Warehouse Team Member: "Could you log into the App Store and download an app for the printer to work?"
Me: "That doesn't sound right." I remotely accessed the warehouse computer, opened a random PDF document, and hit 'Print'. The printer queue looked normal to me.
Me: "It seems to be printing just fine."
Warehouse Team Member: "No, it actually prints a message that says you need to install the app."
Me: "What really? Can you send me a photo of it?"
Warehouse Team Member: Sends the photo in Slack.
Me: "This is something I have to Tweet..."
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Edit: Imagine being the product manager who made this decision...
My guess is that once the app is installed it's easier to convince the user to sign up for an ink subscription. And then once that's done it's easy for the user to forget they've done that. They won't even see the charge, it'll just be lost among the tons of other "Apple.com" charges that come across each month.
Here's how the conversation unfolded at work:
Warehouse Team Member: "Could you log into the App Store and download an app for the printer to work?"
Me: "That doesn't sound right." I remotely accessed the warehouse computer, opened a random PDF document, and hit 'Print'. The printer queue looked normal to me.
Me: "It seems to be printing just fine."
Warehouse Team Member: "No, it actually prints a message that says you need to install the app."
Me: "What really? Can you send me a photo of it?"
Warehouse Team Member: Sends the photo in Slack.
Me: "This is something I have to Tweet..."
---
Edit: Imagine being the product manager who made this decision...