[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by dude

What part of features being pushed back did you miss?

Didn't miss it, but it was not relevant to the question I was answering. Blackacre complained that no timeframe was given. I pointed out that a timeframe was given. Then you complained that no timeframe was given. I pointed out the very words where it was. If you want to throw your toys out of the pram because your favorite feature isn't at the top of everyone else's wish list, be my guest, but how about we drop the factually incorrect complaints about how they aren't giving us any idea when we might see these releases? It just reinforces their view that there is little or no upside for them in sharing such information.

[dude]

whpalmer4, you are correct. They gave a time frame of summer. I missed your point about summer.

I don't intentionally throw my toys nor act like a two year old. You will find I am disappointed with a five year cycle and pushed back features that have plagued OO.

I think that Ken posting it up on his blog may not be read by all on the forum because we get caught up in thinking this is the latest information.

The feature set I was referring to were big enough to cause a fairly large response on here which Ken promptly addressed. It was not like it was *my* favorite but it appeared to be several. So this leads me to look at the OO update as a 3.9.xx update rather than an 004.0 update because the major features a large group of users apparently are requesting will be pushed back months after the 4.0 release. This is the problem I believe most of us are frustrated with.

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Didn't miss it, but it was not relevant to the question I was answering. Blackacre complained that no timeframe was given. I pointed out that a timeframe was given. Then you complained that no timeframe was given. I pointed out the very words where it was. If you want to throw your toys out of the pram because your favorite feature isn't at the top of everyone else's wish list, be my guest, but how about we drop the factually incorrect complaints about how they aren't giving us any idea when we might see these releases? It just reinforces their view that there is little or no upside for them in sharing such information.

The last time I saw such histrionics was when I told my 7-year-old boy that we weren't going to buy him anything from the ice cream truck because he'd already had a milkshake with his dinner :-)

[blackacre]

Whpalmer: In fairness, I missed the reference about OO for ipad this summer. However, that information is old and we could use an update. Furthermore, after being asked countless times on these forums and flat out ignoring the questions or answering that "we don't yet know how long it'll take to get the work done" it doesn't inspire confidence. I'll keep my eyes open a little longer but it would be REALLY nice if Brian would confirm that they really are still looking at "sometime this summer" as their post in April said. hint, hint?


Point remains: We are frustrated both by the huge delays and the lack of communication. Better communication is what I thought separated companies like Omni from behemoths like Microsoft.

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by blackacre

Point remains: We are frustrated both by the huge delays and the lack of communication. Better communication is what I thought separated companies like Omni from behemoths like Microsoft.

Speaking as one who has worked as a developer at a very small company and a very large company, I think Omni is doing you a favor. The big company's customers demand road maps, detailed schedules, etc. and to a large degree, the big company is forced to play along and ship when they said they would, whether or not they should. It leads to a real stifling effect on development, because all the managers want only minimal changes made to keep the risks small, even if the better long-term thing to do is to gut something and re-engineer it. The small, agile company has the flexibility to ship the bits when they are ready because there are no giant customers that have signed contracts with penalties for missing ship dates and so on. Obviously, it isn't good to stretch the schedule too much without managing customer expectations accordingly, but neither should you push Omni too hard to give up one of their prime advantages. My experiences with software that was shipped on a date predicted months in advance haven't been happy ones, for the most part.

I agree it's tough being a kid waiting for Christmas morning when the adults won't even tell you what month it is, but try to let the elves build the best possible toys for you :-)

[Brian]

Originally Posted by blackacre

Furthermore, after being asked countless times on these forums and flat out ignoring the questions or answering that "we don't yet know how long it'll take to get the work done" it doesn't inspire confidence.

Again, I'm sympathetic to your frustration, but answering questions that have already been answered consumes time that we could use to work on the products. That delays the very thing you're asking for.

Originally Posted by blackacre

I'll keep my eyes open a little longer but it would be REALLY nice if Brian would confirm that they really are still looking at "sometime this summer" as their post in April said. hint, hint?

We're going to do our absolute best to do so, but that's not a guarantee that we'll succeed.

Originally Posted by blackacre

Better communication is what I thought separated companies like Omni from behemoths like Microsoft.

I think we've communicated honestly and openly. I'm sorry that the answer we can give - "we don't know yet" - isn't what you want.

[Brian]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

The last time I saw such histrionics was when I told my 7-year-old boy that we weren't going to buy him anything from the ice cream truck because he'd already had a milkshake with his dinner :-)

This is getting really close to an ad hominem - please, let's not go there, even with a smiley...

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Brian

This is getting really close to an ad hominem - please, let's not go there, even with a smiley...

Not intended as anything more than a "we're all getting a little bent out of shape here" but point taken and post edited.

[Young Daniel]

blackacre...what information do you think it takes for Omni to properly estimate a release date?

[MacFrankencow]

It seems there's a lot of frustration here on this thread with people waiting in anticipation.

I just wanted to give a shout out of encouragement to the developers for both Omnioutliner for IPAD and the new Mac version.

Whenever it is released, I know they will be awesome, and I'll be first in line to purchase copies when they go on sale!

[DerekM]

I've updated the original post with the current status of OmniOutliner:


I apologize for the lack of recent OmniOutliner status updates and we greatly appreciate all your patience and enthusiasm for OO. As you may have heard, we just submitted OmniFocus for the iPad to Apple on Wednesday night (yay!). So as far as our iPad plans go, that puts OmniOutliner up next which has actually been in development for a little while already. As far as an estimated release date goes, around the end of summer is our current goal.

So where does this put OmniOutliner 4? Well, as we also mentioned before when we announced our iPad plans, we don't want the iPad app to delay development on OO4. So both OO iPad and OO4 are concurrently being worked on and work has never stopped on OO4. What's taking so long then? The last few months our OO4 developers have been very hard at work getting our outline view and related animations finished. This work is unfortunately taking much longer than anticipated. Due to this, our current best estimate for release is near the end of this year. I know this isn't what you wanted to hear, but I assure you the OO4 team is hard at work and we certainly haven't abandoned or shelved the app.

And that's the current state of all things OmniOutliner. Once again, thanks for your continued support patience!