Better but Broken

Working with application development - either on the web, on the desktop or any other place - is often quite interesting. When making new releases features are added, changed - or in rare cases removed.

As a developer - or “software product manager” - it must be an interesting challenge to keep up with the users and the market to capture the features and changes to a product, which will make it better from release to release.

There are probably many ways to try to keep up - by doing research and by listening to user feedback seems to be two obvious choices, but I’m sure, there are many others. Some, I’m sure is also just a gut feeling of what might be cool new features. If you’re good - and now the users, the market and the competitors, you’re making steady progress.

Yet sometimes you miss. The slow adoption rate of Microsoft Vista might be a sign of a very public miss.

It doesn’t have to be a big miss, to chase a user away.

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This weekend it happened to one of my favorite iPod Touch games - Tap Defense was upgraded to version 2.0 - and while most of the updates probably are great, there’s one little detail, which probably ensured I’ll rarely play it again (unless I find a way to fix it).

I used to play Tap Defense a lot while listening to Audiobooks and Podcasts. The new version has been updated with sound effects and music - and now the podcast or audiobook goes away (pauses) when the game is launched.

I’m sure TapJoy, developers of the Tap Defense game, are proud of their new sounds, but if I need to choose between the game and my listening to podcasts, the game looses. Please bring the ability to keep listening to what every the iPod plays, back in version 2.1.