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Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
I always love the "working as intended" line. If I code something to specs and it doesn't make any sense for it to work that way then yes, it is not a bug. But if it doesn't make sense for it to work that way it should have been caught during the planning process of the application. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe only Dogsbreath and I have an issue with this. But it seems absolutely illogical that I would want to sort projects by due date and NOT have the actions inside of those projects ALSO sorted by due date.
OK, that's great. Those are good suggestions for improving the product. Were you involved in any of the deep discussions on these forums during the alpha and beta programs? Did you send your suggestions to Omni Group with the Feedback menu option? If not, please do!

But I still don't see much evidence of a significant number of "obvious bugs".
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
Let me repeat, if a bug were found that was affecting the use of the application we didn't add it to a list of bugs and plan to release all the fixes at once. We fixed it, tested the fix, and deployed it.
We identified the bugs in that Known Issues thread after we shipped 1.0. We immediately started working on fixing them, but we also posted those known issues to the forums to let people know about the problems rather than just pretending they didn't exist until we fixed them. (Some have already been fixed in the 1.0.1 sneaky peeks, but some people aren't testing those beta releases and we still want them to know about the issues.)

Quote:
You may not be aware of any examples of exemplary customer service but that does not mean they don't exist.
We do try to reply to all support email within one business day, and for most of our products we've usually done much better than that (sometimes replying within minutes, frequently within hours).

Unfortunately for our support team, OmniFocus has been incredibly successful, with a product launch that far exceeds anything we've had for any of our other products. So even though we pre-hired two support people specifically to handle OmniFocus support email before we launched, they've still been overwhelmed—which is why we're hiring more. Hopefully we'll be back to our usual standards soon. (And we certainly won't be satisfied until we are!)

Quote:
5) So let me get this straight, the INTENDED function is that actions should not be sorted inside of projects?
Yes, that's correct: we assume that the order of actions in a project is important, and so we never change that order in planning mode. (It can represent the dependencies in a sequential project, or the priorities in a parallel project.) It's easy to reorder actions if you want them in a different order, and we do offer the ability to select actions within a project and sort them manually (using the Sort submenu in the Edit menu).

Last edited by Ken Case; 2008-02-20 at 11:11 AM..
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
Yes, that's correct: we assume that the order of actions in a project is important, and so we never change that order in planning mode. (It can represent the dependencies in a sequential project, or the priorities in a parallel project.) It's easy to reorder actions if you want them in a different order, and we do offer the ability to select actions within a project and sort them manually (using the Sort submenu in the Edit menu).
When you put it that way it does make sense for a great deal of projects. I also appreciate the option to sort via the Edit menu. However, the sort options available via the Edit menu (By Name, By Date Added, By Date Completed) don't help. Is there a possibility we might see By Due Date added here? Date Added doesn't seem all that helpful. The nature of the way you suggest using OmniFocus is that you are just brain dumping tasks into it as opposed to thinking about it where the Date Added would come in handy. And Date Completed is only useful if you are viewing all items.

Am I the only one who has some of his "projects" as todo lists for certain ongoing projects? That is really why I need to sort the action items by due date within a project.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
However, the sort options available via the Edit menu (By Name, By Date Added, By Date Completed) don't help. Is there a possibility we might see By Due Date added here?
Yes, this is planned for 1.1.

Quote:
Am I the only one who has some of his "projects" as todo lists for certain ongoing projects? That is really why I need to sort the action items by due date within a project.
That's perfectly reasonable; the way I do this is to use the Due Items perspective, which switches over to context mode and groups all my actions by their due date.

If you'd like to focus on a particular project while you're in context mode, you can click on an action from that project and select "Focus on [project]…" from the View menu.

Hope this helps!
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
Yes, this is planned for 1.1.



That's perfectly reasonable; the way I do this is to use the Due Items perspective, which switches over to context mode and groups all my actions by their due date.

If you'd like to focus on a particular project while you're in context mode, you can click on an action from that project and select "Focus on [project]…" from the View menu.

Hope this helps!
Thanks for the suggestions. Interestingly I am still seeing some sorting issues. I did exactly as you suggested but down in the Due within the next month section the actions were not sorted correctly. I have one due on 3/18 that is showing up before one due on 3/4.

Frank
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
1) I love how you question me about how many releases have been bug free, completely ignoring the subsequent paragraph (which you later quote) that states the approach I took when bugs presented themselves. Don't cherry-pick my posts. It doesn't help to further the conversation.
Actually, if you go back and reread your post, you'll see the relevant text was all in a single paragraph. I didn't quote anything from your second paragraph.

Your first paragraph implies that you expect no bugs in a 1.0 release.

You said:
"Also, is the bar so low that we expect bugs in a 1.0 release? What are alpha and beta releases for if not to get rid of these things before releasing into production?"

You then go on to write: "I know that you can't get it perfect on the first try but when I developed software if a bug were found...".

Here you now acknowledge that it's difficult to have a bug-free first release, which is in seeming contradiction to your earlier implication. And then you also qualify your own experience with "...if a bug were found...".

These implications, seeming contradictions, and qualifications left me unclear as to your meaning. So I think my original quesiton was legitimate: "Have you ever shipped bug-free software?"

From your more recent post, I take it now that you haven't ever shipped a release without bugs, which was my point all along.

Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
2) "but at some point you just have to ship the product." ????? Really??? They weren't delivering this to an outside client. They are under NO OBLIGATION to ever ship this product. The only obligation they have is to themselves. If this is your attitude toward software development then you WILL release buggy code.
Of course they were delivering OmniFocus to an outside client: us!

And Omni certainly made an obligation to ship the product when they set the official release date and started accepting payments ahead of time! Even before that, there was an implicit obligation made by Omni Group by simply announcing that they were working on the application, discussing it openly, and inviting people to participate in the alpha and beta programs. Thousands of customers were sincerely *expecting* a release in the not-too-distant future!

But if we follow your reasoning, does any software company really have an obligation to anyone other than themselves? No matter who your customers are, corporate clients or home computer enthusiasts, if you let them down, they will eventually stop buying your products and the company will go out of business. The obligation, in its simplest form, is to stay in business and make money. Omni Group is no different from any other software development house in that respect.

Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
3) Again, it helps if you actually read what I wrote. I did NOT say that we didn't follow a planned release schedule. What I DID say is if a bug were found that was affecting the use of the application we didn't add it to a list of bugs and plan to release all the fixes at once. We fixed it, tested the fix, and deployed it.

Let me repeat, if a bug were found that was affecting the use of the application we didn't add it to a list of bugs and plan to release all the fixes at once. We fixed it, tested the fix, and deployed it.

There are different levels of bugs to be sure but the one I mentioned about the sorting order is NOT one that I would let wait to be grouped with other fixes.
OK, no need to get snarky. You didn't say that you didn't follow a planned release schedule. You also didn't say that you did. Let me clarify my question:

So, you fix it, test it, and deploy it. What does "deploy" mean in this case? Ship to a customer? If so, are you shipping each fix individually? Or do you accumulate multiple fixes into a point release and ship that to customers at planned intervals? I think most software shops do the latter, including Omni Group. But it sounded like you were advocating the former, no?

Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
4) You may not be aware of any examples of exemplary customer service but that does not mean they don't exist. I deal with many companies that provide fast responses and they DO NOT require extra money in order to do this. Heck, Jet Brains (makers of IntelliJ IDEA) actually respond to queries in less than 30 minutes on EVERY occasion that I have asked them a question. Yes, less than 30 minutes.
That's great, Jet Brains sounds like they have good customer service. I hadn't heard of them before and I've never used any of their products. But I can't think of any other companies that guarantee 24 hour response time (without additional service contracts). Sometimes you might get a response in 24 hours, but it's not guaranteed.

But that's not to say I haven't had exemplary customer service on many occasions from lots of software companies, some even within 30 minutes of my original request. Heck, I bet even Omni Group has at times responded to a customer in under 30 minutes.

But I still think expecting a guaranteed 24 hour response *all* the time without a special service contract in expecting too much and unrealistic. If you can find it, great. Enjoy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
5) So let me get this straight, the INTENDED function is that actions should not be sorted inside of projects? I suppose if that is how they INTENDED for it to work then it isn't a bug. It doesn't make any sense to me that it would work that way but I didn't create the specification for this product.
Did you participate in any of the discussions of this very topic in the alpha or beta programs? If not, I strongly urge you to do a search of the forum.

Ultimately, it was decided that Planning Mode should be project-oriented and Context mode should be action-oriented. So each mode sorts its items accordingly. Sorting actions independently in Planning Mode is troublesome when everything is presented inside projects.

Note that you can also right-click a selection of actions inside a project and choose a manual sort order, but Due Date is not currently among the options.

Again, if you have strong feelings about this or good ideas on how things can be improved, I urge you to start a thread and state your case. And be sure to send your ideas to Omni Group via the Help->Send Feedback... menu item.

Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
6) It is a waste of time, no matter who you are, to work through bugs just to be able to use a piece of software. Unless you are a paid tester then it is by definition a waste of your time. I'm not sure why you would have a problem with that statement.
I don't have a problem with that statement. I don't want to have to sort through serious bugs anymore than any other paying customer.

But didn't you just acknowledge that this sorting issue was not a bug? And your only other bug report was non-reproducible, wasn't it?

So what other bugs are you wasting your time on? I'm not trying to be facetious. I'd really like to know, because I've not encountered any real problems. I do have a list of small issues, but nothing that really wastes my time. I make a note of it, send feedback to Omni, and occasionally discuss it here.

It was almost fun, seeing Omni listening to the feedback and fixing issues all throughout the alpha and beta phases. This has maybe slowed down a bit since the final release, but there's still regular activity in the sneaky peak builds.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by frankly View Post
Interestingly I am still seeing some sorting issues. I did exactly as you suggested but down in the Due within the next month section the actions were not sorted correctly. I have one due on 3/18 that is showing up before one due on 3/4.
By default, the "Due" perspective groups actions by their due date but doesn't actually sort actions within each group by their individual due dates. If you want to sort actions within a group, you'll need to set the sorting order as well. (You can do this by clicking on the sorting popup in the view bar, or by selecting "Sorting->Due" from the View menu.)

Does that help?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Case View Post
By default, the "Due" perspective groups actions by their due date but doesn't actually sort actions within each group by their individual due dates. If you want to sort actions within a group, you'll need to set the sorting order as well. (You can do this by clicking on the sorting popup in the view bar, or by selecting "Sorting->Due" from the View menu.)

Does that help?
Yep, that did it.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toadling View Post
A lot.

I really really don't have time to respond to every one of your points. Some of them are valid questions so I'm not trying to just dodge but some of them are you reading something into what I wrote that is not what I intended and I don't have time to rehash and rehash these in some sort of infinite loop.

I will answer a couple of quick points:

1) By deploy I meant to deploy to the production environment. I developed web applications for Fortune 100 companies so that is where the term deploy comes in, deploy to a production web server.
2) Critical bugs (i.e. those that affected how the application worked and did not have a workaround) were fixed, tested, and the new code deployed ahead of other planned releases. The code for these fixes was then incorporated into the other lines.
3) Of course you can't delay forever but as a private company the ultimate decision lies with OmniGroup as to when they announce and eventually release a product. NOTHING forces a release. In fact, a company can pull a product completely if they run into a significant problem. They will take a hit for that too but that is another story.
4) This isn't about shipping bug-free software. It is about how quickly bugs are fixed once you know they are there.
5) Jet Brains is a great company with great products. Unless you have done large scale Java development you probably wouldn't have heard of them.

Back to work.
 
Yeah, I've already spent too much time in this thread too. And I don't want any hard feelings over this really very minor topic. So please, take no offense at any of my comments.

To wrap up:

1) I still believe Omni Group's release schedule is perfectly acceptable. I am aware of no critical bugs, or even major ones, so accumulating a variety of fixes into a series of point releases seems reasonable to me.

2) True, at the most basic level, nothing forces a release from the Omni Group except the desire for the Omni Group to remain solvent. But isn't this the case for all commercial enterprises? Nothing forces Apple to release new products, but if they didn't or were very slow to market, they'd certainly lose money! So at some point, you'd better get something out the door, even if it's not perfect.

3) All my development experience has been in C++, Python, PHP, and JavaScript, so that explains why I haven't come across Jet Brains. But if I ever get into Java development, I'll be sure to check them out. Thanks for the heads up.
 
 


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