Touch Japanese Launch not going well

[ltr]

Hope they will strive to resolve the problems very soon and will stop to release "half-cooked" firmware...

I don't believe Kobo would release any firmware that they thought had bugs and was half-cooked.

I think the problem lies somewhere in the beta testing's inability to ferret out problems. I'm sure everyone does their best, but the bugs are being missed (that's fairly obvious).

They may require a larger test group. It's hard to dispute that within days of being released this forum is full of discovered problems.

ltr

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by ltr

I don't believe Kobo would release any firmware that they thought had bugs and was half-cooked.

I think the problem lies somewhere in the beta testing's inability to ferret out problems. I'm sure everyone does their best, but the bugs are being missed (that's fairly obvious).

They may require a larger test group. It's hard to dispute that within days of being released this forum is full of discovered problems.

ltr

I'm not sure about that... but of course I could be wrong.

But well, if you take a look at the 2.0 firmware thread, people encountered bugs within a few hours of release of the new firmware. How little testers are there, I wonder, if such obvious things like slow epub page turns are not detected?

Of course you might be right and a larger group might help... but it's hard to believe that a bug everyone encounters who uses epubs didn't occur during testing...

Also the timing of the firmware:
1.9.16 short before Christmas last year
2.0.0 short before the launch in Japan

It seems to me that the developers were pushed to release some firmwares early by the marketing department. But of that's only the impression I got and, as I said, I might be wrong...

[benqtitle]

I love my Kobo with 1.9.17, and I hate it with 2.0.0. In less than an hour after upgraded to 2.0.0, I ran into most if not all the problems reported in the 2.0 thread. I downgraded to 1.9.17 and felt relieved. I know I am not the only one having this feeling, and thinking about the new customers getting Kobo with 2.0 without knowing this forum or there is a stable and fast firmware 1.9.17, they will turn to Kindle for their next ereader (if they don't throw Kobo out of window right way).

I also agree a commenter about your product has to be perfect to be released in Japan. I work for a consumer product company and I know that you can charge more money for same product in Japan market, but it needs high quality, very high quality. Maybe Kobo needs some features or fixes in firmware 2.0 to be able to release it in Japan, it really should have waited for the firmware to mature rather than rushing it, especially they don't have a dominate position in the market.

I wish Kobo good luck.

[filmo]

Seems Kobo should make firmware release candidates available for testing by brave, willing users before general release and well before bullet proof final forced released new firmware version.

[Danger]

Originally Posted by filmo

Seems Kobo should make firmware release candidates available for testing by brave, willing users before general release and well before bullet proof final forced released new firmware version.

You'd think so but no. I sent a PM to MDK asking to be considered for beta testing... never heard a word back. Not even a no thank you we currently have enough people. Oh well, I am at least more happy with 1.9.17 than I was with 2.0

[murg]

Apparently, the real reason that the Rakuten pulled the review pages was that they were based on people getting the firmware before the actual release time and: "We then launched on schedule, but considering the review board had been populated by feedback not relevant to the actual service we decided to temporarily suspend the review board feature, which we felt was not fully reflective of the service at launch time and was misinforming consumers."

What a weasel way to do things. And completely wrong. The fact remains that Kobo had a major launch with buggy and insufficently tested firmware and desktop software.

And, it appears that unless Rakuten takes a broom to Kobo's development staff, nothing will change. Maybe this whole episode will be embarrassing enought for Rakuten to take a closer look at Kobo management and practices, and not just believe the feel-good messages they are being sent.

http://www.techinasia.com/rakuten-ko...blems-software

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...to/#more-37031

Folks, Rakuten & Kobo are pitching themselves as the only real answer to Amazon on the global ebook market. If this launch in Japan is any indication of their combined abilities I think we might want to save some effort and go buy Kindles right now.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Hope they will strive to resolve the problems very soon and will stop to release "half-cooked" firmware...

Hopefully, we won't have to wait 3 months for the fixes to 2.0.0.

Originally Posted by Jaden

Fix bugs first, release a stable version, then (if you must) add new features (marketing tools like all that Facebook and Discover stuff...).

You're dreamin...

[murg]

Originally Posted by filmo

Seems Kobo should make firmware release candidates available for testing by brave, willing users before general release and well before bullet proof final forced released new firmware version.

Yes. They should have a public beta test.

Then all the problems get ferreted out during the public beta test, and not in the public release.

If past (and current) actions are an indication, I don't think that Kobo management has sufficient imagination or experience in software development to get out of the bunker mentality.

Seriously, we found a whole slew of problems with the firmware in hours after the release, which all seemed to miss being found in alpha or beta testing or almost 4 months.

It's even starting to look like Kobo didn't even test the Desktop software on a Japanese version of Windows, if some of the reviews on the pages that have been disappeared by Rakuten are true.

None of these problems should have made it out of alpha testing.

[Danger]

Interesting articles. While I may find the articles a bit harsh I can't however say they are untrue. I love my Kobo, I just wish they would pull their heads out of the sand and really truely listen to their customers. Allow us to beta test. Sure do a closed beta test and work out what bugs they find. Once the bugs "appear" to be squashed, do a public beta test so that those bugs that "appear" to be squashed are in fact dead. One proponent of the beta group has said that a good lot of the bugs we found with the official and supposedly stable firmware weren't found when they were beta testing. I really don't mind beta testing but damnit I like to know when I am beta testing and thereby provide proper constructive critism as to what needs fixing rather than some of my kneejerk reactions that I had to the new firmware.

[murg]

Another article: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/07/2...mazons-kindle/

And a translated Japanese page from earlier: http://translate.google.com/translat...2Fnews106.html

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by murg

You're dreamin...

I am...

Though a sensible company would do exactly that. Because - of course - repeated releases of buggy firmware will give the company a bad name which will obviously result in lower sales...

So the only dream is that Kobo will wake up and act sensible for a change...

Also open beta tests would be a very good idea.

I have been part of a forum of a company that had open beta firmware for their products. And there was never a problem with official releases. Any bugs were found in beta tests.

That's a company I trust. You know what you can expect in the future (from looking at the betas, even if you don't try them yourself - features were always described in the forum as well). And they didn't use unwilling customers as beta testers, only willing ones. With Kobo I often feel I'm already part of the beta testers without being one officially...

[hidari]

WELCOME to the world of ebook readers.... Updates?..... Pie in the Sky.... Had to wait for aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages to get an update from Bookeen and Pocketbook for my readers..... Good luck with the Kobo updates....but as some have said sometimes the update ends up being for the worst...

[murg]

My guess as to the reason that Kobo doesn't have an open beta test is that someone in Kobo management is afraid that they'll get a bad reputation if they release buggy beta test versions.

Or... they think that their features are so commercially advantageous that they don't want to give the competition a peek in. To that: is Facebook sharing a feature tipper? Probably not. Is Reading Life a feature tipper? Probably not? Is the Japanese version a secret? Ummm.. no.

This mentality is also leading to the massive release every 3-4 months, rather than smaller releases fixing the bugs. So, any problems or bugs are taking months to get resolved, and when they are, you get a whole set of new problems and bugs.

And, as is becoming clear from some of the posts of the beta testers, they load the software in ways that normal users don't. So no one is really testing the normal user update experience.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by murg

My guess as to the reason that Kobo doesn't have an open beta test is that someone in Kobo management is afraid that they'll get a bad reputation if they release buggy beta test versions.

Oh, I can totally see how it is so much better to release buggy official firmware.

Originally Posted by murg

Or... they think that their features are so commercially advantageous that they don't want to give the competition a peek in. To that: is Facebook sharing a feature tipper? Probably not. Is Reading Life a feature tipper? Probably not? Is the Japanese version a secret? Ummm.. no.

And it doesn't seem like someone had the urge to copy Kobo's Facebook stuff yet - or did I miss something?

Most people I ever talked to about the Touch could very well go without all that Facebook stuff... so if anyone knew that a new Facebook thingy would come to the Kobo there will be something between a yawn and a - but surely no "oh, let's add that faster to our device than Kobo can make it official for theirs" from any other company...

This mentality is also leading to the massive release every 3-4 months, rather than smaller releases fixing the bugs. So, any problems or bugs are taking months to get resolved, and when they are, you get a whole set of new problems and bugs.

And that's exactly the problem here. Kobo could do so much better if they'd try something different for a change (after so many failures in a row...)...

[hidari]

Another problem.... Rakuten is a huge company...Maybe the Kobo is not high on their list of priorities... i.e... Sony would rather make profit on films or TVs or computers than on ebook readers...much more profit....Profits in ereaders may not be that high for big companies....