Who said anything about “Carlgate?”
The folks at The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) managed to speak to Yann Lecoreller and G. Carre, CEO of Awyse yesterday concerning the Talking Carl story I have been obsessing about all week. It is a very good summary of the history, but there is not much new information that I haven’t already reported here.
They do cover an abortive update to Talking Carl that Lecoreller posted earlier in the week, noting that it was pulled, then re-submitted when it turned out to have some serious bugs. These details are not directly related to the Intellectual Property issues that are central to the dispute between Lecoreller and Awyse, but it certainly added to the confusion for Talking Carl customers this past week.
The whole article is worth a read if “Carlgate” is fascinating you as much as it is me.
Details here.
I think I’m obsessed with Talking Carl
At this point, it’s not about the app. The drama surrounding the little red guy is shaping up to be more and more curious each day. Just a few moments ago, the following email arrived from the CEO of Awyse.
Subject: Apologies for the conviniences due to Talking Carl
To our valued customers,
I have received thousands of emails from Talking Carl customers who are upset about awyse changing Talking Carl by Talking C. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.
First, I would like to take a moment to thank each of you for your patience, understanding, and support during Awyse’s recent outrage.
We know how important Talking Carl is to you and your kids and we take any disruption to our service very seriously.
Second, we never wanted to hurt any of you. We always aimed to bring you entertainment by the best technology.
Third, we want you to know we are doing our best to bring you your beloved Carl back!
As a valued customer of Awyse, we’d like to apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of awyse
Thank you for allowing Talking Carl to be a part of your life.
If you require any additional information please visit our official Facebook page, and follow us on Twitter.
Kind regards,
G. Carre
CEO
Let’s ignore for a moment the “apologies for the conveniences” subject line, since I suspect that English is not Mr. Carre’s first language and that this was not meant to be unintentionally funny.
But I’m confused, specifically with respect to the line, “we are doing our best to bring you your beloved Carl back.”
Does this mean Awyse is working with yann lecoroller again?
If not, and based on yann’s previous statement, I was lead to believe that he was the owner of the intellectual property behind Talking Carl’s identity, if not the code itself. And if that is indeed true, how in the world can Awyse promise something like this?
My suspicion is that the contract between Awyse and Yann was poorly written, and what we’re witnessing is a battle over the ownership of the Talking Carl brand being played out in public.
Despite including links to their Facebook and Twitter pages, there’s no further clarification given there. And so, I’ve reached out to both yann and Awyse for clarification and will provide an update once I have something more to report.
Which I hope is soon. I never intended my first post on this to be any more than a casual observation on a design mistake by an App Store developer. And following this saga is turning out to be my new hobby.
Talking Carl is back
On Saturday, I posted that the star of the iPhone app, Talking Carl, had been unceremoniously booted from the app and replaced with a much-less-charming, anthropomorphic cardboard box character named, “C.” Users were up in arms, the app was getting skewered in the ratings, and I was taking the developer, Awyse, to task for this idiotic change.
First, the good news. As of a few hours ago, Talking Carl is back on the iTunes App Store (thanks to reader Ian Graybill for the heads up). Even better, Carl is currently pimping his services out free of charge, so go grab him now before he comes to his senses.
Updated
“Talking Carl is back at a new home and publisher,” says the description on the iTunes App Store, and if you’re playing along at home, you’ll see a link to a new website now. Where it used to list Awyse.com, there is a link to Tayasui.com and an indication that the seller is yann le coroller.
I received so much interest in my previous post from users worried about Carl (or with just not that much to do on the weekend…not sure), that I decided that I needed to get to the bottom of it all.
A Note From a Reader
On Saturday afternoon, reader Shevi Bloom pointed me to the TalkingCarl.com website, noting that it “gives half a story” as to what might be going on. This is the first indication I got that there was a second party involved beyond Awyse, namely the folks from Tayasui. Moreover, the message on TalkingCarl.com seemed full of intrigue:
We are deeply sorry but we are not responsible for Awyse outrageous behavior regarding Talking Carl. They were court-ordered to stop selling the application but instead they choose to gives you this trash bag. If like us you want your old talking carl back, you should ask them : contact@awyse.com
After that, it didn’t take long to track down the Talking Carl Facebook page, on which Tayasui volunteers that, “I have a new publisher, awyse was a very bad home for me. [sic]”
Clearly the relationship between Awyse and Tayasui had gone south, and just as divorce is hardest on the children, Carl seemed to be the victim of this separation.
There were some holes, though. What was the role of Awyse versus Tayasui? And was Carl ever returning? With no clear answers online, I tracked down the folks from Tayasui over the weekend and ended up exchanging email with yann.
The Idea
It turns out that yann is the brains behind Talking Carl. “I am the designer of Carl and the Talking Carl App,” he told me.
“I had the idea and I made After Effects mockups to see if it was possible to bring a character to life with [a] few but carefully chosen pre-rendered sprites. I made the interaction model, voices and sound design and I directed the dev on a day to day basis for two months.”
Yann, for all of his design and animation skills, is not a developer. He could only take his idea so far. And that’s where Awyse came in.
Talking Carl “was done by a independent programmer paid by Awyse.”
Parting of the Ways
So what happened? According to yann, they “cut me off [as] the lead of the project, arguing that it was their idea and project and I was just a pain in the ass to deal with.” He adds, parenthetically, and with a wink “something [that] may be correct indeed.”
He doesn’t go into further details, but the negotiations obviously were heated, and yann decided to sue. He won and as a result, Awyse was given a simple order to stop selling Talking Carl by February 2. The way in which they responded, however, was hardly so clean.
The Switch
It’s worth taking a step back for a moment to understand how the iTunes Store handles apps, and specifically updates to those apps.
Every app in the iTunes Store has a unique identifier that Apple calls the “App ID.” This isn’t visible to users of the application, but behind the scenes, it’s how Apple handles things like updates in iTunes. When a developer completes an update, they submit it to Apple using the same App ID as the previous version. Later, once it’s approved and existing customers log into the iTunes Store, they’ll see that an update is available.
Now the common behavior for updates is that developers add and refine features, advancing the version number from 1.0 to 1.1, 1.14, 2.0 and so on as changes are made. Faced with a loss in court, Awyse decided to do something different. And something pretty terrible, in my opinion.
Not only did Awyse develop the original Talking Carl on behalf of yann, they also submitted the original versions to the store under their name. That’s why customers saw Awyse listed as the seller of Talking Carl in iTunes, not yann or Tayasui.
Once they were told to stop selling it, a logical next step would have been to transfer the iTunes listing back to yann and call it done. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. ITunes does not allow transfers and, once set, a developer cannot change their company name, either.
Now, most of us in the same situation as Awyse would have simply removed Talking Carl from the store. But remember that App ID? The one that thousands of Talking Carl customers around the world had listed in their iTunes accounts? The one that iTunes is checking every time a user hits the iTunes Store? With Talking Carl so popular, it appears that direct channel was just too lucrative for Awyse to pass up.
So, instead, they uploaded to the Store their own version of Talking Carl (presumably with the original Talking Carl code they wrote), dressed him in a box and changed his name “Talking C.” This last part is particularly pernicious, engineered, no doubt, to skirt any trademark claims by Tayasui while still keeping users unawares that the core of the application, Carl himself, was no longer there. The next time someone updated their device, the new app replaced the old and, poof, Carl was gone.
Unluckily for yann, who wanted to simply sell Talking Carl in a different way, Awyse effectively sabotaged his good name and left him with what he claims were “hundreds of bad review [sic] on MY app because of Awyse[’s] stupid move.”
To further “add insult to injury,” noted yann, Awyse’s new Talking C included “a very invasive add [sic] for Vito Panda,” a similar app that yann refers to as “one of the many rippoffs they made of Talking Carl.”
Happy Ending?
In his note to me, yann indicated that he was working on an update and had submitted a new Talking Carl to the store. That was a day ago and, as I mentioned above, the update is now live.
When I wrote my first post, Talking C was there, too, but searches for “him” now return no results. “I hope so,” said yann, “they were ordered to stop it a month ago!”
What happened to “Talking Carl?”
Carl, star of one of the most charming apps in the iTunes Store, is no more. His successor refers to himself by first initial only and wears a cardboard box, presumably to hide his shame.
For the uninitiated, Talking Carl is a simple yet enchanting bit of fun iPhone fun. The geometric Carl sits there on the screen, eyes askew and ready to listen. You speak, and he echoes your words, reinterpreted in his own squeaky voice. Poke him and he growls. Tickle him and he laughs. It’s all inane and ridiculous and yet I defy you to keep from smiling. You can even get Carl to face off with himself in a death match.
Regularly one of the highest rated free apps in the store, it’s unclear what Awyse was thinking in abandoning their popular character. In Carl’s place, they are now running a contest asking customers to submit drawings with the chance to see their work come to life in a future app update.
Judging by the comments and iTunes app ratings, the move was a mistake, and an enormous one at that. An app which previously had nearly 60% of its ratings as 4- and 5-stars has suddenly been banished to the basement with this update. The vitriol in the written comments is striking, too. People love their Carl.
What I don’t understand is why Awyse removed Carl from the app at all. It would seem trivial to have simply included the contest alongside their star, perhaps even using him to squeak out the rules for submitting your entry. Awyse clearly knows that they’ve got a problem on their hands, and manages to squeeze a lame warning into the “What’s New” section just above the fold:
Of course, no one will see this until it is too late, as most users will simply click the Update link in iTunes without reading what changes are in store (a shortcoming of the iTunes update model that is probably worth a discussion of its own). Hence the overwhelming sentiment in the comments that users feel duped and betrayed.
In the grand scheme of things, this is unquestionably small-potatoes stuff. But what it does show in miniature is just how fragile a brand can be, even one based on a free app with a talking red blob with eyes. Developers, marketers and designers risk a great deal with every product change they carry out. No good deed, the saying promises, goes unpunished. And the jilted Carl seems to be exacting his last revenge, indeed.
