I think one of the problems may be that people dealing with AppStore or Android Market customers are not realizing that they are dealing with a different kind of user group. One cannot compare the feedback that HN users (developers/advanced-users/early-adopters) give, with the responses from your average iPhone user. He doesn't understand how complex a piece of software may be. There is probably an expectation that even a free app should work perfectly well.
Additionally the abundance of similar apps means that there is no real interest in "asking for help"; the user can just try the next app. Still, before doing that he will post his comment for the benefit of future users (this app is (terrible|bad|doesnt-work|...).
Finally the feedback channels may not be as easy to find as for traditional software. I am not sure where I would send feedback about some indie-app that doesn't even have a homepage (or that may be ranked on page 20 on Google).
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I think one of the problems may be that people dealing with AppStore or Android Market customers are not realizing that they are dealing with a different kind of user group. One cannot compare the feedback that HN users (developers/advanced-users/early-adopters) give, with the responses from your average iPhone user. He doesn't understand how complex a piece of software may be. There is probably an expectation that even a free app should work perfectly well.
Additionally the abundance of similar apps means that there is no real interest in "asking for help"; the user can just try the next app. Still, before doing that he will post his comment for the benefit of future users (this app is (terrible|bad|doesnt-work|...).
Finally the feedback channels may not be as easy to find as for traditional software. I am not sure where I would send feedback about some indie-app that doesn't even have a homepage (or that may be ranked on page 20 on Google).
> There is probably an expectation that even a free app should work perfectly well.
I'm disappointed that this appears to be an unreasonable expectation.