On 24 Jun, 2004, at 08:14 PM, Aaron Sherber wrote:
I *don't* want to jump ship; that's the problem.
Neither do I, which is why I'm willing to suck it up and support Coda even when they deliver abominations like MacFin2004.
The reason I have a hard time swallowing that is that we're not talking about just fixing 2004 -- we're talking about bugs that have gone unfixed for *years*. If 2003 had been perfect, I would have forgiven the flaws in 2004. But as things are, we *keep* throwing good money after bad. Yes, there are new features each year, and some of them are quite useful, but to me it doesn't quite compensate for the things that remain broken.
Coda right now is basically working on a yearly subscription model for a product which in many ways resembles a late beta. Whereas if they took an extra year and fixed some of the things we all complain about, they would have a better product, a happier customer base, and a better chance of steering new and existing users to their product.
I agree with all of the above. To be fair, though, Coda does have a very democratic way of prioritizing bugfixes -- the stuff that people complain about the most is the stuff that gets fixed. Of course, the flip side of that is that it becomes enormously frustrating when easy-to-fix bugs never get fixed because they aren't widely complained about (Chromatic Transposition of chord symbols), or Coda refuses to focus on hugely destructive bugs that ought to be an embarrassment to anyone selling commercial software (the text block and file overwrite bugs).
I think it's quite clear after Fin2004 that Coda needs to focus more on bugfixes -- it's getting completely out of hand. But because Coda's bottom line depends on a getting a new product with sparkling new features out every year, there just aren't enough resources to fix what's broken and still pump out a version every year.
I think we are saying much the same thing -- it's just that, for the moment, I'm resigned to "paying a yearly subscription for a late beta" because it appears Coda's future as a company is somewhat tenuous and I'd hate to see them die off. Feature-wise, Fin2004 was a *great* response to Sibelius, but it seems Coda simply lacked the resources to test it adequately. Fin2005 will, I expect, be a more polished "regrouping" upgrade that will finally deliver on the promise of Fin2004. But if Fin2005 does well, I'd love to see them take (at minimum) a year off after that, because there are a number of major overhauls that desperately need doing but simply aren't possible given the pressure cooker of yearly releases. I'd rather wait a year and pay $150 for a Fin2007 with a rewritten core, OpenGL-accelerated graphics engine, and redesigned UI. (And maybe it would even be stable out of the box, without requiring a maintenance upgrade to be even marginally usable. That would be nice, too. Also, I'd like it to come with a free pony.)
- Darcy
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