TiredLegs;450224 Wrote: > As a former product manager for consumer electronics devices myself, I > generally agree with Moonbeam's assessment, and I commend him for having > the gumption to post it, knowing he'd catch some flak. > > In my view, a key problem with open source software is that the techies > develop it for their own desires, not those of Joe and Jane Sixpack who > don't give a rats a** about SQLite vs. MySQL. The masses just want > something that works well (even if it has a few bugs), without having to > tinker under the hood. Think iPod or TiVo. When both of those products > were first introduced, they already had very well thought out (if > imperfect) user experiences which kept the technical details hidden from > view. You didn't have to be a tech geek to appreciate them, but tech > geeks could appreciate them anyway, despite their frustrations at not > having full access to the inner workings. I hate to say this, and I'm > sure I'll catch flak for it, but Logitech might be better off taking > development entirely in house. I especially hate to say it, because the > open source platform is one of the things that attracted me to buy > Squeezeboxes in the first place. > > But Joe and Jane Sixpack don't frequent this forum, and that leads to > skewed input into the open source development process unless your target > market is open source developers. Sure, I can set up a Squeezebox system > that's so easy to use that my girlfriend can handle it and even like it, > but no way in heck could she set it up herself. Does anybody here > believe that open source development of Squeezecenter will ever lead to > a product that is easy enough to set up that his or her mother could do > it?
Excuse me ... but how do we not provide a good experience already for the average user? The currently released production-level software 7.3.3 is our most stable software release of the entire 7.x.x releases. We've encouraged no average-users to try out 7.4 (which is in a huge state of flux). Furthermore, we do not ask that any of our average users know the difference between MySQL or SQLite -- in fact, we do our best to hide that fact completely. Only developers, and highly-advanced beta users are affected by our betas at this time. We are very actively working towards making our Squeezeplay experience (Squeezebox Controller) as absolutely dead-simple as possible (given its inherent complexities), and improving the setup experience of our Desktop Software as well as our Squeezenetwork service. That is why there have been so many changes to 7.4 that have "broken" things -- we're making huge under-the-hood changes that allow us to provide a better ultimate experience. -- Matt Wise ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Matt Wise's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=13773 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=66745 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
