My regular readers (rapidweaver.ninja) expect me to review new releases as soon as they become available. As such, I installed to RW 8 as soon as it was released as a Beta. I don’t mind testing beta software, it can actually be fun and I’ve tested betas from numerous LARGE companies, Apple, Adobe, Quark.Inc included.
What I don’t consider fair to the users is when an app is released as “Final” and then continues to issue Beta 0.1; 0.2; 0.3 “Final, Final, Final Releases”.
I really don’t mind waiting until an app has reached a “final” stable version before committing to a purchase, or an upgrade. Even if it takes six months, a year, or even two!
And if the Golden Master (which Realmac has obviously never heard of) proves to be buggy, I expect it to be withdrawn and will wait for the Golden Master II! Remember Apple’s OS X GM 00.1??
I’ve used RW since it’s earliest beta release and after experiencing several buggy updates (most especially 6—7 and 7—8) I’m becoming disheartened by the products being pushed by Realmac.
In my opinion, it’s unfair to allow regular users to test beta products. Test; test again until the users have finally identified a ‘stable’ product – this is simply not the way that a professional software smithy works.
For my ‘professional’ websites I still use RW7.x and I’m still waiting for “come on in, the water’s fine”. And this announcement for RW8 doesn’t look as if it 's coming any time soon.
A stable release is much better than an early release. Not sure what is going on with Realmac…things used to be very reliable but not so much these days…and they seem very quiet on the issues surrounding 8.1.x
I am on 8.0.3 and will not be updating to 8.1.x
I have been a huge advocate and supporter of RW but sadly, Realmac will need to do a lot of work to regain my confidence and most likely many other RW users too.
I couldn’t agree more. This situation is getting gradually worse since version 6. Looks like RM is getting overwhelmed and can’t keep their sh** together.
Dudes, you need some help! Least you can do is hire additional staff and coordinate/consult your development issues with 3rd party developers.
Don’t treat your customers like guinea pigs…
I see at least three areas of perpetual failures that you should stop everything and fix them:
Version upgrading process;
Resources;
Publishing (you should probably consider removing this part altogether).
I’m in exactly the same situation and I wrote this to them in an e-mail with the umpteenth error, where subpages had its’ ‘Show in menu’ suddenly all unchecked, or Preview renders blank pages, that I hope they do not release a v9 before v8 is as stable as v7 is. I also use v8 only for small, simple websites … as long as it works.