Someone once said “never start a land war in Asia,” and if you’ve ever played a game of Risk, you know how true that is. A more modern and similar quote might be “never start a flame war on the internet.”
I said some things about Peter Maurer’s application, Textpander, and its recent change to TextExpander along with a $29.95 pricetag (it was previously donationware) which were blown out of proportion. All I really wanted to say was that I thought $30 for what the application does was a bit too pricey in my opinion, but unfortunately my writing failed me and the comment was interpreted as an attack on Peter.
Peter, quick to defend his integrity as a developer, wrote a counter argument on his site that called me a “cheapskate,” to which I of course defended myself on my own site with I’m a Cheapskate. How quickly things elevate on the web.
I received an email from Peter yesterday after he read my post and we have ironed out the issues that arose from my comment on TUAW. I respect developers like Peter and was not attempting to demoralize his character, though I apologized for it sounding like I was doing just that. After a bit of conversation, he also got me thinking about the fact that anyone who had donated to TextPander was getting the TextExpander features as a free upgrade, and people who hadn’t would just be paying for the full application. The only downside is that users who had just recently given Textpander a try and hadn’t yet decided to send money Peter’s way were now unable to do anything but pay the full $30 for TextExpander.
At any rate, live and learn. Rather than trying to write a paragraph that is attempting to separate itself from a “first post!” comment, next time I might just write something to the effect of “$30 seems a little high for what TextExpander offers to the end user. But that’s just my opinion.” Straightforward and to the point.
