Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael
Hello everyone,
The Mobipocket/Adobe story is a real issue for us and it will be the case for any other reader vendors.
We would have prefered to propose only one firmware to everyone with nice cross fetaure like "Mobipocket dictionary lookup" for ePUB and PDF files. But, we are not authorized do it and we have to deal with it. So we have tried to propose the best solution to the customers who already bought Mobipocket files with these 2 firmwares.
Since the beginning, we have always proposed pretty good fundamentals in our software (speed, rendering, interface). We have been the first to propose Mobipocket DRM support and be the first to be officially certified by Adobe on Adobe SDK.
Our interface has been obviously so much appreciated that it has been fully copied by one of our competitor. If Bookeen fires its engineers, I already know who will hire them.
Concerning the format support, there are plenty of things to do and I agree with you on many points:
- PDF: reflow, auto-cropping are must have
- HTML support is very basic and should be enhanced
On top of that all your requests are legitimate :
1) bookmarks page
2) Reading while charging (we said it)
etc.
All these points are on our list. We are clearly not releasing new firmwares at a pace which satisfies both you and us and we are fustrating about it. But as, we will try to communicate more with you, we will also try to release at a faster pace.
All the best,
Michael
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Thanks for the reply, Michael, it is really appreciated.
I, for one, very much honor good communication. I have said it many times on this forum and I stand to it: The Cybook is a good device and I can easily wait for any updates and improvements. What I have always criticised was the lack of communication and the fact that Bookeen missed their deadlines and didn't even say a word about it. Participating in the community here will definitely be a good way to prevent similar resentment by the community in the future.
It would also be a good idea, though, to make more use of your own blog. Not every customer is also on MobileRead (sadly). It should not be any real effort to post at least one short entry per week.
Also I think it's the wrong strategy to say: Because we keep missing our deadlines by months on end we stop telling people what we do and when it's going to be finished. If Bookeen cannot keep a deadline as vague as 1st quarter of 2009 (and FW is still not finished in 3rd quarter) then it's not a problem of changing one's communication but rather there are structural problems. Planning and/or execution are way off and need to be addressed internally. If you can't keep your internal deadlines it's a short-sighted solution to try to hush it up in public by not communicating any deadlines at all.
Also it is a very bad idea to keep it a secret what you are currently working on. Of course, you can't promise that every feature you are currently working on will be there in the next FW release and that can be clearly stated. But keeping it entirely secret leads to the current situation where everyone had different expectations and lots of people feel let down. If you gave more information about what is in the works people could give you feedback about what is a very highly desired feature and which one is not so much. You could then set your priorities accordingly.
Anyway, glad to have you here on the forum and I hope you'll get to like it here in our community
