I recently published a review of Contribute 2 for OS X. I’d have to say I was very pleased. Contribute isn’t a very complex program, but that is by design. It fills an important spot in Macromedia’s lineup.
Anyway, you can read the review. The point is, 2 days after I published the review we received an email from Erik over at the IT Enquirer citing his own lengthy review of Contribute.
He discredited the review right off when he mentioned personal experience with the application. His review was very negative, and did not cover anything but performance.
After reading his review, I specifically revisited the parts of the program he had a hard time with, and I was unable to reproduce his complaints. As you may know, my test machine is a 400 MHz G3 iMac on a “dirty” phone line that averages 20 bps connection. If Contribute had any speed problems, I have a feeling my system would have revealed them.
The other thing I noticed was the author’s mention that he himself uses BBEdit to edit HTML (yikes). Contribute is obviously intended for users on the complete other end of the spectrum. When writing, audience should always be a key concern.
If anything, this proves that reviews of a given product can differ greatly based on the reviewer’s experience with it. I politely declined Erik’s request for a link from our site, and I’m glad. I don’t think Macromedia deserves that kind of bad press.
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