Wednesday 8 April 2009

Your system not supported. Now what?

I just came across an interesting approach to the traditional "not-available-for-your-system" message. BumpTop has just been released for free download, and even though that's great news since it's an impressive piece of software on its own, the concept itself has been made public a while ago, so it wasn't new to me. The good surprise was instead the way they handled the fact that they don't have yet versions for Mac or Linux.

You see, most companies give us a "we're-sorry-but" or "coming-soon" message (not to speak of those, especially linuxers, who tell you to build the app using the source, or to code it yourself -- which, as I read a few days ago, is actually saying "f**k you" to the user), but the guys at BumpTop made an interesting twist:

They use the always compelling poll look to let you quick and easily add your voice to the crowd, which on the other hand gives them a way to measure the demand for those versions, while simultaneously offering a way for you to get feedback (by entering your email) and get notified once your desired product is available.

Those are all positive signs they're passing to you. No "sorry, not available yet", no "we have no plans to support your system". Just a very simple mechanism that works for everyone. It's win-win! I hope the idea spreads around.

PS - thanks Paulo, for the invite to post on this blog. I'll try to keep your standards of quality ;)

1 comment:

Paulo Ricca said...

oh god no, please be sure not to keep with my quality standards! thats why i asked you to join in :D