Reply To: Review and Assessment of Current Podium Abilities

infinitoar, let me just take on the two first points you made, as I believe that will suffice.

The ‘only One Man’ defense: I used to agree somewhat with that thinking, but recently I believe Frits has himself proved this completely false. The conversion to tablet PC would be a huge undertaking. If he can make time for this, he can instead take on — as I pointed out above — the mere 6 to 10 features the vast majority of us can agree we need. The “only One Man’ argument is a total FAIL.

The ‘users requests are all over the place’ defense. This argument, too, is a total FAIL. If you have been following the recent threads that addressed this specifically — the ‘list’ thread and the ‘poll’ thread — then you know this argument is false. The most outstanding feature of the list thread was that requests were remarkably similar. Yes, some lists were more complete than others, and as I pointed out there were a very small number of unique ones, but it is more than clear now that those users who took the time and effort to speak up were asking for almost identical features needed. I have no sympathy for users who want anything far different who did not participate, since the discussion is edging on 3 or 4 weeks now. To suddenly chime in now to negate all we’ve discussed or make a case for features far different is certainly allowable but also a bit immature. I mean, were you on a mountaintop vacation? Well, if so, make that argument. To sum up, clearly NO, we know what’s needed and 99.9% is nothing you won’t find on any other good DAW.

I’ve tried to look this matter over from every possible angle and defense before posting last night. I find that the arguments against simply don’t ‘wash’ any way you use them. I know you were playing devil’s advocate here and turned it all around at your post’s 2nd half, but I need to attack the falsehoods and logic of what you began with, because those are all anyone can try to use to nix feature improvements.

I am not a dev. I do not code. I have not seen the source code for Podium. However, if there is only one thing all those nearly useless years at the University taught me, it is how to do good research. I can give you a pretty fair estimate of what it takes to get the various jobs done. We’re not asking here for something like taking a huge pile of 32-bit software and suddenly taking it to 64. Also, note that many needed features could be added piecemeal without disrupting everything else. I’d suggest, though, that the MIDI features would be more convenient if done as a whole ‘package’ to save running over the same old ground many times. This would be a significant bit of work, yet less than piecemeal in the long run, and less work than compressing the snot out of everything to fit into a tablet existence.

I stand by the review I’ve posted and its several points, and I further suggest that anyone who wishes to take on a varying viewpoint do his research well and present facts as a defense. Personal protests consisting of emotions, whining, the ‘I wouldn’t use that, I only record church choirs or accordions live’ is simply not going to cut it here. Many of us have paid into this with not only our cash but great efforts spent in mastering this software. Either this should follow the ‘rules’ as they stand, or they need to be changed to reflect some other reality. Again, as they stand, it is:

“Software updates are released frequently with a user-driven development cycle.”

That’s the software I invested in, not Crystal or Audacity.