Quality

[sigabort]

i have worked in the software industry for nearly 2 decades and i've seen this situation more times than I care to remember where you're treading water (or sinking) trying to balance new functionality against maintaining/fixing the existing product - the difference here is they have chosen to actually sit down and address the issue rather than hoping/pretending its just going to majically disappear and they'll all wake up in 2010 with a faultless product. good move guys - when it all works out you'll be a shining example to the rest of the industry

[dinaiz]

I applaud the innovation, but I think Live missed the boat by not doing whatever it took to get a reputation as a full featured DAW (basics not bundled content), they already had the innovation angle.

INteresting point of view ! According to you, which features are missing from live to make it a "full featured DAW" ?

[hacktheplanet]

Fantastic! This is why I love you Ableton.
I bet when they finish their overhaul, my change jar will finally have enough that I can afford an upgrade.

[evon]

Good, maybe I'll soon be able to upgrade to L8

[ark]

8.1.1 is now available. Yay!

[glitchrock-buddha]

WOW...

.. I can't believe it's almost NAMM time again! That means Live 8 was announced a year ago. Jeez, I still think of it as a brand new release! To me, Live 9 is unthinkable until Live 8 starts to feel mature and robust, so this is a great announcement.

Also, the whole Max for Live thing sort of made 8.1 feel like a new version entirely. It seems like it had enough of an impact on the program that it still needs a while for purely bug fix updates, as opposed to new functionality updates.

Here's to Live 9 being announced next fall at the earliest.

[headquest]

Good, maybe I'll soon be able to upgrade to L8

One thing I don't understand - as I saw somebody mention on CDM... considering the seriousness of the situation as outlined by the CEOs and Reobert Henke in this thread, shouldn't sales of Live 8 have been withdrawn until it is working as advertised?

[H20nly]

Well geez, who gives a toss about 9?

A tight 8 would be way better than that.

+1

i just want a tight 8, as it is in terms of features, so i have enjoyment again using it.

i don't care about super duper functions all to often it's only a cheap excuse for people who can't produce and write music anyways.

I just want a dead stable tool, that let's me create for hours and hours and hours without a headache.

+1 Yeah take the foot of the gas Abes. I have no hunger for a Live 9 with more features. Anyway it most likely won't have assignable LFOs or recordable session automation. I'll still manage to make tracks without them or bezier automation curves and track comping somehow Plus this will give me time to get the cash together for Max4live (money is tighter for everyone in 2010 no?). I hope they spend all the time it takes to squash every bug they can find. I assume Ableton will manage without the cash injection from a new version but this way sales for m4l will probably go up anyway.

a completely stable 8 would be a new feature

the only sales that not releasing 9 would affect is all the people who gotta have the new thing. I'm sure thats a lot of you, but in terms of someone just getting on board... i.e. the new customer.... how many has Ableton lost since about half way through the release of version 8?

the trick is to get the new customers interested by keeping the old customers happy. as long as the old customers are sitting around licking their lips for the next version and the only gripe they have is that there hasn't been an announcement, then Ableton is perfectly positioned to acquire new customers and turn them in to the next wave of dribbling wolves bent on some unannounced dream scape feature wishlist.

[H20nly]

shouldn't sales of Live 8 have been withdrawn until it is working as advertised?

yeah thats not suicidal
c'mon man.

Here's to Live 9 being announced next fall at the earliest.

+1

[d-track]

some (many) cpu optimization in the code would also appreciated along bugfixes.
can we expect that in the near future? abes?

[mkelly]

tonight I mentioned this new development to a few friends who are involved in software development
they couldn't believe it

I think that tells you something

I'll second your friends astonishment. Suspending dev time on "the new thing" and re-assigning everyone, or even some, of the primary dev staff to bug fixing is something you never hear. Ever. (Except today of course...)

Is this not pretty much what Apple did with Snow Leopard? They concentrated on performance, re-writing things like the Finder to work faster and more reliably, rather than lots of new "big-ticket" features.

My own employer (telco software) has done similar in the past. We had what internally was known called a "bug war" where all development employees were re-assigned to stablising our current releases as opposed to working on new features.

I don't think what the Abe's are doing is that unusual - except in that they're shouting about it. At a guess it's probably only a reputation saving move.

Personally, while I appreciate that they're focusing on bug eradication, I'd like to see more transparency (I echo the calls for published bug lists) and to get the users more involved. Get a proper external bug-tracker going so that users can submit their own issues. Make t-shirts so that users who submit good bug reports get a t-shirt that acts as a badge of honour - "I squashed an Ablebug and all I got was this lousy t-shirt"

I'd also like to see less fawning from some of the users here - yes it's good that the Abe's have acknowledged the flaws, but they were still naughty developers in putting out overly buggy software

[Coupe70]

suspend all development towards new features while the
whole team joins forces to address the current issues. This
effort is open ended and will result in a free Live 8 update;

I would be interested in what that actually means.
How many people were working in the development team and how
many in the bug fix team ? Without having an impression of that
the whole statement can mean a lot or next to nothing...

[H20nly]

^

what color socks are they wearing?
are they all German born?
how much money are they saving for retirement?

give an inch...

[Lamont]

I'm happy to see that Ableton is finally getting its priorities straight. Fixing minor and major bugs and streamlining Live 8 is much more important than trying to cram more and more half finished features into an already complex piece of software.

Thank you Ableton.

[djgroovy]

I welcome and applaud this announcement.