Thursday, December 29, 2011

PDANet from JuneFabrics. Poor customer support service! [Fail]

OK, this is not a dating related article, but I figured I'd post it here to help any other wandering souls. I am sure many are doing the same fruitless searches I've been doing (related to PDANet not working on iOS5) for the past couple of days and not finding anything on the above topic. So here it goes...

Couple of days ago, redsn0w was released to allow for untethered jailbreak on iOS5. After many months of anticipation, I decided to finally upgrade my iPhone4 GSM from 4.3.2 to 5.0.1. The upgrade process was seamless and there were no snags. I then used redsn0w to jailbreak the device and things were running as smooth as anticipated.

Then I went ahead to install PdaNet from Cydia, which is a 3rd party app allowing you to tether to your PC, iPad or use it as a hotspot. I had previously purchased this application, which by the way is a wooping $15. The installation was a painful process. First the repo wasn't working, then there were URL issues, but finally, after two days of unsuccessful attempts, I finally got it installed.

I rebooted my phone and went ahead to activate the WiFi Hotspot. Unfortunately, it did not work. The option just kept returning to the off position and no matter how many times I tried to turn it on, it did not work.

I've searched for help on the internet and can't seem to find anything. I've sent emails to JuneFabrics and still nothing. For an app that is $15, one would think there is a better customer support. There is nothing in their forums, nothing in their help, and I am just left speechless.

If anyone has had the same issue, please comment below.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Apple Sends Match.com’s App To The Dog House For Untaxed Subscription Payments Josh Constine

Those look­ing for love won’t find it in the App Store. Apple has removed Match.com‘s iOS app because it allowed the lone­ly to pay for Match sub­scrip­tions with a cred­it card through an exter­nal link rather than using the in-app pur­chas­es sys­tem. That meant Apple wasn’t get­ting its 30% cut. In June Apple revised its pol­i­cy to state that “Apps can read or play approved con­tent that is sub­scribed to or pur­chased out­side of the app, as long as there is no but­ton or exter­nal link in the app to pur­chase the approved content.” Apple and Match.com are now nego­ti­at­ing how the app must change before their rela­tion­ship can be rekin­dled and they can have an earth-shattering make­up rev­enue split. You may remem­ber the con­tro­ver­sy back in Feb­ru­ary when Apple unveiled its orig­i­nal sub­scrip­tion pol­i­cy which required apps to offer their web­site sub­scrip­tions through the in-app pur­chas­es sys­tem at an equal or lower price. Match.com appar­ent­ly dodged the 30% tax on in-app pur­chas­es by dis­play­ing a but­ton to pay them direct­ly. This was the exact type of behav­ior Apple banned with its June pol­i­cy revi­sion, but I guess it took a while for it to notice Match.com was mess­ing around on the side. Match.com’s app pri­mar­i­ly serves as a mobile access point to its subscription-based web ser­vice. Those who’ve already down­loaded it can con­tin­ue look­ing for their soul­mate through the app. Still, new users could cre­ate an account and start pay­ing with­in the app, so the removal may be tak­ing a small toll on Match.com’s onboard­ing rates. That’s a prob­lem since they have high churn rates.  See, any suc­cess­ful match­mak­ing ser­vice per­ma­nent­ly solves the prob­lem it address — mar­ried peo­ple don’t need mar­riage apps. Even a tem­po­rary removal from the App Store can also have a last­ing impact since it caus­es an app to fall off the leader­boards, reduc­ing dis­cov­ery poten­tial. Match.com will have to decide whether to stop allow­ing users to signup and pay through the app, or agree to pay Apple’s 30% tax. The for­mer seems more lucra­tive.  If you’re set­ting up your Match.com pro­file on the go, you’re prob­a­bly not putting your best foot for­ward, you won’t meet peo­ple, and you’ll stop pay­ing any­ways. Even bet­ter, Match.com could pro­vide lim­it­ed func­tion­al­i­ty in the app and only offer the full expe­ri­ence if they’ve paid online, but not offer any link or but­ton to its web pay­ment sys­tem. This way it could still hook up with new users through the app, but be free to col­lect 100% of their sub­scrip­tion fees. You could call it an open rela­tion­ship.