Worst case customer handling?!

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

If it continues to sell doesn't that mean they "don't" need to do anything to it? If it doesn't sell they either need to improve it or drop it.

BOb

I was thinking in terms of revenue/cost. If it continues to bring in revenue, then it's easier to get management to approve of budgeting some money towards software support. If it doesn't bring in revenue, then I expect they'll eventually drop it. I don't see them budgeting money to improve it if it's not selling at this point. If it were a new product, yes, but not now.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by nekokami

At this point, I think iRex is better off giving the source to the community, which is what they seem to plan on doing. That's fine. It would be great if they could also cut the price of the iLiad and sell it as-is, since they don't seem to want to support it anyway, but I suppose the nominal amount of each unit price that they set aside for support wouldn't make much difference anyway.

I agree. I also wonder if iRex would be interested in making any of the community improvements available as "official" releases. For example, I'm thinking if the community fixed the content lister limitation, would iRex take that and release it as 2.13. That would make a lot of iLiad users happy who aren't savy enough to download/install third party software. It would also be a big PR boost for iRex in that there would be "new updates" without them having to task their resources with it. They'd have to do some testing and create a release, but it's a lot less work if they don't have to do the development.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I was thinking in terms of revenue/cost. If it continues to bring in revenue, then it's easier to get management to approve of budgeting some money towards software support.

Not my experience. The products that have low support calls, customers that like it they ignore and don't market, sell or develop. The new products that have tons of problems, high support calls, unhappy customers they spend more money developing and fixing.

The bean counters will say "why spend money on this when it is selling well and we are making money on it"?

BOb

[sasilk]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

They did originally promise suspend/hibernate and later said that they won't be able to deliver it. [...] I'm not aware of any recent power management promises which they have made.

That's pretty well what I was referring to. I wasn't aware of the later announcement.

However, promising to deliver something that you don't even know is possible isn't exactly the brightest move. It smacks of "Look we're working on it, please just shut up and go away." I don't really think it was that way but perception can be everything - it can make or break a single product company.

Originally Posted by Shaggy

They've said that the main reason they are not continuing development of the iLiad is that they don't have enough resources to work on both.

In which case it isn't a complementary product, by definition, unless it's considered 'complete' as it is now.

Hands up all those who think the iLiad is complete as it stands?

Don't get me wrong - I love my iLiad. But there's so much more it could be, and I think it's a bit rough to expect people to lay out the premium price they charge for either an EOL product or a completely new one if you want something that will have the features that you were told the original would have.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by sasilk

Don't get me wrong - I love my iLiad. But there's so much more it could be, and I think it's a bit rough to expect people to lay out the premium price they charge for either an EOL product or a completely new one if you want something that will have the features that you were told the original would have.

IMO, that's why you don't lay out the price until it can do what you need it to.

[sasilk]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

IMO, that's why you don't lay out the price until it can do what you need it to.

Oh, it does what I needed it to, at the time. I didn't find out about a lot of the other possibilities until after I already had it.

I'm not so much disappointed in the iLiad as I am in the company.