Hows the progress doing?

Any estimated time on a new dev version? :o

Getting restless! not enuff updates! ha

:slight_smile:

Sry for being impatient

Hi there,

Lots of stuff is in flight at the moment; I’ll post some details of what’s being created on the dev blog soon!

cool :slight_smile: i just hate seeing you lie dormant thinking development stalled :slight_smile:

Looking forward to it Stephen! :slight_smile:

I love World Machine.

But this is why a yearly 100$ maintenance fee is a complete ripoff. If you’re only going to do less than 3 stable releases a year, there is no way I’m going to pay. Even your dev releases are few and far between. Remnant, if you can’t commit to a more consistent and reliable schedule, you shouldn’t do a subscription fee.

I think very few - if any company - in this industry has 3 significant updates each year. 1 or may be 2 is what you see most and those are from rather big companies.
Software cost and I think especially the associated “value” is a very personal thing.
$100/year for 1 or 2 annual updates is acceptable for me.
It also depends a bit on what the updates bring, but that’s a whole different discussion.

I do tend to agree a bit about the commitment part though.
Not in particular about the development cycle speed, but rather about the lack of forum activity and interaction with the users here.
Lack of activity and interaction leads to annoyances from users, like now here.
Lifting a tip of the veil on what’s happening and keeping users posted on progress, even if there’s little, is transparent and leads to understanding if things are or aren’t happening as they were supposed to.

The blog is nice for such purposes and I think the last entry about the new development model is a nice example of good communication with users/customers.
Unfortunately it already dates back to last August.

Martin

Hi there,

Sorry for the lack of communication lately – the last month or two I’ve been running down some unexpected R&D alleys that haven’t panned out the way I’ve hoped, which has been quite frustrating and has set back the next release considerably.

I’m probably going to have to punt this particular feature to a later release, as its just not getting production ready fast enough. No one is more frustrated by that than me!

Quantum Theory:

I understand your concerns. It might be helpful to look at the maintenance as “buy the upgrade that has the feature you want, get 1 year of upgrades free.” You are entirely allowed to not update until a release is available that interests you (or to never update!); this basically splits the difference and lets me release new features when they become ready, while keeping you in control of when you are willing to lay down your hard earned cash. You lose nothing compared to the previous model of “Wait 3 years for the next version and decide if you want to buy”, and potentially gain quicker turnaround – the current dev push has been quite delayed, but prior to that we were doing pretty well at having at least quarterly releases, which is about as good as it is likely to get all honesty.

I’ll see if I can write a blog post tonight dishing out some of the internal things that are being worked on.

Here’s a link to the latest blog post talking about some of the major under-wraps changes that have been made since the fall:

http://www.world-machine.com/blog/?p=468

AWESOME looking good. Luve to see new layout :shock: