Do You Use This?
September 14th, 2007I really like the iUseThis site for Mac software updates. For one thing, the UI is extremely clean and easy to navigate. None of the clutter of some of the more senior update sites. For another thing, the guys who run it are really cool Mac nerds who accept feedback graciously and are honestly striving to make the site “breakthrough” in ways that I don’t think the other sites will be able to keep up with.
iUseThis is an indie site, so it’s no wonder indie software developers love it!
I got in touch with the guys in charge at iUseThis with a funny proposition. You know those supermarket promotions where the millionth customer walks through the door and balloons and confetti fly everywhere? I sort of wanted to do that for one of my customers, only I’m not quite at the million mark yet. So I had to pick a less lofty benchmark!
And The Winner Is…
Nick Loose is the 300th “user” of MarsEdit at iUseThis. Nick is a 15 year old German who was on the verge of buying MarsEdit when he clicked the “I Use This” button. His prize? A free copy of MarsEdit — and every other application I sell!
One of the unexpected joys of running your own business is you can perform random acts of fun. All the things you wish bigger companies would do more often, well you can just do them if you feel like it. I really like the idea of prizes, and this one is sort of arbitrary, but what the heck! 300 is a nice round number!
If you haven’t checked out iUseThis before, be sure to give it a look. An excellent way of testing it would be by visiting my product pages there and “using” them to show your love!
iUseThis MarsEdit Page
iUseThis BlackInk Page
iUseThis FlexTime Page
iUseThis FastScripts Page
iUseThis Clarion Page
September 14th, 2007 at 10:31 am
I must say that I like that idea, pretty cool. :) Damn if only I went to say i used MarsEdit sooner!
September 14th, 2007 at 11:03 am
i like the idea, too! ;)
thanks for this amazing software!
September 14th, 2007 at 11:50 am
This is why I like smaller companies!
Rob…
September 14th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
At what point does an indie software developer become a not-indie software developer, I wonder? Is it based on number of employees? Annual revenue? Organization type (corporation or other)? Public versus private? Venture versus privately funded? Or just the cool factor?
September 14th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Michael: probably a bit of everything. Definitely a lot of it is public image, which is shaped by public behavior. For all ya’ll know I’m a subsidiary of Microsoft. :)
September 15th, 2007 at 8:01 am
This almost makes me wish I’d only started being so diligent with my iusethis, uh, flags (I guess?) a few days ago :) (Mind you, MarsEdit 2 is easily worth the money)
Congratulations Nick!
September 17th, 2007 at 8:09 am
I like iUseThis, but I find MacUpdate more useful. Mainly because w/ MacUpdate, I can see two days worth of new releases. With iUseThis, I see 6 entries per page. And I have to click on the link to see just New Releases. IUseThis wastes valuable front page real estate w/ excessively long app descriptions. Those should be saved for the detail page, not the home page.
But I really admire the guys at IUseThis, and champion their support of the Mac community. I find myself tied in to them via their RSS feed, but still check MacUpdate constantly, almost like they are serving crack.
Competition is good though. Remember the days when VersionTracker was the only game in town for Mac apps?
September 17th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Yeah, information on the iUseThis main page has been worthless to me compared to the more compact product summaries on MacUpdate and VersionTracker.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Hi.
Thanks for useful feedback. We’re trying out an alternative layout at http://osx.iusethis.com/compact/
What do you think?
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 pm
That it’s already a significant improvement. :)
The “release” date is the most obvious thing missing from the compact listing. Similar to MU/VT, that would be useful to me for simple by-date item grouping though still not as useful an indicator for when developers actually add/update their software as it is on MU/VT.
I can send you more detailed feedback about that and other issues directly instead of further hijacking’s Daniel’s space.