This will no doubt get lost in all the flotsam but:
RS is a business, and the decisions regarding their one and only source
of income will mostly be based on the following, in no particular
order:
1. Industry changes and trends.
2. Bug and feature request report statistics, which are derived 100%
from the bug reporting system.
3. Discussions with customers who have decided to discuss their
particular concerns one-to-one with RS in an intelligent and respectful
manner.
I can personally attest to the fact that RS does respond to
intelligent, and reasonably thought out requests for bug fixes and
feature additions. If you prepend your request with "I know you don't
have enough manpower to do all this," you get extra points because, it
was, is and probably always will be true.
We haven't had a wild party like THIS in a long time. If you think that
entering bug reports is a waste of time, you are dead wrong. You will
not get anything done by complaining here. It just will not happen. It
may be fun to debate and even helpful to vent, but it will NOT advance
your cause.
About 100 or so, tops, of the NUG members are getting involved with
this thread and it's sub-threads. About 1/4 of those involved have made
comments that certainly would not warm me up to changing the course of
MY business. Let's imagine there are 100k paid RB customers total in
the world. that means that the people involved in this thread represent
.001 of the total customers.
How important we all are! We expound our complaints and will fight
against the mighty, evil RS! We are so important that RS will change
listen to our whining despite our small numbers!
That's the way it comes across, folks. And I can tell you that it hurts
them in a personal way. A lot. Everyone who works for RS knows that the
customer is their lifeblood. Again, I know this because I've spoken
directly to many of them for years.
Those of you that ARE being a bit too rough, are tearing into a company
of about 25 or so individual people. This isn't MS or Apple. They are
not faceless and they not immune to hurt.
In my years at AT&T, the company spent a lot of money sending us to
classes that helped us to be more understanding people. Why? Not
because, Mother Theresa was the chairwomen of the board. Because it
made BUSINESS SENSE.
None single one of us are that important to RS. I've been a paying
customer since 1.0. Only partly by plan, my entire income is requires
REALbasic. I've had a major upgrade to FTP Suite delayed a year because
of difficulties getting a new feature into sockets, certainly costing
me more money than I want to figure out at a time when my family surely
need it. The Windows version of A-OK! The Wings of Mercury was in limbo
for even longer because of thread problems that have now been solved.
Who cares? I'm a fairly well-known figure in the RB community and
vocal supporter. So what? In a business sense, I am not more important
than any other licensee.
When I have a problem, I enter it into the DB. If it's THAT important,
I'll contact the engineer's responsible for that particular corner of
the product. If it's really important to me I go, hat-in-hand, to Geoff
Perlman and explain the situation and how it affects me. Or, I use my
Quick Fix from my support plan.
Sometimes the answer is no, coupled with a very logic explanation of
why. But most of the time, the answer is yes, or at least, I am
presented with decent workaround.
Please don't take the above as a judgment, it's really just advice.
These type of discussions can be helpful and I know they are read by
RS, but once they take on the tone that this one has (in many, not all,
of the posts), the true message gets masked.
You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Peace,
Joe
--
Joseph Nastasi
Pyramid Design - a software development firm
http://www.pyramiddesign.us
Voice 609 601-0814 Fax 609 601-0815
Products:
A-OK! Spacecraft Simulation System - http://aok.pyramiddesign.us
A-OK! The Wings of Mercury http://www.aokwom.com
FTP Suite for REALbasic - http://ftpsuite.pyramiddesign.us
Columnist for REALbasic Developer Magazine
Proud Sponsors of REALbasic Olympics 2005
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