Complaints to SD about OD

from Stardock Forums
Hello,

So the last thread got locked because it went a little off-topic so I'll make sure this one stays on topic. And right from the word go I must address the last to posts that were made in the last thread that got locked.

well ivan to mee that sounds like your not interested in hearing the OD+ works, your just determained to find fault with a program that in all honesty is probably not working because of something YOU have done to cause it to not function correctly.


Quite on the contrary, I would very much like for OD+ to work 100%, however that hasn't happened for over a year. And yes, I am determined to find problems with this software, which is what testing ultimately boils down to. And no, it's not something I have done because on numerous occasions the support did inform me that they has received reports of similar problems.

I was also given the answers (by Jafro) to the following questions:

1. Changelog for alpha of OD+ that's available through Impulse?
2. Are there any ideas about plans of releasing the next stable build of OD+?
3. What sort of pricing structure to upgrade to 2.0 (when it comes out) should we expect?
4. Which current bugs in OD+ are given more priority?
5. Why was WindowBlinds treated preferentially last year in terms of updates considering license price is the same?

Answers:

For questions 1-4:

When such information is ready for public consumption, it will be posted publicly to these forums, WinCustomize, the ObjectDock homepage etc.  If the information is not available it means that it is either not ready for public posting, or has not been finalized yet. 

For question 5:

WindowBlinds is the core technology behind a lot of what Stardock does, and multiple other projects and products rely upon it, DirectSkin and MyColors being the major ones.  When work is done on those products, often work needs to be done to WindowBlinds as well.

Now let's break it down.

1. Surely some of the developers would know this information because this alpha must have been release for some purpose. The alpha has been finalised and so should have been the documentation regarding it. The only thing that is left to assume is that SD would rather us not know it because of its possible negative impact.

2. SD is a serious company so it's quite frankly obvious that they would have a roadmap of how things would go and what we can expect in the future. Such information may not be final yet, but apparently SD doesn't trust its customers enough to let them know, apparently we are not worthy.

3. Ok, this one I get. It's to do with money, it's a tricky subject. I'll guess we'll silently speculate about it.

4. This one I do not comprehend. Within each bug-tracking system you can set a priority of a bug: Production Stop, Critically Impaired, Standard etc Therefore, there are bugs within OD+ that are significantly detrimental to using the product and there are those which are minor inconveniences (whether one is or is not is a matter of personal opinion of course). Once again, it's SD's unwillingness to share such information that is puzzling. Yes, you can all sing the chorus of "It's their product, so it's up to them". Sure, that may be true, but seriously, where is the harm in letting us know such information?

5. Well it was just as I suspected. This sends a clear message that a value of the product varies greatly depending on whether it has links to any other products. It also provoes that SD does treat customers differently in terms of updates despite the fact that people pay the same amount of money for OD as they do for WB. Apparently the thought "we haven't updated OD in over a year, perhaps it would be a good thing for our customers if we do something about it" hasn't rung their minds at all.

And eclipsing the answer from Jafro was this statement

...and enjoy the present [and future] of Windows Customizing

How gobsmackingly sarcastic is that? Here I am, telling him about my problems with a product that a company he's working for makes and he's telling me to enjoy it! :( That statement has some cheek!

Astoundingly, what I haven't seen yet is a person from Stardock coming on here, putting their hands up and saying: things are not good and they can be better. Nobody said that they are sorry that OD has been put on a shelf to gather dust while the other projects proceed full steam ahead. Nobody said anything to spoil the pretty picture with the rainbow and the house with brown roof and the sun shining. It's this sense of pretentiousness and not being able to admit when things are not right are some of the worst traits of humans, let alone companies.

objectdock
15,578 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
No offense Ivan....but I've been using OD+ for several years now and I've yet to find a bug or have any instability in it. It's very "possible" that its something on your end thats causing a problem.

It's this sense of pretentiousness and not being able to admit when things are not right are some of the worst traits of humans,


Couldn't agree more. This works both ways...a lot of customers are quick to blame the software or bad support rather than admitting its something on their end. If it was half as bad as your claiming it to be I'd have gotten rid of it a long time ago.

And I think its safe to say that these guys take problems seriously...but you can't snap your fingers and expect them to jump when very few people have a problem. This is not to say that they don't care...but OD+ is not the only thing they develop...so unfortunately things take time.

Your best bet is to detail what your problem is here and maybe someone can figure it out or has already had the same problem and can tell you a fix for it.


Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Well that's very interesting WebGizmos, because in another thread here I posted a list of bugs:


1. Start menu isn't rendering properly (using Stardock's own orb)
2. Moving cursor in start menu without clicking causes temporary no-response in side docks.
3. [Request] Being able to display items from system tray in any tabbed or normal dock.
4. Saving/packaging a theme doesn't save images for system tray icons.
5. Doesn't display nVidia's icon for system tray
6. Timing out of Weather docklets
7. [Request] Flyout of weather docklets on mouseover in tabbed docks
8. Sometimes misreporting if Recycle Bin is empty or full
9. When deleting files from a portable USB HDD and using OD to empty the Bin and then trying to safely remove hardware after that fails because OD locks a process handle onto a file stored on the portable HDD.


and your response to that list of bugs was


Damn iVAN WILDER!

I had no idea people were having "that" many problems with ODP. In light of your info I can understand your frustration and I hope they get to these problems as soon as they can so you can start to appreciate and enjoy ODP when it works as it should.


Since then another issue to do with disappearing of non-tabbed docks after starting from Hibernation on Vista SP1 has surfaced so you can add one more notch to a bedpost that is OD. And support did admit that those are bugs which rules out the problem on my end completely.

OD was good but it has started to get worse. I don't know why, maybe it's because SD has more projects to deal with which means their resources are stretched, I don' know.

I'm afraid being told to stick with a buggy beta to avoid confusion (note: not because there's anything better working available) isn't taking taking problems seriously. Being told for months in a row that info has been passed onto the developers isn't taking problems seriously. Not valuing people who test software for you and provide feedback on bugs and hiccups isn't taking problems seriously. Not having the balls, excuse my French, to admit that things can be better and that OD isn't getting as much development input as it and the customers who bought it deserve isn't taking problems seriously.

Additionally, just because not many people have problems, or choose to report problems, doesn't make problems any less important. I appreciate that OD is not the only pin on their map, but I don't see why I, as a customer, should suffer because of that. It has been over a year since latest stable update and that's the only software on my PC that hasn't got a stable update in that period of time. Surely it's of the utmost importance to keep focus on all products, OD included, equally and if that's possible then start branching out. To quote a famous expression: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". I hope you can understand what I meant.
CursorFX - Customize your Windows cursor
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

iVAN WILDER ...the reference to "...and enjoy the present [and future] of Windows Customizing"  was to a Personal Message sent to you in April, and it was a postscript to the explanation of WHY Windowblinds appears to receive more attention [updates] than Object Dock.

I repeat a second time.....as far as I am aware nothing has changed. 

As and when revisions are made to any Stardock product I'm sure you will be appraised there-of, when appropriate.

Over the past [several] months you have had communication from virtually everyone relevant.  Their advice has been to roll back and/or try other beta vers.  The fact that others appear to NOT be experiencing your 'bugs' implies there is something particular to your system that is at fault.

Perhaps you are not even alone in experiencing these 'bugs', however you appear to be a singularity in their vocalizing.

The correct process for having a found bug adressed is to email [email protected] and notify them with the maximum detail to allow its replication for 'debugging'.

Then you wait.

Until such time as Stardock determines a revision/repair/whatever is a/ relevant or b/ appropriate.

That's it in a nutshell....;)

+1 Loading…
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Ivan, how many times are we going to go through this?

Support has been giving you the same answers, yet you keep bringing this up.

Alpha's are Alpha's.  They are a step below a beta.  Write documents on Alphas? I'm not even sure why we are putting out Alphas.  So, I'll admit that we screwed up there- we shouldn't have put an Alpha out on Impulse.

Otherwise, I'm sorry that you aren't happy with a product that you purchased years ago that NOW you are having problems with.

We've discussed this on the forums, it's been discussed in email with support.  It's beating a dead horse.  Sorry, but we can't fix every issue that every person has.  As stated before, OD is not shelved.  Wait full for the full release.  Nothing else can be said or done for your issue.

And, that is the official word.

Angela Marshall
VP of Operations

 

+1 Loading…
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Your argument for not installing the alpha has always been: "I don't want to install a beta-program (Impulse) just to try out an alpha version."

..well, Impulse is no longer beta and works like a charm on non-proxy systems.

Why don't you do us all a favor and install impulse and then upgrade OD+ to the newest version to see if some (or all) of your bugs are resolved?

You could actually do something constructive and give more feedback to the developers instead of ranting on the (community-)forums. Not that the "bugs" mentioned above where something to throw a hissy-fit in the beginning... chee, there are people in this world fighting for survival this very moment...

/me goes and tries to find a gif-file of a man beating a dead horse....
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
In my reply I will address the messages posted by Jafo, KarmaGirl and aufisch.

Jafo:

Are you suggesting that OD is not part of Windows Customizing? You know as well as I do that both OD and WB are parts of Windows Customizing and as such should receive equal attention.

Yes, in the past several months I had communication from almost everyone relevant. However, that's all it has been: talk. SD hasn't done anything to put things into action on a stable level. And I put it to you that all 3 releases ("stable", beta and alpha) have bugs in them. So what's the point in hopping from one horse to another? You say because some others aren't having the same problems then it's a problem on my end. Well, why hasn't support worked with me on that issue? At no point they pointed finger at me and that's because I had evidence to prove that it's a problem with OD. I have been notifying the support, there were never problems with the depth of information that I provided so I assume it was detailed enough. Why should I have to wait? :( I have a product that I paid for that doesn't work 100% every day and I haven't heard a single word on what SD is planning to do about it.

The impression I'm getting is that SD is exploiting its position of authority on such matters and sending a message that "if we want to fix it then we will, but if we don't feel like it then we won't"

KarmaGirl

Oh we are gonna go through this as many times as it takes. Support has been giving me the answers but they are the wrong answers. They don't answer the questions. Whether it's an alpha or a beta or a release, the common practice is to create a changelog to see what actually has been done. You either chose not to do it for the alpha or do not think that your customers are worthy of "...consumption..." of such information. Either of those cannot be condoned.

Yes, I purchased the product almost 2 years ago while it was version somewhere around 1.5 or just below. At the time it worked 100% as far as I can remember. What difference does that make? You decided, voluntarily, to update your product and somewhere along the way things started to go astray. You broke it so it's your obligation to fix it, yet you haven't done so.

You say that you can't fix every issue every person has. This is not true. You can, you just don't want to. You aren't even trying to. You're telling me to wait for the full release. Saying something like that would immediately raise questions that you don't have answers to, so please don't say things for which you aren't prepared to be accountable.

aufisch

Speak of the devil. I already have Impulse installed. However, since SD is not willing to provide or does not have any version history for that alpha then I am, in turn, unwilling to update because how do I know if any of the bugs I have are fixed or if the situation will get even worse?

As I stated in the previously locked thread, I have sent many pages of feedback, not to mention almost daily crash reports, screenshots, detailed explanations and did everything that was asked of me to better determine the problem. It has literally been one way traffic so the sooner the traffic lights switch the better.

You clearly don't have any problems with OD and more power to you. However, since you don't have problems then it's not your place to judge whether those bugs are important or not. If people are fighting for survival then it's their business, their life. Those bugs are important to me and I experience them every day and that should be enough.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
iVAN,

You have received the final word you're going to get from KarmaGirl (Angie).  I'm closing this thread.  I will close any further threads you open on the issue.

+2 Loading…