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Time for Nemetschek to stagger releases with Apple


B Cox

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36 minutes ago, Jim Wilson said:

It is indeed still not picked blindly, but more and more I would like to see it move. Far, far away from other now-standard release dates of important related tech.

I can imagine that having different development processes overlap all at the same time makes all those processes more complicated. One thing I really like about the current release schedule is that its opposite my Service Select renewal schedule so I assess my renewal in a neutral environment. If the release cycle moves, I would love to be able to reset when my Service Select schedule renews as well so that they remain far apart. I wouldn't want to be have my renewal decision clouded by marketing..... 

 

40 minutes ago, Jim Wilson said:

(Selfish side reason I want this: Putting in overtime in July/Aug is never fun.)

 

I always wondered about this. I know when I approach a deadline the days can get longer. Employee sanity is very valid reason for adjusting the release schedule.....

 

Kevin

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On 10/9/2018 at 6:55 AM, Kevin McAllister said:

One thing I really like about the current release schedule is that its opposite my Service Select renewal schedule so I assess my renewal in a neutral environment.

 

In my case, the opposite is true. My VSS subscription renews at the beginning of September, about 2-3 weeks before the new full-version release. Based on the not-quite-ready state of the past several full-version releases, I don’t bother installing the new version until at least SP1 comes out, and by that time I am well past the 30-day window for a full refund. 

Edited by rDesign
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I actually wonder whether VW should be updated every two years, and not annually.

 

It seems crazy that we spend one year to reach SP4 or SP5 for each version, which admittedly is stable but still not ‘complete and perfect’.

 

Then we abandon this ‘last stable’ version as quickly as we reach it,  and jump into a world of chaos and insanity because of ‘new features’ in the next version.

 

If SP4 and SP5 are genrally stable, then shouldn’t we extend its use for an extra year, and continue to improve productivity and  fix all the remaining bugs well into, say, SP10?

 

I image once we reach stability at SP4, we can focus on productivity improvements in the subsequent SPs. Productivity improvements currently seem lower on the VW list than new features. Perhaps productivity is not sexy for marketing purposes, but new features are?

 

Of course VW needs annual income to balance its sheets, and this is how I think it can work.

 

Currently:

If current VSS is, say, US$1000 per licence (for designer series), then it is $2000 over two years.

 

Alternatively:

VSS is split into

(a) SP releases for the next two years (US$1000 for two years’ worth of SP releases)

(b) Upgrade to the next SP0 version (US$1000 paid every two years)

 

VW will end up with the same subscription amount, but have more time for much better feature release and product improvements (broader in scope, better in quality) 

 

But that means if one buy the next SP0 version without the upgrade options, that person will end up with a buggy software. 

 

This bi-annual cycle would only be feasible if VW does indeed commit to releasing software every two years that looks and feel like there was two years worth of thinking and development in it- not just giving us the same thing we used to get on a yearly basis. Hard to quantify and qualify I know.

 

Perhaps one way to quantify and qualify it is to say, every two year, 200 items in Wishlist feature  request is granted (compared to say 20 in annual releases).

 

May not work for everyone. But this would work for my office.

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15 hours ago, B Cox said:

Exactly. SP0 is like a useless release. Too buggy and incompatible with current environments to use.  It might as well be called Beta 1 Beta 2 Beta 3 until Sp4

 

^ part of the challenge is that I don't think their beta test base is big and varied enough, so many issues aren't discovered until the SP0 release. Different workflows discover different bugs. Without implementing an open beta program (or at least a different beta program) the result may be the same even with a longer release cycle. From other threads it seems like the plan is to change how VW is deployed so that adding features isn't confined to a large release.

 

Kevin

 

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17 hours ago, B Cox said:

Exactly. SP0 is like a useless release. Too buggy and incompatible with current environments to use.  It might as well be called Beta 1 Beta 2 Beta 3 until Sp4

 

I have said this too..  SP0 = Beta 1,    SP1 = Beta 2/Release Candidate 1,  SP2 Release Candidate 2/Release etc.    

 

1 hour ago, Kevin McAllister said:

 

^ part of the challenge is that I don't think their beta test base is big and varied enough, so many issues aren't discovered until the SP0 release. Different workflows discover different bugs. Without implementing an open beta program (or at least a different beta program) the result may be the same even with a longer release cycle. From other threads it seems like the plan is to change how VW is deployed so that adding features isn't confined to a large release.

 

Kevin

 

 

I agree,  and really hope they expand.   It is pretty amazing to me the number of bugs/tools not working I have found within an hour of using a release,  many of which I'm fairly astounded no one found.    This latest 2019 SP1 update definitely felt more like a hotfix style/less intrusive update,  which I like,  it also felt like it came out much faster than previous SP1s,  I'm pretty sure the last two SP1s at least were around Thanksgiving each year.

 

Edited by Wesley Burrows
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I went over analytics a bit during my morning coffee, and I found some info that would affect this discussion:

Users (when focused to the US, UK and Canada, the user bases I interact with most often) updated from 10.13 to 10.14 twice as fast as they did from 10.12 to 10.13. For example, last year at this many days (30) after the release of the last macOS, around 7% of our users had migrated to it. This year, after 30 days, closer to 14% of our users were actively using 10.14. Just about double the adoption rate in a single year. I only have the two years of data to compare, and two points of data do not make for an accurate plot, but it would certainly contribute to this pain point.

Side note, Vectorworks users updated to the latest version about 10% faster this year than in prior years, but this isn't as important as it has been in the past since in terms of the macOS compatibility, it affected ALL versions of Vectorworks, and affected them so far as to make Vectorworks nearly or truly unusable.

EDIT: (The 10% faster adoption of Vectorworks by the way, is just even more evidence that an improved beta process is needed in my opinion.)

I would expect that macOS adoption will only increase in speed with more users opting in earlier and earlier, and we need to adapt to that shift in some way.

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