Learning from the mistakes of others is a very beautiful thing. It’s an opportunity to gain some insight into life for free. Recently I had an opportunity to compare two companies, both releasing software (as I soon will be). One did it right, the other did not.

The mistake we can all learn from.

Cha Ching — a new money management application for Mac OS X from Midnight Apps — is touting itself as a “Quicken killer.” It’s a great idea, and their first attempt is valiant. The interface is beautiful, which they continually remind you of in their marketing and help files. The niche it attempts to fill is currently full of vastly underwhelming software, so their opportunity is vast. But they made a few really big mistakes that have created a slew of bad press across the internet.

Some of their mistakes:

• Offering lifetime upgrades for early adopters and then rescinding the offer after customers bought in early.
• Releasing what is obviously a version 0.6 or 0.7 beta as 1.0 software (essentially their 1.0 release was their 0.5 release, just made prettier).
• Touting features such as “completely redesigned Budgets” that simply did not work. They were completely broken in the 1.0 release.
• Releasing the software with no documentation or help files. None.

To sum it up: Midnight Apps released a product that fell far short of the company’s promises.

A company that did it right.

Coda — a new web development application for Mac OS X from Panic — is everything that Macintosh software should be and a whole lot more. This is the most impressive 1.0 software release I have seen. The documentation & support is great. It works as advertised. In fact, it continues to amaze the user long after getting settled in it. The interface is clean and well thought out — and here is the real differentiator between Coda and Cha Ching — the functionality of the application is as perfect as the interface is beautiful. It works. No, I said that wrong. It doesn’t just work. Its like having a sidekick that is with you at all times. It works with you and for you. The drudgery of web development is offloaded to the application, leaving developers to enjoy the fun that web development should be.

Coda utilizes the Subetha Engine from SubEthaEdit. Perhaps it is those same three green men hard at work in this application that make it feel like you have to do far less work to get so much more done.

The most interesting thing about both of these software endeavors is they are entering into niches that are already filled by plenty of alternatives. Each company recognized that there are major deficiencies in their competition, and they set out to one-up them. The difference is, while both promised to one-up the competition, only one delivered. The other is simply not ready.