Willy Jones [Cakewalk]
I never said that we were not aware of C3 issues. I asked for feedback to be consolidated into a single place. A place where we don't have to weed through pages of unrelated issues to get to the requests & ideas or problems. 

 
Willy, there are already about 5 threads alone in the FR forum right now regarding C3 issues, with at least one being very succinct in describing this issue. You appear to be unaware of these issues, so your suggestion is to...create a 6th thread?
 

Anyway - I'm truly sorry I offended you so much by my request to put the feedback in a single place, in the future I won't do that and we can just cross our our fingers that someone finds it.

 
This has been done already in the FR forum as explained above. Can you elaborate as to what is insufficient regarding those existing threads?
 

Back on topic to your specific requests, I'll illustrate exactly why discussion around these by users is valuable for us in designing C3.
 
Allow per-product install locations.
While I don't know exactly what you mean by per-product, I'm assuming you mean the ability to specify the install path.

 
Yes of course. Sonar, Dim-Pro, Rapture, Studio Instruments Suite, Artist Instrument Collection, Platinum Instrument Collection... Each of those, and other, need the ability to have a custom destination specified.
 

Can you elaborate how you'd like this to work, do you want a new button a context menu?

 
Yes, a button to a dialog allowing to specify a custom location. What is so complicated about that?
 

How often do you think you'd use this option vs the default?

 
For those of us that paid $$$ for dedicated sample SSDs, ALL THE TIME.
 

There are about 30 design questions in this one - hearing what others think would be extremely helpful.

 
There is just one design question - Where to put the button for each product. Compared to other problems CW solved, this one is trivial. I fail to see what is so complicated about this. There shouldn't even be a question that this should be a must-have feature. We should not need to justify why this is required. I'm really surprised that we have to explain this over and over to a company like CW. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
 

Allow uninstalling of products. I used C3 to install D-Pro and Rapture, but wanted to uninstall them and install them manually somewhere not on my limited space C drive. To date, after asking multiple times in the forum, nobody can tell me how to uninstall Rapture and D-Pro. It can't be done from either C3 or Add/Remove Programs.
Most products can be uninstalled by right-clicking on the product name in the tree on the left. If it can't be uninstalled then our installer failed to drop the uninstall.exe.

 
So this is most likely a bug in C3 then if it was supposed to allow for an uninstall via Add/Remove Programs. It doesn't give me the uninstall option in the right-click menu for those two products either.
 

Show changes between updates.
When an update is available orange text appears and includes a clickable link. We haven't been using that heavily but again - these 4 words you have provided don't really tell us how you'd like it to work or what would help illustrate changes. Feedback and discussion around this would be great - how would you like to see changes presented? Do you read them all the time or just every now and again (IOW - should it be super prevalent or just available somewhere)?

 
TBH this isn't something that I care too much about, but I added it to my list since other people asked for this and I wanted to have a comprehensive list of issues in one place.
 

Allow un-hiding of previously hidden products.
Yeah we can get on that one, would just a button in the settings page to unhide all products be enough or do you see a need to un-hide specific ones?

 
Yes that would be fine. I had a particularly bad experience because of this. I wanted to unhide Melodyne Essential after hiding it, and foolishly followed someone's suggestion to log out/in from C3. This wiped everything from C3's records and it no longer recognized any installed products, so I had to re-install everything again. Just because I wanted to un-hide one product. This also shows why C3 should be able to recognize already-installed products based on registry entries or config files.
 

The ability to select multiple products and have them all downloaded/installed in one go.
This is an area where use-case and better understanding can help us design something that makes the most sense. If you're going to use this once in a blue moon then maybe something like CTRL + clicking products in the tree and clicking install is enough. If you're going to use this every single time then we should find something that is more obvious/intuitive.

 
Yes this is not critical, just a bit of an annoyance. But a few people did mention this so I added it to the list. Just a way to toggle a per-product selection on/off and a button to start the overall download/install process.
 
Willy your overall response is a bit of a let-down for me and I'm sure others too that require the ability to specify install locations. I was quietly hoping (like I'm sure other were too) that CW was well aware of this issue and how important it is to a lot of people, and hence in the process of working on a fix. Your reply makes it clear that we are still stuck in the phase where we try to explain to CW what the issue is and why there are people for which the default install locations isn't workable. For those people, the solution is to...not use C3?

I'm somewhat a supporter of C3. But if I understand some of the posts here some seem to start Sonar via the C3. If that is so I can see why some would feel its a pain to do so. I never thought of starting Sonar from C3. I have it as a quick launch shortcut on the Windows Taskbar.
 
I never see the C3 unless I start it on purpose to check for updates. 

It is pretty clear that Cakewalk is aware and is attempting to resolve these issues.  How long they will take or how many they can fix at once is something users don't know and on which speculation is futile and counter-productive.
 
Sarcastic comments like "What is so complicated about that?" and "I fail to see what is so complicated about this" very clearly shows the truth:  we are not Cakewalk programmers, and we do not understand how difficult or time consuming it is to do these things.  To assume they are a simple matter to fix over lunch is ludicrous.  Unless you are a Baker, and helped develop Platinum, then there is no way to know exactly "what is so complicated".  
 
I think it is safe to assume THEY know how complicated these things are, and are working to fix them.
 
 
 
 
 
 

The fact Willy bothered to respond at all (I didn't get one I'm jealous) when he's probably working his ass off trying to get it sorted probably speaks more than anything... Getting involved in analytical discussions is probably not worth the time he's given his advice on how to lobby it's your choice if you wish to take it.

sven450
It is pretty clear that Cakewalk is aware and is attempting to resolve these issues.  How long they will take or how many they can fix at once is something users don't know and on which speculation is futile and counter-productive.
 
Sarcastic comments like "What is so complicated about that?" and "I fail to see what is so complicated about this" very clearly shows the truth:  we are not Cakewalk programmers, and we do not understand how difficult or time consuming it is to do these things.  To assume they are a simple matter to fix over lunch is ludicrous.  Unless you are a Baker, and helped develop Platinum, then there is no way to know exactly "what is so complicated".  
 
I think it is safe to assume THEY know how complicated these things are, and are working to fix them.

I've been doing all sorts of software development for over 25 years now, including everything from low-level system programming to UIs. Adding a button next to each product to allow a custom path, and passing that to the installer is trivial by any programming standards. The type of programming that goes into a product like Sonar is infinitely more complex. Hence my question "What is so complicated about that?". It is a perfectly valid question.
 
I don't agree that "It is pretty clear that Cakewalk is aware and is attempting to resolve these issues". From Willy's reply, it seems more like CW isn't even sure that there is a problem to begin with. Then again Willy doesn't speak for everyone at CW so maybe someone else is aware of these issues and are working on fixes.
 
EDIT: BTW, while there might have been some small amount of sarcasm in my reply to Willy (sorry), I was replying to his statement that "There are about 30 design questions in this one". I'm not sure why there would be a lot of unanswered questions with such a straightforward feature to allow per-product install locations.

I've been doing development seriously since '94. Your assumption about Willy's motivations are completely opposite to mine. It's like we read different posts. The way you write shows me you've probably haven't had to deal with a team of developers,qa,managers,marketing,customers,an online community, and a business owner on a major project. Often it's more than developers developers developers..

Splat, I re-read Willy's replies to make sure I didn't misread it. Sure, his intentions are good and he wants to help.
 
To Willy: Thanks, it is appreciated. I'm glad you replied and hope we can work together on a solution.
 
My own frustration is from the fact that I believe those of us that are affected by these issues have done quite a bit in order to make the issues known, both here in the Sonar forum and in the FR forum. The string of threads I linked to should show that this is the case. The information is there, just wondering why we need to repeat the same process again by starting more threads.
 
I think we all have a common goal: Make Sonar even better than it already is.
 
 

SilkTone
 
I've been doing all sorts of software development for over 25 years now, including everything from low-level system programming to UIs. Adding a button next to each product to allow a custom path, and passing that to the installer is trivial by any programming standards. The type of programming that goes into a product like Sonar is infinitely more complex. Hence my question "What is so complicated about that?". It is a perfectly valid question.

1) All the installers may need to be repackaged. There are a lot of packages.
 
2) You will need to add logic to read registry values so the CCC know where everything is installed, see next points.

3) The current packages may have different logic when storing file paths etc, the clear thing to do would be to adopt some sort of standard logic rather than write bucket loads of code to accommodate every scenario, that would be time consuming and increase development time/allow more scope for bugs. This new logic would have to be adopted for every package.

4) What about existing installs? What happens when you try to install something that's already installed elsewhere maybe a different path specified... how will that be handled?

5) It will need to be tested, what happens if the install fails or runs out of disk space, or there is a permissions or the storage is offline... how does that get reported back to the CCC afterwards?
 
6) There are probably other issues that may take priority over the CCC that we don't know about... How do you allocate resources when they are limited?
 
There's probably a few more things I haven't thought of...
It's not trivial... it's the big picture.

Splat, almost all of those issues can be resolved by having a global option in C3:
 
[x] Run installers silently
 
Then, users that want custom install locations can uncheck it, and all C3 has to do is to not run the installers silently. This way we can take advantage of having C3 manage updates, as well as take advantage of the fact that the individual installers are already smart enough by themselves to ask for install locations, detect previous installs and instead perform an upgrade in that location, etc.
 

1) All the installers may need to be repackaged. There are a lot of packages.

 
The above solution would solve that.
 

2) You will need to add logic to read registry values so the CCC know where everything is installed, see next points.

 
Yes agreed, logic would need to be added to detect installs via registry entries etc. Since CW owns most of the products this info should be readily available to them? Plus I've seen posts from end users explaining exactly where everything gets installed. If end users can figure it out, CW should have no problem. 

3) The current packages may have different logic when storing file paths etc, the clear thing to do would be to adopt some sort of standard logic rather than write bucket loads of code to accommodate every scenario, that would be time consuming and increase development time/allow more scope for bugs.

 
According to Willy products like DimPro, Rapture etc should have uninstallers, meaning I can uninstall it from Add/Remove Programs. If this works properly, then this issue becomes moot.

4) What about existing installs? What happens when you try to install something that's already installed elsewhere maybe a different path specified... how will that be handled?

 
Just like installers have always handled this. The installer will detect a previous version and upgrade it in place, first uninstall it, or ask that it be uninstalled first.

5) It will need to be tested, what happens if the install fails or runs out of disk space, or there is a permissions or the storage is offline... how does that get reported back to the CCC afterwards?

 
How does C3 deal with this today? The same conditions can have it fail whether it is a silent install or not.
 

6) There are probably other issues that may take priority over the CCC that we don't know about... How do you allocate resources when they are limited?

 
Having the ability to specify install locations is a fundamental feature and should have been in C3 V1.0. I remember reading in a thread about the Braintree update, and either Noel or another CW employee mentioned that a particular feature was thrown into that update because they had some extra time available.

SilkTone
 
Adding a button next to each product to allow a custom path, and passing that to the installer is trivial by any programming standards. The type of programming that goes into a product like Sonar is infinitely more complex. Hence my question "What is so complicated about that?". It is a perfectly valid question.
 

 
So you're the reason people think this type of stuff can be turned around in a day ! 
 

Splat
 
There's probably a few more things I haven't thought of...

You forgot the fact that Willy does not own a Tardis and cannot manipulate the total # of hours in a day. I find it frustrating since I could be doing a lot fewer things if he would get his act together. 
 
Sounds like you guys have been developing a lot longer then I have, but it didn't take me long to realize there's a huge difference between something being too hard or too complicated to address and something simply requiring time to address it (and address it properly). When someone asks you "why is it so hard", it's a bit frustrating to continue the conversation. It can be a bit defeating. Usually we just go back to solving the problems being reported anyway. It's not as if Cakewalk Command Center itself isn't based on years of legitimate feedback...
 
Feedback is good.
 
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FWIW - Command Center is a brand new product for us. We put a ton of work into it, but you guys are all just seeing version 1 of it. I'd argue that our support guys might become bored soon when it comes to the # of installation problems we've resolved by having an installer that makes things easy on you. 
 
Thing is, we knew some power users would want to still do things the old fashioned way, which is why when we redesigned the store and My-Account pages we made sure it would also deliver our installers via assisted installers as well. This was deliberate and intentional. We also knew we'd be getting a ton of feedback in regards to what we should have done better, could do differently, with Command Center.
 
If default installation paths are a huge inconvenience in the meantime, you can still grab the assisted installers from here: www.cakewalk.com/my-account/products . It's a bit more of a PITA to download each installer separately in my opinion, but it's an available option.