I have a couple of applications from Smile on My Mac, and normally I’m reasonably pleased with the software. Definitely has its shortcomings, more so than software from somebody like Omni Group, who makes great stuff and talks to and listens to its customers. (I really really want access to OmniFocus while mobile. Please.)
I had received an email to update my software a bit, and I had some issues. Eventually, clicking on a mailto link from the PageSender update page, I sent the following letter … to PDFpen support:
I don’t have a lot of faith that this is going to the right person. I clicked the link from the PageSender update page, and now I’m sending support to PDFpen.I would have sent this message from within PageSender, but such a function was not to be found. Please look to the Omni Group for best practices in this area.
My initial problem? I noticed the email with update information from 4.0.3 to 4.2.0. I opened up PageSender Fax Center, to look for an “check for updates” function. No luck. So I checked out “Purchase / Register / Upgrade …” because you might have included update along with upgrade. Upon clicking this, a drawer appeared from the top of the window.
None of the buttons or controls were right. My serial number was already entered, I’ve already purchased the product, I’ve already registered, I don’t want a link to the Phone, Fax, or Web Store. I clicked the only remaining button, “Clear”. This promptly erased my serial number.
I tried ESC as the standard cancel action. Beep.
I tried to close the window using cmd-W. Beep.
I tried to quit the application using the menu. Beep.
I tried to quit the application using cmd-Q. Beep.
Finally, I force quit the application. When I re-launched, I was relieved to discover that my serial number was still there. Now I knew not to try “Clear”. I still didn’t want to Register, Buy, or Enter a serial number (what does that do, anyhow?). Again, I had to force quit the application.I wanted to get a nice clean screen shot for you, but the application did not have Hide and Hide Others, not even just as keyboard shortcuts. Come on, even Firefox got that one right. Heck, even OpenOffice got that one right. So instead, I went to another application, hid other apps, switched back to PageSender to bring it up, switched back to my other app, hid it, switched to Grab, chose “grab window”, noticed that this failed, went back to Grab, chose “grab area”, and got the screen shot for you.
Because I was so frustrated by this process, and because I have no faith that the correct person is going to get this message, I am now going to post the information on my blog.
—Barbara Ballard
barbara@littlespringsdesign.com 1-785-838-3003
Hi Barbara,
I’m Greg Scown, one of the founders of SmileOnMyMac, and the author of PageSender. I found your Blog entry because we have Google alerts on our product names so that we can proactively address support issues we don’t receive via Email.
I checked our support records, and I see that Anderson, one of our support team members, answered your inquiry within a hour of its receipt thanking you for your feedback on the interface and asking if he could be of further assistance. We do answer all of our Email to support@smileonmymac.com as quickly as possible, with a majority of our queries being responded to within a few hours.
To dismiss the registration dialog, you press “Register”, which is the default button when you’re already registered. Even if you were to press Clear (fair point, that should have Esc as a keyboard shortcut) and Demo, PageSender is smart enough not to erase your registration info. If you were to enter different info and press Register, it would record that info. We appreciate your feedback on the interface and acknowledge there are some improvements we could make.
Hide and Hide Others are available from the PageSender Fax Center menu, and they function when the registration sheet is displayed. Looks like we should add the command-option-H shortcut now popular for Hide Others.
Hopefully, both the swift response by Anderson and corresponding response by me can help persuade you that inquiries to SmileOnMyMac get to “the correct person,” and a regular Email to support@smileonmymac.com is sufficient to accomplish that.
Regards,
Greg Scown
SmileOnMyMac Co-Founder
Barbara, we’re waiting for the iPhone SDK (tomorrow? maybe? please, Apple, please
and are also hard at work on mac-to-mac sync. Your mobile OmniFocus solution in progress, stay tuned… -e
@Greg –
You’re right, the 4.2 release does have Hide/Hide Others. The 4.0.2 most certainly did not. 4.2 still has Quit disabled with the drawer open; is there a good reason for that?
The fact that all of the email addresses work is a very good thing.
I did try the Register button as you indicated: it launched my web browser. That’s certainly not what I wanted, but it didn’t damage things. A Cancel button would be appreciated.
I recommend adding “check for updates” to the software as well as a support contact or web page within the software itself.