telecharge
I have nothing but respect and appreciation for your technical prowess, but I hope you can understand how difficult it is to determine whether you're speaking in an official capacity or not.
My official capacity is to say what I think. I've consulted to dozens of companies over the years, from biggies like Microsoft and Sony to tiny start-ups. I have value to them
only if I say what I think.
With respect to Cakewalk, sometimes that coincides with the "party line," sometimes not. Cakewalk does some things brilliantly, and some things...uh, less brilliantly. They too count on me saying what I think, which I've done as an interested bystander since 2000 and as part of Gibson since 2013; like you, sometimes they agree and sometimes not (usually not, but I can handle it).
Also remember that my "defenses" of Cakewalk apply equally to other software companies, because I've worked with virtually all of them. There are plenty of competitors people speak of here in "grass is greener" glowing terms that leave support tickets open for weeks, and whose software has plenty of bugs - and don't do bug hotfixes a week or two later. I don't think any less of them. I know why this happens.
People really need to understand once and for all that this is a tiny, low-margin industry with employees who make very little compared to other industries, and do what they do primarily because they love their work. You wouldn't expect to give someone $10, tell them to go to a liquor store, and then be disappointed they didn't bring back a 1979 Dom Perignon. Life just doesn't work that way.
It's demoralizing for the people creating the code at
any music software company when all they hear from their clientele is "it's not enough." But to keep it in the context of Cakewalk for now, just in this forum you'll find comments along the lines of...
"I want excellent but free support."
"I want nothing but bug fixes, I don't need new features."
"I want new features."
"I want a better staff view."
"I want SONAR to equal dedicated beat-making programs in terms of beat-making."
"I want a Mac version."
"I want the things in the features and requests forum to be implemented."
"I want ARA integration with VocALign."
"I want new control surface plug-ins for all the new controllers out there."
"I want Note Expression."
"I don't want to pay $199 for lifetime updates, I want a special price because I've been using SONAR for a long time"
"I want a chord track."
"I don't want a workaround that solves my issue, I want a dedicated feature"
"I want to register an ancient version of SONAR that Cakewalk doesn't support and runs on an operating system Microsoft doesn't support, Oh, and I've lost the serial number and original disc"
"I want a complete PDF manual with all the updates every month, I don't want to go online for help."
"I want a Platinum feature in Professional because it's an important feature."
"I want SONAR to be compatible with all plug-ins, even the third party ones done by some guy in his basement."
...and so on.
Folks, it ain't all gonna happen. Period. What you'll get is Cakewalk [feel free to strike out that name and put in the name of any other music software company] juggling to implement as much as they, for as many people as they can, using whatever resources they can.
My thoughts are based on decades in this industry. Perhaps that's why I appreciate when a company decides to go through tough times in order to maintain free support, instead of taking the approach of some companies that's essentially "the easiest way to cut our support load is to charge money and make it a profit center." Cakewalk
could have done that, but they didn't. I'm sure some people will applaud that decision, while others will condemn it. But the bottom line is
they felt it was the right thing to do and based on a long-term industry perspective, I think Cakewalk was probably right to sacrifice five months of negative comments from being caught off-guard in favor of positive future comments about how cool it is that Cakewalk still does free support. (Of course, if users want that to continue, they have to do their part too - like use support only if the other avenues of support, like FAQs and the online help, don't have an answer. For example, think of how many "support" posts would not have been necessary if people had read the eZine.)
As to this forum not being a "proper" kind of official support, this forum is about "we," not "I." It's a
community. It's not only about "I can't get support," it's about "We'll help you." Which, in my opinion, is a good thing and I wish I saw more of that attitude in the world at large.