I have to admit I find the lack of forum notifications annoying as well. It means if I ask a question, I have to come back to see if there are any answers or suggestions.
I don’t believe I am whining. On the one hand, I don’t believe developers become slaves of users. They put out a product, we pay, that’s the deal. And of course Jon can charge what he likes. But on the other hand, I do believe some developers make apps that are pretty good but have bugs or issues that linger, releases that come but only slowly, and so on. In those cases it seems like they are content to let the money flow one way but not to have anything but a single download flow another way. No roadmap etc. In fact that is the entire reason I am here, TextMate is great but obviously the developers were being that way, so I came here.
I only use two paid programs day to day on Mac to make stuff: Sublime Text and Pixelmator. One is a text editor and the other is an image editing programming. Similar sorts of programs for similar demographics. Pixelmator is much less expensive ($15 vs. $70) but I would say it’s a better program, doing more with more polish and documentation. Plus if I have issues, a google search reveals active forums with answers from the company. They don’t always have the answer I’m looking for but at least they’re trying.
So I’m in the position of wanting to love Sublime Text and its community and say $70 is a worthy price, but I can’t endorse it yet. And I’ll pay for the upgrade but I’ll do it grudgingly. If there were a better editor out there I’d switch. Or I’ve thought of writing my own text editor, but I’d rather make games. I just think if I were making a text editor, I’d want my users to pay not just because they are held hostage by there not being a better option, but because I’m offering solid value for their money.
That’s my opinion, call it whining if you will.