PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists Band-in-a-Box Wishlist New Ways of Doing Things, Quantum Leaps In Thinking

+1

Though I have quite a lot of sympathy for where I think PGM presently are with the software.

About 15 years ago now I built an application primarily for me as a test harness for a design for a client. I used one of my preferred RAD (rapid applications development) tools to do that. When we went to approvals testing, I expanded the test tool to include automated test runs to speed up the testing process. Later the client needed to do some admin, so I enhanced the tool some more. Then we did some post-release tests to help find a temerature-related issue, and some linearity checking, and some version management, and a different flavour for a German client of my client, and so on. The RAD tool dropped out of popularity, though has since been resumed, but it's morphed quite a bit in the mean time, and sometimes does unexpected things. 15 years down the line I rather wish I'd used C/C++ and a graphics library, but in truth in the same circumstance I'd almost certainly have made the same decision. Despite the fact thatr many earlier features are obsolescent, I don't want to waste time and effort removing them. Neither the client, nor I, have a sane business model for a ground-up rewrite (it has only around half a dozen users), so I have an imperfect and over-cluttered application on which I really cannoty justify doing that work.

In some ways PGM and I are in similar positions. I cannot have a business plan to do the work, because there's no business. PGM very likely have difficulty formulating an alternative business model whilst working under the surface maintain their present business model.

I think you're right that then need a quantum leap or paradigm shift or fresh perspective or whatever other term one wants to use. I do though also see that that may be quite hard for them to do. It's a competitive world out there, they have a business to run, customners to support and staff to pay. It's a family business and very often those better support their customers and staff than do other types business.

It's notable that a number of other companies have changed, or tried to change, business model and the changes are sometimes met with anger from the customers ... I'm thinking particularly of the subscription model that some are trying. Selling the content rather than the tool has attractions, but I have to say that personally I can find myself irritated by the edless "now you need this sound" posts from companies that work that way.

My own experience of starting-over on something that has now become "not the best way I could have done this" has generally been good. For the new version I know better what's needed, know better how to do things, know better what works well and what would be better done differently. But BIAB is quite a large and complex application and ground-up revist would be pretty scary. I'll also add that I have only done ground-up revisits a few times and maybe I've been fortunate ... others may have found it very painful. I have only my own experiences from which to judge.