Poor help from help@teamtreehouse.com

Sorry that you had a poor experience. You posed a really great question. I have been able to watch videos, take quizzes, and complete some of the code challenges using my iPad. It's great being able to watch a video using the app, but I would recommend a computer (PC or Mac) if you are seriously interested in making the best use of what Treehouse has to offer.

If you are asking if you can watch the videos and complete the code challenges and quizzes on teamtreehouse.com then the answer is yes. I have done the above mentioned on an iPad and Android devices. If you are asking if you can develop and run/test your own iPad apps independent of teamtreehouse.com then yes you need a mac. You need xcode for that kind of development and it won't work with an iPad by itself. I would recommend a used or refurbished mac mini. I watch BestBuy.com for open box deals or ebay. The first section of Build a Simple iPhone App will walk you through everything you need. http://teamtreehouse.com/library/build-a-simple-iphone-app-ios7-2

Hi M T,

To answer your initial question, in order to code iOS apps for either the iPhone or iPad, you'll need a Mac with OSX installed so you can work with Xcode. Apple doesn't offer Xcode for iPad currently.

I apologize for the frustration caused. It is certainly not our policy to deflect questions. One of our core values is to Serve Our Students, and this is something we work hard on and are extremely passionate about. From time to time our Customer Support team simply doesn't know the answer to a question asked. At that point, they may defer questions to the Forum as it's likely another student or Treehouse staff member will know the answer.

RE the FAQ, we actually have a project for that in the works. I totally agree with you that this is something we should have, and frankly we've dropped the ball by not shipping it sooner.

I hope your free trial at Treehouse goes well.

I would have to agree with the OP and rate Treehouse customer communication as the weakest part of the entire program. I have reported bugs both on the forums and via email and have never once had a response. It would be nice if issues were responded to by staff without the necessity of a moderator requesting employee participation in the discussion.

Thank you all for your input. Might I suggest a suggestion box forum? My thread here feels out of place and lacks direction (is this guy asking for help now or just whining*?) which could have been curtailed if there were a suggestion forum or option other than general discussion - I felt emailing my grievance to help@ would have been awkward considering the circumstance ("Thank you for your complaint. I'm the same person that responded to your first inquiry. . .")

Similarly, a suggestion box could be used to open and close matters on bug issues.

*I did ask in a focused manner in the iOS, so yes, I'm whining.

Hi Aaron,

I'm sorry to hear that we in Support haven't met your expectations. I found your email from August in which you alerted us of a broken link. I apologize that you didn't get a response on that because you should have at least received a message thanking you for alerting us!

You also reached out to us in December about videos being choppy. The video player can be buggy sometimes but we in Support don't have any control over that and can only pass this information you report to us over to our developers. I personally responded back to your email that same morning with suggestions to temporarily disable plugins to see if that resolves it and the other alternative to disable the HTML5 player all together and enable our Flash player and to write me back if you were having problems still. I didn't receive a response back so I assumed that you were able to resolve it with one of the two suggestions.

We're always aiming to provide a better experience for our students, so please don't ever hesitate to post here on our forum or email us your feedback at help@teamtreehouse.com. Thanks Aaron.

Regarding the video player - what I was hoping to learn from that email is something like "we implemented a new video player and have experienced some issues but will be sorting those out over the next week or so".... so that I had some expectation of when or if the problem was being addressed. I want to use the default player. I'm assuming the issue was known and being worked on as just a few days later the player changed it's behavior and reloaded the video and started playing it again from the point it stopped. This introduced another problem but at that point I didn't feel that feedback was really wanted. So in summary, I guess it would be nice if we were kept in the loop on site defects and expected remedies, rather than being told how to work around defects as I would like to be able to benefit from the full set of site tools here at Treehouse.

Hi Aaron,

My goal when I'm assisting you or anyone else is a solution, even if it's a temporary one and never an excuse. Videos were playing fine for me so I was doing what I could to help you troubleshoot the issue on your end. Again, I apologize you didn't receive the service that you were expecting from me.