NameNetwork shut down — if you know what it is. Yes, it turns out that many who have given money to Mark Howson’s so-called company are out of luck. For those not following the event, which has picked up momentum in the past few months, Mark Howson has failed to deliver goods (once again) which his customers had paid for in advance. The latest thing he had pushed was 20MacApps, which had promised a new app every fortnight since February 1st.
I wish I could have seen this coming, but Mark Howson’s shady dealings were new to me when disappointed customers really started propagating the news. I did not even start to suspect of what was really going on after TheMacPak’s Christmas bundle fiasco last year. I thought that all previous complaints to that one were just isolated problems — but they weren’t. I only bought a couple of MacPak items and the 20MacApps bundle, but had somewhat of a luck to only be cheated out of the last one. Others weren’t as lucky.
I was even offered some jobs as a blogger by Mark Howson. Not knowing better at the moment, I accepted them. But now I realize how lucky I was back then to have those blogging projects canned before they were completed.
Now that everything has finally come out into the open, it’s safe to assume that Mark Howson is anything but business person, to say the least. In the end, he took money from loyal customers and still has to give anything in return. Whether the fact that money he got away with was planned intentionally or not, the actions committed always tell us more about the person than anything else.
Mark Howson has publicly mentioned that he will not do business again in the Mac community for at least five years. That’s what bothers me — he plans to continue even though he’s made himself an enemy of the Mac community?
Still, 20MacApps didn’t burn everything to the ground. Take a look at the developer of Paperclip, Grayson Hansard, who is still giving the people who bought the bundle a license to his app. And Paperclip is a great app! In the end, Grayson is keeping his promise, but is getting nothing in return. That’s perfect customer support, if you ask me.
People lost money on 20MacApps, if not before. I lost money, too. I wish to extend my sincere apologies for those who got involved with Mark Howson because of something that was written in this website. I made the mistake of being part of the blogs that gave him the much-needed publicity he needed to get his locomotive going — he just never bothered to set the tracks for it.
Additional reading:
-Mark’s final words
-MacHeist forum thread against Mark Howson
-Second MacHeist forum thread against Mark Howson
-Grayson’s first blog entry on 20MacApps
-Grayson’s second entry on 20MacApps
by Grayson
23 Apr 2008 at 14:27
Thanks for the kind comments on Paperclip. A small handful of developers were caught up in 20MacApps but we’ve managed to escape fairly unscathed. I always figured that although I never got any money for any sales of my software through Howson’s ventures, I’m not out anything either. I think it’s good business and good community to keep promises and I promised to deliver Paperclip on time to any purchasers of 20MacApps. I still get emails from people who haven’t been able to get their money back so if anyone has purchased the bundle, please email me and I’ll send a registration code.
by Frank
23 Apr 2008 at 22:10
And it’s awesome that you’re doing so, Grayson.
by Alex Smith
24 Apr 2008 at 07:23
He is a kid, around 15+ years old in fact – and has been stupid enough to publish enough about himself on the web that it’s not difficult to form a complete picture of what he’s been up to.
For corporate information on Namenetwork, go to ukdata.com and search for Directors with the last name Howson in the YO12 postal code. From the data there, it appears that Namenetwork has been dissolved and these guys are in the process of forming yet another company.
by Frank
24 Apr 2008 at 10:08
Ah, yes. That’s another thing I was deceived in — his age. I don’t have a problem with young entrepreneurs, because if you’re good at it, age shouldn’t be that much of a concern. In fact, there are some well-known Mac entrepreneurs who started at a similar age. Even though I must admit that I never asked for his age, I was lead to believe by him that he was old enough by making claims like, “If TheMacPak is successful, I’ll be able to quit my day job.” Now I realize he meant school, but I seriously doubt he ever meant to drop out.
by rampancy
24 Apr 2008 at 10:19
Here are some of the other ventures Mark Howson has been involved with or headed:
MacAppADay
TheMacNurse
MyMacGames
MacGameBox
WasteAWeekend
MAAD massively overhyped itself but woefully underdelivered, passing off shoddy for-pay betas of web apps as “Mac apps”. Others, like TheMacNurse, and MyMacGames were simply non-starters. And MacGameBox (which garnered Mark an interview on MacRecon) was also a non-starter. And then there was the MacPak May bundle, for which people paid money and ended up not getting their serial numbers – which happened again with the Santa’s Stocking MacPak bundle…not to mention the customers he left high and dry when they bought into memberships for the MacPak Club, only to see him fold up TheMacPak after a few months.
I think the only thing more tragic than Mark’s audacity to post that farce of an apology is that so many people on the web have let themselves be conned by Mark. Unless of course, they were in on it too.
by Frank
24 Apr 2008 at 14:32
Another one that never came to be (fortunately!) was Macademy. That was one where I was offered a job at — but I was lucky enough that the thing never even got started before my one-way ticket to whatever world Mark imagined became a reality.