nicolas75;671129 Wrote:
>
> So you keep spending your time giving advices and tricks, for problems
> which should simply not exist at all.
> It would be far more effective to push Logitech and developers to make
> problems disappear.
> (asking weird NAS platform, or funny plugins, instead of getting decent
> library management push them the other way).
>
The issue is that we no longer have anyone to push, it's pointless to
push the Logitech developers available on these forums because they are
not the ones that's deciding what should be prioritized these days. It
was the case 5 years ago when the Slim Devices CEO was available on
these forum but it's not the case today. Bugs are best to push for
through http://bugs.slimdevices.com by voting on them or by complaining
at the official Logitech support at http://forums.logitech.com.
Enhancement requests are not possible to push for today unless you have
a personal relationship with the person who decides what should be
prioritized, currently I don't even have any clue who this person is.
Regarding library management I've just given up, we won't get there
with Logitech because it's not what they want, I've more or less tried
to push for this since 2006 and it won't happen.
And just to be sure you understand what I'm saying, when I say library
management I really mean library management and not library scanning.
Library management requires a persistent database and doing a complete
rescan is basically not something you ever do except for once initially
if the software supports library management. You scan for new files but
you don't do a complete rescan. SBS/LMS has no library management
functions what so ever today, it has library scanning functions but not
any library management functions. The community SMD project will have
library management functions, but at the moment it's evolving slowly
because we have too few developers that contributes actively.
For some reason we have accepted that it's a good idea to do a full
rescan now and then and the result is that all the focus is on the
scanner instead of music related functionality. I personally want the
focus to be on the music because I want the system to be good at
suggesting and playing music I like, I don't care if it has to scan to
do so, that's just an implementation detail and it should be completely
hidden for the user.
I guess I'm just trying to say that if we ever want to get this
software to be user friendly for non geeks we need to stop prioritizing
technical things like scanning, tagging, database backend, servers and
instead focus on things like usability, streaming services, playlist
management, smart playlists and features related to audio quality.
nicolas75;671129 Wrote:
>
> Of course it is a lot more fun (and far easier) to spend time helping a
> lot people and show how good and helpful you are.
> But it is far more effective to point out what should be corrected
> (instead of saying everything is great).
>
Completely agree, but to make this work you need to be able to point it
out to someone that actually can do something to solve the problem, and
that's clearly not the community members of this forum.
nicolas75;671129 Wrote:
>
> That's the difference between geeks having fun, and professionals who
> make a living from what they develop.
> I am quite certain none of you is a professional software manager (and
> a good professional software manager has to be an excellent software
> developer)
>
- Knowing the product is a must to be able to be an excellent software
manager.
- Have a good understanding of the user needs is a must to be an
excellent software manager.
- Being able to describe the needs to the developers is a must to be an
excellent software manager.
While being an excellent software developer is an advantage but it's
definitely not the most important skill for someone managing software.
In many cases it can actually be a disadvantage, because people with
development background sometimes tend to focus on technology instead of
users.
Unfortunately, from what I've seen lately, Logitech doesn't have much
of any of the above, which makes me a bit worried. They have excellent
developers but they don't seem to have anyone with good understanding
of the user needs that decide what to prioritize.
nicolas75;671129 Wrote:
>
> I have absolutely no doubt that without serious management from
> Logitech CEO and executives to change the geek state of mind which is
> behind LMS, this software is cold dead.
>
Agreed, Logitech is not going to keep pushing a geek product on longer
terms, they will either make it less geeky or drop it completely, the
main reason it's still here is probably because they are still able to
sell a lot of Squeezebox units. The change has to be initiated from
upper management because that's the only way it will work in a large
corporation like Logitech. Unfortunately, I have some doubts regarding
how many people there are in upper management that really understand
the music streaming business. I'm 99.9% sure no one in upper management
is reading this forum and I'm also pretty sure many people of this forum
are focused at their own needs and don't necessarily understand the
changes needed to bring music streaming to the masses.
Also, making the scanning optional is not the thing that's going to
change things, it will just put the focus back on scanner related
things instead of focusing on the music. It's important to understand
that people are primarily buying these boxes to play music and not to
scan music files. As long as over 50% of the product development are
focused at scanning related things we are going in the wrong direction
IMHO. When 50% of the development is focused at making it easy, fast,
interesting and fun to find some music I like to listen to, we are on
the right track, but it has been a long time since anything major was
added in this area except through third party plugins.
--
erland
Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info))
(Developer of 'many plugins/applets (both free and commercial)'
(http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland).
If you like to encourage future presence on this forum and/or third
party plugin/applet development, 'consider purchasing some plugins'
(http://license.isaksson.info))
Interested in music discovery ? See 'Social Music Discovery (SMD)'
(http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=656713) project.
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View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=91673
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