Brian Ball responds to xPad developer's claims
[UPDATE: Moments before I posted this, Brian's post on macZOT mysteriously vanished and he's not responded to my IMs regarding where the post went. So the links to Brian's post below are broken until Brian decides whether he wants his side told in his own words or not.]
[UPDATE 2: Brian has put a post back up at the links I reference, but he's replaced his original post with a new one indicating he's "over it" now.]
Brian Ball has a few things to say about Garrett Murray's "Maniacal Rage," which I posted about earlier this evening.
Brian's response appears on macZOT and it's worth reading, word for word, as it is factually accurate to the best of my knowledge and it's always good to hear both sides of a story from the involved parties themselves. And Brian spells my name right, which I always appreciate.
The key points in Brian's post are not in dispute. The fact is that the contract between Garrett and Brian was not violated in the strictest sense. Garrett himself admits that and I didn't hide that fact in my post either. It was a dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb thing to have in the contract and Garrett has, I'm sure, learned his lesson.
But - and there's always a but - sometimes it's about more than what's technically correct. Sometimes it's about what's "right" in the broader sense. Brian says "There is no wrong action to defend. You simply have to read what was stated and just determine if what happened is really unfair, or if somebody had unmet expectations and went into a Maniacal Rage about it." It's worth noting if you are just tuning in that Garrett's blog is called "Maniacal Rage," lest you think that Brian is overreacting. He continues... "We had every good intention of bringing lots of xPad to the market because we really like the application. But once we decided that really wasn't part of the core strategy we held up our end of the agreement we made. The fact that Garrett is making xPad free confirms the fact that he himself realizes that xPad is not worth further development but is still a very useful application."
My take, and this is just my opinion as an uninvolved bystander, is that Brian lost sight of the bigger picture here and he could have handled it a lot better, while still accomplishing the same thing. He'd have come off less like a spoiled kid and more like a professional. I don't know Brian so I can't say he had ill intentions all along, but it comes off that way, whether he meant it to or not and whether he did or not. I would not go as far as many of you did in the comments on the last post, but I still think Brian blew it and his "I stuck to the exact terms of the contract and that's that" attitude really hurts him more than the act itself. Right or not, it's often about perception and not about facts. That's a lesson I have learned and forgotten and relearned many times, so it's close to my heart. Being right is great. Being perceived as being right is better.
