Whatbird.com

Oooh!  Listing features!  I hadn't thought of that!  I keep my lists -- tens of thousands of sightings -- in a databse, where I can sort by date, venue, species, whatever, but I have to manually enter after every birding outing, whether individual birding or a formal Audubon field trip.   Yes!  We want listing!  We want notes!  We want more customizing of our search criteria!  And four months ago we had NOTHING!  It is amazing how a truly valued tool stimulates the imagination.  Four months ago we had nothing, now the imagination runs wild!

The bottom line is that along with everyone else, when I purchased iBird Plus I was not given enough information to prevent me from spending $20 on something that I clearly would have not purchased.  Had I been informed that iBird Plus was not going to continue to be the top-of-the-line product, I would have waited a few extra weeks.  As it was, I was led to believe that I was purchasing a guide for the serious birder (funny how now it is being peddled for the NOT so serious birder) and you were committed to making this the only guide I would ever need.  Sure, it's a nice product however I am disappointed that it was misrepresented and I was certainly misled.

RookedandHow:

The bottom line is that along with everyone else, when I purchased iBird Plus I was not given enough information to prevent me from spending $20 on something that I clearly would have not purchased.  Had I been informed that iBird Plus was not going to continue to be the top-of-the-line product, I would have waited a few extra weeks.  As it was, I was led to believe that I was purchasing a guide for the serious birder (funny how now it is being peddled for the NOT so serious birder) and you were committed to making this the only guide I would ever need.  Sure, it's a nice product however I am disappointed that it was misrepresented and I was certainly misled.

Perhaps you would like to be on our beta testing team so you can know more about our plans in the future? Let me know. I do think there are some misconceptions in your message, but I do understand how you feel. I tried to make our case in the initial message to this thread, did you read it? I'm repeating that again: it would have been great if we could have informed everyone who owned Plus that we were working on a Pro version, but we have no way to do that, since Apple does not, at least at this time, let us know who our customers are. We also dont have the luxury of providing a way for a customer who purchased Plus to upgrade to Pro. That ability is coming down the road. And as I explained we believe there are in fact more than one level of birder, and while not everyone agrees, that is what our customers are telling us. The Pro version is aimed at professional birders, the Plus at serious birders. iBird is the only guide you will ever need, whether you have Plus or Pro. 

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Mitch Waite

Yes, Sir, I certainly read your explanation/justification of the situation.  However, if you wished to be totally up-front with your customers, let's face it - there was nothing preventing you from including a line in your original iBird Plus description about the soon-to-be-released Pro version.  I stand by my original comments.  Nice product, not-so-nice tactics.

--Edited at request of site owner--

I am sorry that you felt my previous post was a rant. Not intended to be. Just feel like you aren't taking our concerns seriously. 

 

here are the features I would like to see in iBird Plus-

larger, zoomable illustrations representing the most common plumages

lists

higher quality bird calls (several have odd garbling noise in background)- just a thought, the 3.0 OS will allow for library access, it would be really cool if iBird could play Stokes if we own it. No idea if that is really possible

 

Thanks 

 

I wish I could have purchased iBird Pro right off the bat. I am fine with your explanations. If, in the future, I can upgrade from Plus to Pro under iPhone OS 3.0 then I will do so. In the meantime, if you could just add the French names to iBird Plus I would be happy. It would be a mere courtesy to the Francophones in Norh America who have already purchased some of your products. Merci beaucoup.

drewweber:

--Edited at request of site owner--

I am sorry that you felt my previous post was a rant. Not intended to be. Just feel like you aren't taking our concerns seriously.

 

Apology accepted. I take everyone's comments very seriously. I read and answer questions in this forum everyday, and keeping a (growing) list of all the requests. We are close to releasing an update for both Pro and Plus with 25 new birds, many new alternative plummages and photos we were missing as well as improved photos. When I say release I mean put in the App store - it usually takes Apple one to two weeks to approve it.

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Mitch Waite

flymyassoff:

I wish I could have purchased iBird Pro right off the bat. I am fine with your explanations. If, in the future, I can upgrade from Plus to Pro under iPhone OS 3.0 then I will do so. In the meantime, if you could just add the French names to iBird Plus I would be happy. It would be a mere courtesy to the Francophones in North America who have already purchased some of your products. Merci beaucoup.

I think that is likely to happen - but there are several things we need to do first for the French version to make it work better - including allowing the search by name to work with the French rather than English.

The way OS3 will work is there will be an appstore right inside the app itself. You will be able to upgrade from whatever version you have. We'll offer other features also via this internal store page. Apple was really wise with this new feature. 

 Thanks for your comments.

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Mitch Waite

Re: Flymyassoff -- I'm sure the French is priceless for those in Canada and the U.S. Northeast; I am in San Diego County near the Mexican border and we have many, many who speak Spanish.  I suspect there are more Spanish speakers in North America (especially if you include Mexico which is part of North America....), and would suggest that Spanish bird names would also have been very helpful.  As to accepting Mitch's explanations, I found them satisfactory too.  However, I do not know how I would have felt if I just bought Plus a few DAYS earlier.  I had gotten Plus back in December, had plenty of time to fall in love with that excellent program and get tremendous practical use out of it, then got TWO more free upgrades so I did feel there was excellent customer support, so I could accept the need for a substantially new product (kinda like when Sibley added the Bird Life & Behavior book without an upgrade from the field guide).  So while I was disappointed that there was not yet an easy upgrade path, I understood, and considered waiting for the 3.0 upgrade path, but then got impatient....  But again, if I hadn't had this long time to develop a huge appreciation for the product and the customer service I had received, I might have felt differently, and I do understand others' feelings.  We each write from our own perspective.  Mine has been very positive from the start.

I am new here, and because of a one-day glitch in the iTunes store, I ended up being able to use both iBird Plus and iBird Pro.  (I paid the price of iBirdPro for  iBirdPlus - but the iBird folks promptly corrected the problem).

 In any case, these are both fantastic programs, but given the choice I would definitely buy Pro.  I understand the disappointment by some here who would like to upgrade from Plus (and presently cannot), but I think that the good news is that in a few more months they will be able to upgrade, thanks to Apple listening to their customers. 

 Coming from the PC world (and a Treo650 mobile phone, running Palm OS), I have been impressed by the iPhone and Apple's steady continuous improvements to both the iPhone and iTunes, including the iTunes application review process.  I wrote several times to Apple about some very abusive stuff going on by some reviewers, many of which posted destructive reviews without having even owned the applications in the first place!  I suggested several changes, and have been pleasantly surprised to see them all implemented by now (I'm sure there were many others writing in with the same criticisms/suggestions) - the main improvements being a) a reviewer must own an app in order to post a review, and b) each review is stamped with the date of the review and the version of the application being reviewed.

 But back to iBird - keep up the good work, Mitch!  There are a few little bugs to be worked out, but overall this is at least a 4.5 star now, and will be a 5 star by the next revision, I am confident!

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Dennis W.
Austin, Texas

Dennis thank you for the support and understanding. Customers like yourself make our job a lot easier because rather than blowing off steam you offer constructive information and suggestions.

There is no question in my experience that Apple listens to there customers and constantly strives to improve there products. Unlike Microsoft who spends most of its energy trying to protect its turf from anyone entering, Apple expands its turf by creating better user experiences. This has been proven over and over. Not that Apple is not protective of there ideas, they will go to court in a heartbeat if they feel someone has wronged them. 

Your efforts to get them to change the review process is commendable, I saw that same destrutive tendancy and was happy when they made it so only owners could leave reviews. I still think the review process needs some work, what I dont find useful is when people give products low ratings for not understanding how a feature works, using the review area to ask for tech support, or perhaps the worse is when someone gets on a bandwagon and makes all kinds of negative claims about the intentions of the dev.

We are working night and day to improve iBird and appreciate any ideas or comments you want to leave.

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Mitch Waite

Hi Dennis3 - Not that I am looking for any reasons to find something to complain about in these two programs (Plus and PRO) that I love, but you mentioned "a few little bugs" and I had noticed some mention in the iTunes store to "crashing."  I have had Plus since December and PRO for little more than a week, and I would say I push them pretty hard and I have never experienced any problem like that or anything I could consider a bug.  I am just curious as to what others have experienced.  I am using a first generation iPhone running software 2.2

Doug, (and Mitch)

I typed faster than I thought - "a few little bugs" should have been "one bug", and "a few GUI things I would like to see improved".

The bug is the crashing.  When I had Plus v1.4.1, it seemed that after I navigated to 5 or 6 different screens it would crash.  When I got Pro v1.5, I thought at first that this had been resolved.  However, now it seems it crashes after a lot more activity than before, but it does crash.  More like after doing 12 or 15 different things.  I consider it a minor irritation at this point, and I am confident that Mitch will get to the bottom of this. 

You said that you have iPhone 1G, that might be the difference in our experiences.  I don't know much about the iPhone OS and all of the hoops an app has to jump through, but I'm wondering if it is what is sometimes referred to as a "memory leak" - I don't like that term as in my understanding I think it is more properly a "memory pile-up", due to the memory gradually being used up as certain operations cease when going to another operation (within the same app, in this case) but the former operations continue to occupy the DRAM, and so on, and eventually there is no more free memory for the next function and the app crashes.

The GUI improvements I would like to see:

1.  A clue as to how to get to the extra buttons at the bottom of the screen - now I feel foolish after discovering that I swipe the buttons to get to the new ones, but I wonder how many others have searched for this in vain?  At least add a note in Help section...or, see my suggestion in #2...

2.  When swiping between groups of buttons at the bottom, I sometimes accidentally end up energizing one - in fact the button causing me the most problems here is the star (add to favorites) button - this can cause one to inadvertently add or remove a bird to/from the favorites list.  The best way to avoid this problem is to remove the swipe function, and instead replace the lower right button <Birdipedia> with <more>, so that now instead of swiping, one pushes <more> and the next group of buttons come into view - and vice-versa, have a dedicated button with the second group to <return>      ----OR----    Retain the swipe feature for the buttons, but decrease the touch sensitivity by requiring holding down a button for a bit longer in order to activate (and include the "flash" when activation has officially occurred), or at least protect the favorites somehow by requiring a change be confirmed with a dialogue box.

Cheers,

Dennis.

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Dennis W.
Austin, Texas

dennis3:

You said that you have iPhone 1G, that might be the difference in our experiences. 

I fogot to mention - I have the iPhone 3G (and- of course, yours is "2G" - I keep mixing up Apple's generations - yours is the 2st and mine the 2nd - vs the cellphone standard generations - there is 2G and 3G).

 -Dennis.

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Dennis W.
Austin, Texas

dennis3:

Doug, (and Mitch)

The GUI improvements I would like to see:

1.  A clue as to how to get to the extra buttons at the bottom of the screen - now I feel foolish after discovering that I swipe the buttons to get to the new ones, but I wonder how many others have searched for this in vain?  At least add a note in Help section...or, see my suggestion in #2...

2.  When swiping between groups of buttons at the bottom, I sometimes accidentally end up energizing one - in fact the button causing me the most problems here is the star (add to favorites) button - this can cause one to inadvertently add or remove a bird to/from the favorites list.  The best way to avoid this problem is to remove the swipe function, and instead replace the lower right button <Birdipedia> with <more>, so that now instead of swiping, one pushes <more> and the next group of buttons come into view - and vice-versa, have a dedicated button with the second group to <return>      ----OR----    Retain the swipe feature for the buttons, but decrease the touch sensitivity by requiring holding down a button for a bit longer in order to activate (and include the "flash" when activation has officially occurred), or at least protect the favorites somehow by requiring a change be confirmed with a dialogue box.

 

Dennis

1. The information you seek is in the 4th box at the beginning of the Help section - its titled "Enable Favorites and Flickr" and has a graphic showing the settings. Check it out and let me know if that is enough. It shows how to enable the buttons if they are not enabled and how to swipe to move them. Perhaps its not apparent enough in the graphic on the Help page or the title is wrong?

2. That is a very interesting idea. You are correct about swiping, I have the same issue accidentally enabling a feature when I just want to access a different button. However I have become very adept at it by swiping gently but I don't know if this is a universal problem. I understand the More...button idea but something about that turns me off. We do change the color of the button when its enabled but perhaps your idea of making it less sensitive and requiring a hold down for a longer time would eliminate the accident? Good things to discuss.

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Mitch Waite