iPhoneography.com misrepresented!!

Above: Screenshot from the App Store description, showing the misrepresented quote!!Today whilst doing my regular check for new apps, updates and price drops in the App Store, I noticed that Paint FX was on sale. Now if you remember, on the 21st June, I showed a very interesting preview video of Paint FX, and when it was released I took a brief look at the app, only to find that despite its promising features, it only saved low-res images. At the time, I commented, saying "Paint FX is an app to watch, but not one to buy right now", so when I saw the app on sale, I jokingly thought to myself, "I bet they wont have my quote in their app description!!". As I looked at the app description, with the intention of posting news of the price drop [after all, at its sale price, I thought many of you might be interested in it, despite the low-res output], so imaging my surprise, when I saw the words "iphoneography.com" with a quote next to it saying "Color Splash killer". But oh no, it wasn't my quote, no it was someone else's, someone using the id of "cam", who posted an anonymous comment on the blog, saying "Color Splash Killer?", which was clearly a question and not a statement, as in the App Store description.

As you can imaging, I am far from impressed by this misleading statement, and I have emailed the developer demanding it is immediately removed from their description, but this leaves me asking one question, "what kind of developer is this, one that has to take a comment from a blog that had already made a negative comment about their app, take that comment, and turn it from a question to a statement", well, I'll leave you to answer that one.

Comments

[the_bman]

Regarding the misleading comment - perhaps it's a English mis-understanding?
I do not know where the developers are based but English may not be their native language and the question *may* have been lost.
In any case it should be corrected.

[Suzé]

In addition it is in the Featured section in the US AppStore. I refuse to purchase any more low res apps. It does appear as if the dev extracted exactly the wording he wanted.

[kelly]

Hope he spologizes publicly & ack his mistake....& learns a lesson of professional buz ethics.

[SpriteLabs]

Sorry "cam" for thinking that your question was a statement.. took it out immediately. BTW, we are based in Silicon Valley founded by ex Sun and Adobe employees and English is our first language.

For reference, Paint FX will support native resolutions on Android, coming very soon, as Android platforms have a NEON and ARM optimized versions of the image processing functions we want to use, and are lacking on the iPhone platform.. but this is an iPhone blog, so for the iPhone readers, we will be supporting 1024 X 768 on iPhone in the 1.1 update, but we are not happy with the performance when working on native resolution pics and so we decided to hold off from releasing it.

Of course iPad performs much better, so look out for high res version of iPad coming soon as well.

[Mr Timney]

Anything LESS than full resolution is USELESS! So they needed to fool potential users into purchasing it. I own it & haven't used it since the first day, if an app doesn't save full resolution, it's rare if I will ever use it or promote it ever!

[Suzé]

So my question is Sprite Lab, why did you even bother to release the app for iPhone users if you weren't happy with native resolution?
I may be alone but I'm sick of developers releasing low res apps then promising high res or iPad compatible in "future" updates. Is it so difficult to release an app that is high res or universal out of the gate? You end up losing a base that you could have attracted with high res photographs.

[Shutterbug]

Reading Sprite Labs response I feel totally misled by purchasing this app. I decided to go ahead and get it even without full resolution since many of these start off that way and add full resolution later. But now seeing they have no intention and look at the platform as inferior it is clear they will never add such a thing.

Add misleading comments taken out of context - no STOLEN out of context - designed to deceive and I will never get anything from them again. In fact will be telling both Android and iPhone friends to avoid them like the plague as well.

Deceit and greed is not a good combination in the business world Spritester.

[kelly]

fyi: I was in rural Texas & on a bumpy road (yikes!)...& thus my post was full of spelling errors! lol. (the devil or pride made me post that).

But, I really am surprised to see they are FULL English speaking (native) & yet (I felt) they really brushed off what they did! hmmm...maybe it's a small unexperienced co? Just seemed like they brushed off & passed over what they did...not that it was pure evil (lol) -- but, it was very unprofessional in my opinion. So, that's the only sad note here.

Anyhow, not to keep harping on it ( I don't do that)..but to share my thoughts in this blog...maybe they will hear it.

[Shane]

Even if SpriteLabs did mistake Cam's question for a statement, they KNOWINGLY credited a reputable blog with a comment made by one of their readers. They knew exactly what they were doing. For shame.

[Mr Timney]

*Side note: Most Reputable Developers would only quote a website or blogs webmaster or the one who did the review ie: taking a quote from a review not a comment from a reader as those can be faked by a developer anytime. So they aren't too smart even when looking from a "quote" to steal.

[the_bman]

Glad that SprtiteLab have responded and will rectify/rectified the issue.
I'm going to give them the benefit of doubt and believe it was a genuinely 'mistake' - I mean nobody can be that stupid to think no one would spot it would they? ;)

[Spritelabs]

Again, if you care for native resolution, PLEASE DO NOT buy the app
We are working feverishly to add NEON optimizations .. Something I'm not sure has been tried for image processing routines and are seeing encouraging results and close, but cannot guarantee anything.. This application is supposed to apply fx in real time while painting, unlike other apps which apply it offline to full images.. So we are in unchartered territory here and trying our best, not sure I can be more open and certainly don't want to deciwve anyone

Our other app: Photo Captions Premium has been at 800 x 600 res for more than a year with a user base in six figures, and no one has complained about res, so we did not anticipate this... Check out the app reviews if you like.. Almost all 5 star reviews for the current version. I agree that it is a diff user base, but we are trying... For now, please ignore and dont bother about our apps

[Tomba]

... bad news are also good news for spiritlab. free advertisment ;-)
Anyway like most experienced iphoneographers i will not waste my time using a low res app.

[Shane]

Since obviously the low resolution IS a big deal (clearly), I think it would be fair to mention this in your App Store description. It's almost like you intentionally omitted it so that you can sell a few more units. After all, it's easier to apologize after you have the customer's cash than it is to risk them passing you over for a clearly superior product. Dishonest and sneaky tactics coming from SpriteLabs.

[Shutterbug]

In re-reading these posts I am not even sure that Sprite Labs the responder is part of Sprite Labs the company. Sounds a little fishy how they are discouraging sales to iPhone users on an iPhone site.

[Glyn Evans]

@Shutterbug, I agree with your concerns, however the comments left here have similarities to comments I've received from them via email regarding this post, and the post where I raise the issue of low-res in the first place. To that post I received an email, asking me first not to raise the issue, and then saying "looks like iPhoneography viewers are not the right target users for the app".

Based on yours and my concerns, I have emailed the developers, asking them to confirm the comments are theirs.

[Shutterbug]

@Glyn: Thanks! I really got a little confused when they said "For now, please ignore and dont bother about our apps." As much as I disagree with their tactics, I don't believe they deserve to be sabotaged anonymously on the internet if that is what happened. Just looked really weird. Glad you are on that!

[Charles Maclauchlan]

"looks like iPhoneography viewers are not the right target users for the app".

Good luck with that market strategy

[The_Neuner]

Perhaps Spritelabs should maybe, I dunno, apologize directly, honestly and publicly for the misleading statements and misuse iphoneography.com in their advertising. If a company cannot admit when they are wrong I for one will never buy their products and actively advocate to whoever will listen what a crappy company they are. Stop blowing this off. You were caught redhanded so why not admit you were wrong, take your lumps, learn from your mistake and try to rebuild your brand? Just a thought there Spritelabs.

P.S
I seriously doubt a developer would be stupid enough to make the kinds of comments I see made by "Spritelabs" on here, but you never know.

[SpriteLabs]

Hi Folks,

Again, very sorry for misrepresenting iphoneography.com by using a comment post. I should have mentioned that explicitly instead of mentioning iphoneography.com

I am just replicating what Glyn said and saying that if you care for full resolution, dont buy the app yet and wait till we get there. This way we are not deceiving anyone.. this is not a marketing strategy but an honest confession of the current abilities of the app. But, if you would like to share your Paint FX creations on Facebook or over email, the current resolution of 1024 X 1024 might be good enough for you.

However, as i said earlier, we are working very hard to support full resolution with the same performance of the current 1024 X 1024 resolution. We could have supported it from day 1 with the launch of 1.0, but it would have been slower, so we wanted to wait for it and do it right and release it in update when it works efficiently. With the success of Photo Captions premium which has always been 800 X 600, we never anticipated that it would be such an issue.

Full resolution is almost getting on par with lower resolution performance and we hope to release it in an update very soon.. if you would like to beta test it for us, let us know at info@animagik.com and we will send you beta builds over testFlight for you to start testing and providing us feedback.

Thanks for your patience so far,

SpriteLabs developers