Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest: Software Vendors, Don’t Make This Mistake

It’s the dumbest thing we’ve ever seen from a software vendor in the technical communication space. And, that’s a big statement when one considers all the really dumb things we’ve seen. But, this latest bungle from MadCap Software takes the cake.

We were researching software for a client who needs to be able to “show” prospective customers how their software works. Our client asked us to compare and contrast the capabilities of two software simulation packages—Adobe Captivate (formerly Macromedia Captivate) and MadCap Mimic and to gather information on XML authoring tools (in this case, Adobe FrameMaker and MadCap Flare).

In the course of our research, we visited each vendors’ website to grab a formal description of the products and to learn as much as we could about each tool by reading case studies and watching demos. However, nothing could prepare us for the experience we encountered on the MadCap Software website where—get ready ... drum roll please—MadCap has published software demonstrations that run on Adobe software. That’s right, MadCap has a tool that creates software simulations, but their own product simulations are presented using Adobe Captivate, their primary competitor. Oh, the irony. It’s so funny, yet so dumb. (see screen shot below)