Brian Ball responds to xPad developer's claims

All this talk about who is legally in the right misses the point. At the end of the day Brian Ball does not appear to have made reasonable and timely efforts to find a mutally agreeable solution. And the Mac community has to ask whether we want to support people who act that way.

Its not a question of legal or illegal... its a question of being sleezy and unprofessional...

What's unprofessional? The fact that Brian/macZOT didn't bother to notify Garrett of their intent to no longer use xPad and that they were voiding the contract.

Brian didn't return emails, IMs, etc over the course of a couple of months... what is Garrett supposed to think? Thats the unprofessional aspect. Garrett had to send repeated emails, IMs, etc and never received so much as a response from Brian... who cares if it was buried under other more important matters... you NEED to stay in contact with your suppliers. A simple response would have probably solved this whole situation.

The fact that Garrett posted on his blog is irrelevant IMO... he in no way made it out that Brian had screwed him... as he states, he simply felt it necessary to let his xPad users know what the situation was and how it affected them. Nothing more, nothing less...

again, its not about legal or illegal... its about being professional.

"Most of this story has been about Brian Ball's devious motives, but I haven't seen too much about why Garrett Murray was willing to sell in the first place or how well it was actually selling for him."

That's irrelevant - Ball knew all that, and signed a contract which put the value of the app at $5000.

What a moron you are! Grow up and learn how to interact with others. You whining adds no value.

@ djcarbon/stealth43 - although your comments are completely off topic in regard to this post, i haven't deleted them. you simply haven't activated them. But if you wish to debate with me on an unrelated topic, this isn't the place to do it. so there's certainly a chance that your comments are going to end up being deleted anyway. As I am sure you have figured out - it's not just me deleting the comments. you (but mostly thomas and his games) have managed to waste many peoples time today and I can't say they are happy about it.

xPad 1.0 came out in December 2003, and 1.1 came out in August 2004, so it had gone 2 years without an update when this ugly deal was done. The developer had said on his site in the discussion board that he wasn't too interested in updating it, so maybe selling it to Brian Ball was an easy way out. Most of this story has been about Brian Ball's devious motives, but I haven't seen too much about why Garrett Murray was willing to sell in the first place or how well it was actually selling for him.

It seems to me that Ball is just the kind of sketchy vendor who would put spyware in the apps he sells, just to make an extra buck.

"@ Stealth43 - the commenter in question has been warned multiple times about his need to post unrelated and flame-baiting comments on every post he can. Off-topic and blatantly flame-baiting comments are deleted as a rule. There's no place for them and they serve no purpose other than to entertain the children that post them. He can post disagreements and insults all he wants and we won't touch them but every time he tries to incite a cyber-riot for his own amusement, he'll be deleted. simple as that."

@Laurie

That may be the case. In the past he may have done exactly as you said. You know he didnt do that this time. Restore his post. His post was on topic, referencing previous posts from the author (you), as they relate to this situation. Launching into an invective laden attack with more than a few fallacies only shows your own colours.

With Regards to the Islam situation, I didnt really have a problem with the post, but the way you chose to defend yourself was tasteless. Further, the body of your work leads me to question the appropriatness of your being a poster.

It seems that more often than not it is you who flamebait, one only has to look to the top of the page for evidence of that. Further, in your response to me, calling him a "child" and saying that "he tries to incite a cyber-riot for his own amusement" is in poor taste. I have no doubt that somene in your position could've choosen better words than those. I doubt that he is a child, and making intelligent observations is not inciting a riot. For you to suggest such is an ad hominem attack. If you really do have a problem with what he says, I would suggest responding with intelligent discourse, make him a fool by proving him wrong.

Qui audet adipiscator

If I may suggest something to TUAW, it would be nice if you'd give far less attention to these MacZot/MacHeist/MacCrookBastard sites, and more attention to the app developers themselves.

Why not highlight a Mac App every day, pointing directly to the developer?

Can I be honest? I'm relatively new to this Mac developer community, but I went to MacZOT today for the first time and there really isn't anything on the site that strikes me as so special that people are going apes*** about this. Garrett would have had far less headaches to do if he had gone the DIY route.

As for as this whole situation, let's just say this: there's no law against stupidity, but that doesn't mean its okay to be stupid.