Are we ungrateful?

Sniff … yet again no mention of Cross … I feel left out!

But seriously. Software development can be a real b*tch and unfortunately many companies have a business model that calls for rather infrequent major updates, with the minor updates mainly dealing with bug fixes and just some small tweaks and the occassional “new” feature.

Problem with that (old skool) model is that while you are developing and testing, and changing and rewriting and testing some more, the world moves on. So by the time you have created what you wrote a plan for a year or year and a half earlier, it has already been outdated by new developments in hardware, by competitors beating you to the punch or any other host of reasons.

Clever companies release (very) frequent updates that obviously contain bugfixes (gotta fix what’s broken) but also will have one or more new features. Development cycles typically last 4 weeks and at the end of that period there is a potentially deliverable product available. You might decide to wait for the next bit to be ready too (because they are complimentary for example), but the end result of a 4-week cycle is a workable product. At the beginning of each cycle you re-evaluate your feature list, it’s priority and you can quickly adapt to things is the market so dictates.

That way a program becomes a living thing that evolves on a monthly or bi-monthly or even quarterly basis, rather than something you buy and then stays the same for a year or more, after which you have to get used to a whole load of new features, often new looks and even new workflow.

I think the companies that manage the latter way of working will have the flexibility to be quickest to market customer demand driven solutions, as opposed to coming out every 1 or 2 years with yet another “NEW” version based on 1 to 2 year old customer wishes.

The thing is that most products are not inventions, they are at best innovations. And innovations have a habit of triggering new innovations. So, by releasing a new feature, you might be triggering a respons from your users that says something like “wow, that is great, would it be possible to add this or that to enhance that feature”? Suppose you can realise that enhancement in 2 or 3 months time, you think that would be keeping your user base happy?

To answer your question on “are we spoiled”. Sure we are spoiled. Gear is cheap and there is no really bad gear around anymore. Even the simplest gear has more features than the setups with TTs or CDJs of old. It’s more compact, lighter, can be often carried in a decent sized backpack. The software takes care of so many things it’s sometimes ridiculous.

In my opinion there are a few reasons for the increase of complaints:

1) Old pro’s weren’t gear heads to the extend that some of the newer generation digital DJs are (this goes for more than just DJ geat btw, these generations are gear heads too in other areas, like smartphones and tablets for example)

2) With gear being so affordable, many more people (try to) walk the path. In the old days only those willing to go the distance made it to a place where there actually was something like a pro-ish set-up. You don’t b*tch about the gear if you finally made it there, you work with it.

3) There is such a high rate of new releases of gear and software, that the manufacturers have created this feeling of “the next development is right around the corner, hurry up guys, what’s next?”.

You raised a good question Klaus and I am curious to hear what others think.

Greetinx.

This is the issue we have now in all technology. DJ gear, tablets, laptops, smartphones, TVs, video game consoles, etc.

Everyone wants some new awesome amazing big thing to happen every year. If one releases an update with just fixes, they get disappointed.

I see the same complaints with Traktor. Frankly, I dunno why people scream for 1000 new bells and whistles when they don’t use the full capabilities of their current setup.