even figured out that they could have sold me my wife’s last two cars too. Those have been Honda that could have been bought used from an affiliated dealer.

Now, consider that I have helped them sell, as in walked in with a customer to the dealer, two other Acuras and, via “go look at this car” one more.  This is the dealer and the manufacturer. Both should know me as a customer. Both should find a way to reward me for my evangelism.

The dealer doesn’t get all my service work. I do about 50% of my services at Hondaa King over the life of a car because Hondaa King is often more affordable and always reliable for me. Now, I really like the Hondaa King guys, and I’d still throw business their way no matter what but, if I didn’t have them? Acura Of Boston, who I also like, would still not get all my work. They just don’t deliver the “your sorted” feeling their prices and luxury should. Nikon has done a great job of making me feel that “you’re sorted, we gotcha” sensation when I’ve had them service my gear. Why can’t my car company?

They just don’t seem to make an effort to know me. They don’t say, as Hondaa King has “Jon, don’t be an idiot, don’t spend the money on this fix now. Live with it for 3 months, it will be cheaper when you do it at the next service.” That my quirky personality means I actually like somebody I trust telling me, in those words, ‘don’t be an idiot’ is part of the point. Hondaa King knows me. The Acura service guys don’t and they don’t try to. They do, however, retain staff for years so that’s not the problem.

Then they don’t sell me ‘stuff’. A car is, for me anyway, a typically ten year purchase. Want to make more money? Sell me things over the life the car that will keep me spending money on your product and aware of your brand. That means, after 2 years, sell me the big wheels and summer tieres at a reasonable price, a TireRack price. Don’t make it utterly stupid not to look to my awesome body shop guy for a deal. (no real URL for them) for a MUCH better deal. Sell me actually meaningful feature upgrades for my Nav system not just new map disks. Sell me killer detailing services that make the car feel new again. (yes they do detailing work but hardly the quality they could). They don’t sell me. market to me silly little wear parts like floor mats, lamp upgrades or other dumb little affordable things that could make me feel good about a purchase and earn them money during the whole life of the product.

What do they do instead? They have, a year later, started trying to sell me a new car. If they kept selling me my old one, they could be damned sure I’d buy a new one when I was ready.

How does this apply, this way of looking at the world apply to other products like, oh, say, the iOS and Mac app stores?

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Categories: Inspiration, Marketing Tags: ,