A bug saved the company

I'm sure this is some MBA 101 stuff, but I'm slowly learning that all sales come from a sense of urgency.

A two-week long trial ends and you're not even on the computer? Oh well.

You're recording something longer than 15 minutes that you want completed _right now_ and the only way is to upgrade? Instant purchase.

I believe this goes hand in hand with certain types of customers. Purchasing software is often a long-term decision, but many people only need it once. In 15 days, they can complete one or two projects and then forget about it. With a 15-minute limitation, however, you are effectively encouraging them—assuming the quality of your product matches the price—to purchase the software.

So customers were satisfied anyway, but because of the bug their satisfaction did not last enough:-)

I think more than anything it reflects on the fact that most people don't need to record audio all that often. If the product is fine, but you've done all the recording you need, why would you buy it. I would wager that most users never even saw the trial end nag screen simply because they didn't need to open the app anymore.

I'm actually not so sure. Even if 100% of the signups to the new version came from users trying for the first time, the previous version being essentially free could have got the app a lot of publicity in tutorials, recommendations or even just showing more highly rated or higher in the download charts.

All of that could increase discoverability of the version with only 15 minutes free trial, so it would be essentially trading sales for advertising.

That said, 2 weeks evaluation on a tool you might use only once effectively means it's just free. Those who might have a need say once a month might just uninstall and reinstall it, and feel completely justified because they didn't get their 15 days, only one day.

it is the unfortunate truth of the world. It's why I just roll my eyes when I see comments like "nagging reminders mean I'll never buy your product!" Those were probably never going to be customers anyway, they're just finding ways to justify it to themselves.

I'd expect that the 15-minute nag screen prompted users when they were most enthusiastic about the app and therefore most inclined to purchase. After 15 days, your initial interest may have waned, or maybe you even completed whatever recording you needed to do in the first place.

It's very "Mac ecosystem" from multiple directions: a paid-for tool that is often free on other platforms, but also a paid-for tool that provides a very nice UX with easier customizability and features than a "small utility/script".

(I don't use Audio Hijack, nor am I in the market for anything like it. But it's obvious from the product page[1] that it's a nice piece of software. I also know that several podcasters I listen to rave about it.)

That's not to say free options don't exist. BlackHole[2] is FOSS.

[1] https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/ [2] https://existential.audio/blackhole/

Audio Hijack isn't a recording app. It's an app that allows you to selectively route audio from individual apps to different destinations - audio interfaces and otherwise.

Its built-in recorder is a small part of what the overall app does.

It drives me nuts how quickly people jump on the criticism bandwagon without bothering to look up what the thing they're criticising actually does.

Please see the dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

That is a question for those that did not make that small (free?) script, not Rogue Amoeba that solved the problem with a paid for app.

For the past like 30 years I feel there's never been a time some commercial Mac program hasn't filled a simple niche. I remember someone last year posting a Show HN for an ffmpeg wrapper for Mac with a limited feature that focused on transcoding and made $9k in the first 4 months.

Or in the late 90s when there was a commercial program that allowed OS 9 to show real-time window previews while dragging rather than merely showing the window border outline.

Indeed. Windows has had a Sound Recorder since 3.1, and it's possible to record the currently playing audio if you select the right input (usually named "Stereo Mix" or similar.)

https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/sound

You don't, depending on your audio hardware. If it has a loopback you can just use sox from the command line to record the loop back channels...