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Originally Posted by whpalmer4
Well, as someone who has filed many hundreds of bug reports with Omni ...
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I have not reported 100's of bugs, probably 25. And I have experienced only one crash in seven years. And I re-iterate that I am a heavy OG user (light OO user).
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... you seem to take intense pride in your work.
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Yes. And thank you for noticing.
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Does the official Omni response here strike you as reinforcement of your position that bug fixes are not subject to votes? [...] See threads such as [...] and come back and tell us you can't see what OmniGraffle is doing wrong!
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I stand corrected. Omni is a much smaller company than I realised. Evidently (from the Omni responses on posts that you referred) they lump:
- straight bugs (that should be fixed without discussion)
- rare bugs (due to the feature in which the bug is encountered being rarely used, and therefore possibly worthy of discussion)
- new features
- enhancements & changes to existing features
together, and they prioritise the lump on the basis of votes. Disgraceful for a cutting edge s/w company.
And I posted a
response to Brian directly in the "sync after sleep" thread, expressing my upset, and the conflict in expectations, and the consequences, so I won't repeat that here.
We now know what we can expect in terms of changes to the product, from a company that has a short-term, non-QA approach to their business.
But leaving it at that would be incomplete for me ...
How Important Is It ?
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The auto-layout feature in OG Pro 5 has plenty of bugs, as Rob has amply demonstrated [...].
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Ok. I read the lot (but I can't be asked to open the zip files, etc, and very few others have). For the life of me, I cannot understand what Rob is going on (and on and on) about. Yes, there is a problem with auto-layout when orthogonal lines are used; yes, it clearly works well with, and is obviously skewed for, straight lines; to go on about the resulting layout being "incorrect" and expecting (demanding ?) symmetry for orthogonal lines is way over the top. My considered opinion is that auto-layout with straight lines is fine; auto-layout with orthogonal lines while not being "incorrect", could certainly use some enhancement; evidently there is not enough votes, so forget about it.
- I am all for the symmetry; clear hierarchy; clear parent-child group separations; and the reasonable amount of intelligence required to lay out a diagram with orthogonal lines different to the layout using straight lines, but clearly the product does not have that, you are getting object placement carefully designed for straight lines, there is no different placement for orthogonal lines. Deal with it. In fact I invariably use orthogonal.
- In the time that Rob spent posting those several threads, pages, and accompanying diagrams, I could have moved about 1,000 objects in 100 diagrams from their correct straight positions but "incorrect" orthogonal positions, to their correct orthogonal positions. No big deal. The correction or workaround or improvement or whatever you wish to call it is too small to warrant the demonstrated upset, let alone the hysteria.
- I think many of Rob's assertions are incorrect, and manipulative, eg. that the Omni example "promises" symmetry in the orthogonal line instance, is simply not true. So I do not agree that Rob has ably demonstrated plenty of bugs. He has certainly demonstrated a few bugs, with unnecessary volume and repetition; and the bugs are too small to worry about for the majority of people; and we now know, they do not have enough votes to motivate Omni to proceed with.
- The sync bug is likewise, annoying, but simple to work around (just hit sync).
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... Trying to work around [the auto-layout bugs] often exposes bugs in the Applescript support.
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Yes, I have already agreed (
in another of Rob's long threads) that there is an issue with the AppleScript Integration, which manifests as various bugs, it could definitely use some work. But I disagree that, as Rob posits, there is some "architectural flaw". And again there, Rob has some expectations which are not reasonable, and makes accusations which are not technically accurate, which diminishes Rob, not Omni or OmniGraffle.
And again, we have to accept, that Omni, being the size it is, has administrators who have a short term view, and who have prioritised their total work, the way they have declared, and there is simply not enough votes to deal with the AppleScript Integration issue.
Pricing/Expectations
The pricing of $50/$100 was most appropriate; the new pricing of $100/$200 places the s/w in the professional category, which means professional people use it, and they understandably have the normal expectations of professional s/w. There is a case (Australia & NZ, and some EU countries, where we have a very simple and direct Trade Practices Act) where we can demand errors to be corrected, unless the initial pre-sales documentation clearly identified that errors will not be corrected (which is the net effect of lumping errors and enhancements together and prioritising the lot). But hey, it is an American company, subject to American law, with the usual "no guarantee; condition is
as is" declarations.
The notion that they are very interested in customer feedback is clearly false. No amount of opinion posted in writing has changed their model.
Cheers
Derek