Transparency

[mekanism1200]

I have noticed the lack of transparency and openness of Ableton as a company with regards to development. Did anyone even know about 9.5 and what the features were going to be?

Microsoft is allowing users to have a more direct path with the developers with the insider program to help shape the future of their products, and it seems to be working very well for them. Knowing that a company is taking feedback from the customers allows those customers to feel part of the evolution of the product helping to boost brand loyalty.

It seems in 9.5 many requested items were implemented, but we weren't told they would be or not. I guess it would be nice to have a glimpse of what is coming to know that our feature requests and bug reports are not falling on deaf ears.

Or maybe I'm wrong and there is an outlet that Ableton uses to show us whats coming and I don't know what that is. Social Media?

[login]

I think the market for windows and Ableton Live are quite different, specially now that Ableton has to compete with BW.

[mekanism1200]

It is a bit offtopic but trust me when I say that Microsoft doesn't pay half as much attention to the Inside program as you make it sound here. I've been part of that and well; there were plenty of people who warned them about the irky way Windows 8 worked and how the start screen vs. start menu was a horrid idea. And not just a small group mind you: hundreds of people. And we've all seen the result.

In the end it's my impression that the thing Microsoft hopes for the most is cheap beta testing. Most people who sign up don't care about anything but getting their hands on the new product(s).

Microsoft has a huge reputation of taking in feedback and then fully ignoring it. I've seen the same thing with the Visual Studio forums; when they thought it was a great idea to strip all the color from Visual Studio and turn all the icons you have into black small 'shapes' making it pretty much impossible to quickly differentiate between, say, save project (the well known blue floppy icon) and open project (the yellow folder icon).

In fact: within 3 (!) days a suggestion to please, please, please bring back the colors to the icons on the VS suggestion forum got over 10,000 votes eventually getting around 30,000+ in a few weeks time. Context: for a good suggestion a normal amount of votes would be 5,000 to 7,200. The result? Nothing. Eventually some colors found their way back, but only in a new version of Visual Studio; which meant that many users had only one option which was getting a new license. Unless they wanted to use the free version of course. But if you have projects sitting in a full version then trust me: that's not an option.

For the record: Microsoft also isn't like Ableton which gives you a nice discount if you upgrade their software. Nuuu, with Microsoft you'll get some thanks for picking up the license, then you can pay the full price again when the next version comes out (= approx. E 600+ Euro's, katsching!).

Eventually they did find somewhat of a solution for that: pushing subscription models in favor of personal licenses. So now some of us get to pay per month in order to be able to develop stuff

Sorry to break it to you but Microsoft's "transparency" is hardly what you claim it to be.

I never said what Microsoft is doing is perfect, but at least you know they are receiving the information and either ignoring it or acknowledging it. The subscription model is the way things are headed for just about everything so its no surprise they went down that road. On another music production forum about Windows 10 the head of the windows 10 pro audio dev team chimed in to let people know what they were working on and answered weeks worth of questions in that thread. I don't see that kind of thing here on these forums.

I'm not knocking Ableton here, just want to know if there is a better way for Ableton to interact with the user community.

[mrgrim3]

Microsoft is not transparent at all really

how many times did they try to sneak in the windows 10 installer under a recommended update

and you have to click multiple links to see what the update even do

Microsoft makes me want to switch to mac personally because of their shenanigans recently

[tom_d]

At the end of the day, Ableton have to remain competitive, and in this case, that will have meant keeping Push 2 under wraps as long as possible so their competitors are caught off-guard... which in turn, will have meant that an open beta of 9.5 probably wasn't feasible as there would be too many clues about 9.5 in there. They have actually got a lot better at transparency with 9.x, there is a public beta program with discussion boards etc - obviously Ableton could be a lot more open in an ideal world, but in reality that's true of most reasonable sized companies. I still love 'em regardless

[jlgrimes]

I have noticed the lack of transparency and openness of Ableton as a company with regards to development. Did anyone even know about 9.5 and what the features were going to be?

Microsoft is allowing users to have a more direct path with the developers with the insider program to help shape the future of their products, and it seems to be working very well for them. Knowing that a company is taking feedback from the customers allows those customers to feel part of the evolution of the product helping to boost brand loyalty.

It seems in 9.5 many requested items were implemented, but we weren't told they would be or not. I guess it would be nice to have a glimpse of what is coming to know that our feature requests and bug reports are not falling on deaf ears.

Or maybe I'm wrong and there is an outlet that Ableton uses to show us whats coming and I don't know what that is. Social Media?

Ableton vs Windows.

One is pretty much a Monopoly.

The other one has several competitors in a relatively small market.

It would be nice to know the scoop on things but if they made it public information, Bitwig (or whoever else) would know their strategy.


Most DAW manufacturers keep their upcoming software releases guarded. About the only exception is Reaper but Cockos is a very unique company.


Even if it isn't about competition, you can shoot yourself in the foot by giving release dates. I'm sure Ableton works on a lot of stuff that just doesn't meet standard or takes a few versions to get right. If they promise too much there would be a lot of pissed folks when they don't meet the deadline.

[mekanism1200]

I have noticed the lack of transparency and openness of Ableton as a company with regards to development. Did anyone even know about 9.5 and what the features were going to be?

Microsoft is allowing users to have a more direct path with the developers with the insider program to help shape the future of their products, and it seems to be working very well for them. Knowing that a company is taking feedback from the customers allows those customers to feel part of the evolution of the product helping to boost brand loyalty.

It seems in 9.5 many requested items were implemented, but we weren't told they would be or not. I guess it would be nice to have a glimpse of what is coming to know that our feature requests and bug reports are not falling on deaf ears.

Or maybe I'm wrong and there is an outlet that Ableton uses to show us whats coming and I don't know what that is. Social Media?

Ableton vs Windows.

One is pretty much a Monopoly.

The other one has several competitors in a relatively small market.

It would be nice to know the scoop on things but if they made it public information, Bitwig (or whoever else) would know their strategy.


Most DAW manufacturers keep their upcoming software releases guarded. About the only exception is Reaper but Cockos is a very unique company.


Even if it isn't about competition, you can shoot yourself in the foot by giving release dates. I'm sure Ableton works on a lot of stuff that just doesn't meet standard or takes a few versions to get right. If they promise too much there would be a lot of pissed folks when they don't meet the deadline.

I didn't mean to make this a Microsoft vs ableton debate, that was a bad example.

I see your point about competition but there are things that are specific to Ableton that wouldn't affect their bottom line. For example, making certain M4L devices native. No other company has M4L and letting us know a little more about that probably wouldn't hurt them.

I think many of us want to know a little more about what to expect in the future, and whether we even want to keep using Ableton as other programs do offer some amazing things. 9.5 was definitely helpful, as my confidence has been partially restored in the Ableton team coming up with really cool shit (like those lovely filters we now have).

[login]

Personally I don't think it's healthy to be so concerned about the future, it's just anxiety. In my view is also this kind of unsatisfaction that produces consumerism.

Do you like the product as it is? Do you think other products are better now? Use whatever is the best for you now, the future could take a long time.

I went to the BW forum recently and they are quite pissed about a few major bugs (stuff like bounce not working, can you imagine what a PITA is that?). So I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side.

[mekanism1200]

Personally I don't think it's healthy to be so concerned about the future, it's just anxiety. In my view is also this kind of unsatisfaction that produces consumerism.

Do you like the product as it is? Do you think other products are better now? Use whatever is the best for you now, the future could take a long time.

I went to the BW forum recently and they are quite pissed about a few major bugs (stuff like bounce not working, can you imagine what a PITA is that?). So I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side.

Yeah there is a lot of truth to what you are saying. I'm somewhat happy with Ableton as is but one feature that would really make what I do easier is tabbed projects like BW. That doesn't mean I'm willing to make the switch just for that as there are many differences between the 2 programs that make the learning curve steeper than I currently have time for.

With that said, I would have a different outlook if Ableton were to not implement that feature or something similar to it in X. If I had the money I would own both, but as of now I would have to sell my license to afford something else.

Knowing that the grass is usually not greener on the other side has kept me from jumping ship.

[BoddAH]

The lack of transparency is probably for the better.

1. it removes pressure from the developer and allows them to release new content/features when they're actually ready, not when an arbitrary public deadline has been reached or an angy mob of customers becomes impatient for the release of an announced feature (immediately).

2. it makes sense in a small, competitive market based mainly on innovation. Revealing a feature publicly also means revealing it to the competition. It's beyond dumb doing that long before it's even released.

3. The surprise and WOW effect is fun and enjoyable, I am actually happy and exhilerated at Push 2 and the new features of Live 9.5. Had they been announched 6 months ago, I would just feel jaded and entitled to those things and I'd mainly focus on the problems and the things that didn't live up to the hype.

I think overall it's just obviously better and more healthy. Creating hype peeks into work in progress is just a cheap strategy many companies use to sell expensive stuff on promises that are almost never kept.

Developing awesome things in secret and giving them away for free (exclusing hardware obviously), now that's nice business practice.

[pencilrocket]

because ableton does't want to be predicted by bitwig...