Dear Dave Dreezer,
Let me start out by saying Rick Baker is off the hook. Infopop, you now can respond. You have mis-characterized my point. I am not asking for a feature, I am asking for a standard. Paying top dollar and getting less than current market standards makes me feel like you don't care about me, at all. Here, take this Ferrari, but we've still got the crank starter. Since when is an up-to-date standard a feature?
My point is it IS simple indifference. How do I know? Because through hours of coursing through the net, I have been able to force the most basic standards of user-frendliness common to the entire genre on to this product through hacks. If I can do it, with my skill, which is zero, how much more quickly could YOU have done it? Instead, your team there CHOSE TO IGNORE IT. That IS indifference, it's very definition.
And let me tell you why it's so troubling: because having already created a great interface for UBB, but having chosen to indifferently leave it out, when you finally get around to raising the standard of the interface, how will I ever be able to figure out how I can untangle the hacks I put in? Well, it will take me hours to do that- hours. And that's troubling to me, because it means my time is worthless to you. You're a busy guy, right? Let me lock you up in a room away from your customers, friends and children for a few hours each day because you have to un-fix an out-of-date new product that already took you hours to fix. How would that make you feel? That's troubling because, to you, I don't count. Unlike others, I do not buy software to join a community. I have a community: it's called my life. I bought state-of-the-art software and got an interface that was less than state-of-the-art.
Not only do you not care about my time, you don't care if I succeed. You have given me a tool wrapped in an outdated wrapper. That faded wrapper means that people AREN'T going to pick up my product. They'll move down the aisle. Doesn't that trouble you? That's YOUR product they're passing by. It SURE troubles me.
"We didn't leave anything out, we just havn't added it yet." If my accountant or lawyer made this kind of a statement to me I would go through the roof. You are a professional! If you had integrity, you would simply say, "We are wrong." Is that possible here? Is it possible that, if some kid in Cimbalex, Florida can make an up-to-date interface hack, and EVERYONE snaps it up and hounds each other around the world for the code...is it possible that you should have included it in the first place? Have you looked at the little brown folder that changes when there is a post to a barely-recognizable open little brown folder? Have you taken the time to notice that on EVERY COPY of threads, the Posts column is too narrow? So when you have a new post it says
(1
new)
posts, and breaks the line? Have you looked at the interface of UBB, Open Topic? Let me ask you this: CAN you be wrong? Shouldn't you have issued the software with an up-to-date interface? And, if you can be wrong, if it's possible for you to admit to that, can you take the next step?
Look, you expect me to spend my weekends hacking away at the product. Shouldn't you do the same if it isn't up to spec? How long would it take your team to put in the burning folders, the graemlins, to put a 2/05/2002 interface on your product? You know the answer to that question. The only issue is, are you the kind of men and women who are big enough to admit mistakes and stop making excuses.
