Stop! Bored after Five Minutes!

First, thanks to all who posted five-star reviews of Geom-e-Tree!

To the negative reviewers who got bored after 3-5 minutes:

You say you got bored after 3 minutes, but something tells me that you didn't even experience the App.  Each of the six trees provided in the arboretum can produce many many tree patterns -- ones that you would not even expect to have come from a tree.  I suggest that you look at  the "Explore" page  (www.geom-e-tree.com/explore.html) and examine the variety of patterns that can be produced.  Hints along the right side tell you how you can obtain the pattern. These are just a sample!  I hope you try again and get your $2 worth!

The six "Reference Trees" represent all binary, ternary, quaternary, quinternary, ... trees.  They all conform to the definition of a tree (see Graph Theory).  Perhaps in a later update we will introduce other Tree-like forms.  Geom-e-Tree 1.o has the classic geometric tree shapes -- kind of like the platonic solids in solid geometry.

You cannot exhaust all the possibilities in 5 minutes.  There are basically an infinite number of patterns.  Please see the FAQ.  Other "visualizing" toys do produce dazzling effects, based on particle physics for example.  Geom-e-Tree's patterns are fractal line drawings that you can explore and manipulate.  I'm pretty sure this is a first-of-a-kind app in that respect.  Please take a another look.  Make suggestions for improving our App Description if you think it is misleading, etc.  Thanks!

To ALL - I played with the app for months while developing it -- and I am still discovering new trees.  These reviewers must not have taken time to look at the web site, otherwise they would have noticed the screen shots and all the patterns shown on the Explore page.  By the way, Geom-e-Twee has a similar gallery, under "puzzles".

Seek out "Geom-e-Tree in Action" on YouTube for a demo to get yourself started.

Ethics Corner: None of the 5-star reviews were solicited, nor were they from "fake" accounts to my knowledge.   I would never approve such unethical behavior, nor do I need fake reviews.  I wish people could just honestly review the app and leave out such speculation.

Snarky Remark: Is there little wonder that political systems are dysfunctional when people would rather just mouth off than write to the support address given for the App (at least give that a shot first), or maybe consider that they missed something about the app?  "RTFM?"

Corrective Action: I added the YouTube link to the AppStore description.  Previously it was only on the web sites.  Hopefully prospective buyers can go there to check it out first.  We can only guess that the unhappy guys didn't get that they can pinch and spread the tree, etc.

Feel free to follow up here (moderated) or via our Geom-e-Tree support address.

Taking the First Step...

Welcome to my Wandering in the Forest blog, which will supplement the websites for my two apps, Geom-e-Tree and Geom-e-Twee, as well as other Apps that may come along.

FIRST OFF..  If you have an idea for how color might be used in either of these apps, please send them to colors@geom-e-tree.com or colors@geom-e-twee.com.  I have some ideas, but I am curious what others think -- do you have an interesting idea, or just some gratuitous use of color that won't add any value to the experience, just color.  Color needs to be related to geometry.  Tree might use color one way, while Twee another.  I'll throw out some of my ideas in a future posting here.

Possible Future Topics

I may go deeper into some of the concepts brought up in the FAQ.

I may explain why I chose the gestures to change the angle and common ratio... and perhaps post some videos of the app that will demonstrate why those design choices make most sense.

I may explain some of the constraints that are on the program (that is, why the tree turns red sometimes).

I may pose more questions or thoughts about the deeper structure of these trees, and the forest of trees.

I may also discuss decisions that go into making an Android and Mac OSX version of Geom-e-Tree.

I may also publish a bit of a road map of future versions of Geom-e-Tree - that is if other developers allow me to develop these apps instead of copying the idea and putting their own versions into the store.  What do you think of that?  You can write to me - john  at geom-e-tree dot com.

To be honest, the first thing I'm going to do is take a break from the months it took to create these apps, the web sites, video, help pages, and so on.  After that break, one of the first things will be to have the help and App store info translated by Oregon Translation into five additional languages.  Then when we have an App update ready, it will be more international.

Comments are enabled, but will be moderated.  Feel free to share your constructive criticism or ideas!  Thanks.  JM