Mmm… crow!

OK, I admit it. I have been trained from a very early age to respond to guilt. And so, after yesterday’s entry , I decided that complaining about NewsFire is an indefensible position, especially considering how much I’ve used the application. So this morning I shelled out and registered.

But let me clarify one point: I still feel a little duped. So in the interest of constructive criticism (and so I know what to do in the event I actually want to charge for an app), I’ve done some thinking about why. Keep in mind that these reasons are firmly rooted in ignorance: I found NewsFire via the OS X RSS Showdown , never really bothered to read much of the background, and still haven’t looked at so much as a FAQ on the site.

So the two thoughts are:

• When you download the free version, there didn’t seem to be any mention of the restrictions. I’ve noticed this is true of lots of shareware sites. All I want to do is make an informed decision about what I need: a statement of what’s missing, or (even better) a pretty grid comparing “lite” to “full” would make the process much easier.
• It wasn’t clear to me that the author eventually intended to charge for the application when I downloaded the beta.

Damn, and here I thought there was something insightful lying around somewhere.