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Comment by BIKESHOPagency | Hacker News Reader

This is a kind of look behind the curtain that we rarely get from large software developers. Users are often told by someone down the chain in support it works or doesn't and no explanation why. I find this very fascinating and as a saas developer that makes an app that has to work with external hardware that I often don't have to test on very encouraging. Sometimes, there's no fix and it's not my fault.

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I'm also moving towards software that is less dependent on hardware especially because of the headaches that Lunar brought me over the years.

You're probably in a much better spot, SaaS is still the best way to make money as a developer, if you don't have to provide too much support.

That "if" does a lot in that sentence :) Just had a typical fun experience:

Customer: Your platform doesn't work, when we do this, A happens

Me: Hm, we don't have that feature, but I understand your use-case. We could deliver this new feature by tomorrow, but using it that way also inherently means B would happen in such and such cases, so just want to make sure that's what you want?

Customer: Let us know when the bug has been fixed, it's urgent and we're losing money because of you (they had 1 month free trial)

Me:: It's not a bu...okay, we will

Me: * works all night, builds a new feature, fully polished, notifies customer

Customer after 2 days: Yet ANOTHER bug with your unstable software!! * describes B

Oh.. that sounds so familiar it almost triggers PTSD-like symptoms inside me.

I guess these vocal and demanding people are everywhere, no matter how easy and intuitive the software is.

I just had someone ask for a new feature and a discount on my $6 app a few minutes ago.

We have to come to terms that this is part of the job where we have such a close connection to the people that use our product.

Unless this was a customer you absolutely needed you should not have given them control over your immediate development schedule. Offer refunds if relevant (sounds like not the case). Keep your sanity instead.

Could recommending a competitor to these people be a good business decision?

I've tried that in the past only to be told ' We've tried them and they are even worse than you lot are! They are rude, their stuff is full of bugs and their support staff are unhelpful.. '

Whelp!

Do you get any fun responses if you reply "You told me that's what you wanted :)"

It takes all kinds.

I (have learned to) love working with hardware. There’s a specific tension between hardware developers (firmware) and software that runs closer to the user. I used to do a lot more consulting - building mobile apps that talked to BLE sensors, like refrigeration controllers, etc, and almost always the end user was a technician.

Now, I’m making apps specifically for non-technical users. I really love the challenge.

To come up with my app idea (and business) I tried to think about the worst possible hardware on the planet and thought label printers.

Turns out that the hardware is almost universally pretty good, but there was no software that worked for both Mac and windows, worked independent of device drivers, was easy to use, had modern conveniences, and didn’t cost hundreds of dollars.

At the same time my competitors are extracting as much value from the label printer landscape as possible, with a wake of irked users behind them. RFID in the label roll? Yep. Jacked up pricing and mandatory support subscriptions. Yep. More proprietary everything… yep.

I’m always looking for new markets and ideas. A year ago, when a competitor released a new printer with RFID, I got call after call asking me to bundle a printer with my app. At the time I didn’t find a compelling printer on the market … nothing that would set my business apart.

But then I found a Chinese manufacturer and read Hardware Hacker, and now I’ve got these awesome printers for sale, bundled with my design app! I’m competing in the 4” wide 300 DPI direct-thermal market. I’m not marketing this as a shipping label printer (that’s a solved problem), instead, it’s for making custom designed labels, usually with barcodes, usually with data from an external source.

The printer: https://mydpi.com

The book: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3465

>This is a kind of look behind the curtain that we rarely get from large software developers.

Very true, it makes me wonder just how unreliable hardware is and how many crashes are caused by random EMI like cosmic rays, or close proximity of other devices.

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