lemming Posted April 10, 2006 Report Share Posted April 10, 2006 What we need is a public wishlist, so that users can suggest improvements or point out weaknesses in Macex. Right now we only have the "request a feature" page which, annoyingly, requires you to fill in name, email, etc. Plus nobody else gets to see those submissions. A separate wishlist section in this forum would go a long way towards improving Macex. Plus it would greatly reduce duplicate requests, and even eliminate unnecessary requests, if other users can suggest ways of doing it with existing commands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe Posted April 10, 2006 Report Share Posted April 10, 2006 Thanks for the feedback Lemming. I look forward to hearing more on this subject from other users, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberchief Posted April 10, 2006 Report Share Posted April 10, 2006 I agree with Lemming. It would be nice to have 1 place to go to make suggestions as well as read other's suggestions so we are not making duplicate requests. On a side note... it would also be nice to see what enhancements are currently being worked on or may be available in the future. I know the Insight team is always working on these... as well as working on the new release of ME 4. I would like to see what is being worked on so I know what I have to look forward to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe Posted April 10, 2006 Report Share Posted April 10, 2006 On a side note... it would also be nice to see what enhancements are currently being worked on or may be available in the future. Well, if it were my company I would not publish these in a public forum. I would not even admit to working on any. Why? Competitors! There is no doubt that when you are the BMOC (big man on campus) others try to do what you do and are constantly looking over your shoulder to see what they should do. As a capitalist, I think competition is great. But that doesn't mean I have to give my competition the bullets to shoot me with, not even if I already have 3 steps towards the door. ... great song, btw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyberchief Posted April 10, 2006 Report Share Posted April 10, 2006 On a side note... it would also be nice to see what enhancements are currently being worked on or may be available in the future. Well, if it were my company I would not publish these in a public forum. I would not even admit to working on any. Why? Competitors! There is no doubt that when you are the BMOC (big man on campus) others try to do what you do and are constantly looking over your shoulder to see what they should do. As a capitalist, I think competition is great. But that doesn't mean I have to give my competition the bullets to shoot me with, not even if I already have 3 steps towards the door. ... great song, btw. If only there were a secretive place... maybe a place that is password protected... Man... what a place that could be... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted April 13, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 13, 2006 Well, if it were my company I would not publish these in a public forum. I would not even admit to working on any. Why? Competitors! There is no doubt that when you are the BMOC (big man on campus) others try to do what you do and are constantly looking over your shoulder to see what they should do. As a capitalist, I think competition is great. But that doesn't mean I have to give my competition the bullets to shoot me with, not even if I already have 3 steps towards the door. ... great song, btw. Sorry to have to disagree with you Joe, but that is such an 80's mentality. Making secret plans and not listening to users is a recipe for disaster. I hate to have to mention other products, but AutoHotkey (ahk) is a really formidable competitor to Macex, and it is open-source and free. One thing I really like about the product is that it has very active forum, which among other things has sections for wishlists, bug reports, and upcoming features. Plus, the ahk author himself reads and posts on the forums. In fact, I have already ported about a quarter of my Macex macros to ahk, simply because I have no clear indication of whether certain features will be implemented in Macex, or even if the company has any idea about what its competitors are offering. Don't worry though, I'll still contribute to this forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe Posted April 13, 2006 Report Share Posted April 13, 2006 Sorry to have to disagree with you Joe, but that is such an 80's mentality. Making secret plans and not listening to users is a recipe for disaster. I don't recall writing anything about not listening to users or of secret plans. It's no secret that software companies are always improving their product and are always working on the next release. And listening to your customers is a primary responsibility of any company. But in order to support customers, in order to listen to them, in order to attract more customers, a business must stay in business, which is done by charging a fair price for a product or service. If that is an 80s mentality, then so be it. There will always be other products with wide customer support. And there will always be free products. By their nature, free products draw a lot more users. But they are not customers. They have not paid for a product but instead, are simply using something. Do they have the potential to hurt sales in a real business? Of course! And companies must make themselves better for it. simply because I have no clear indication of whether certain features will be implemented in Macex, or even if the company has any idea about what its competitors are offering. Sounds iffy. Your decision must be based on something more than what you say in the above quote. Maybe it has something to do with "free"? The great thing about an open marketplace is that people are free to decide what works best for them. Your answers and support have always been welcome in this community. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin Posted April 14, 2006 Report Share Posted April 14, 2006 Right now we only have the "request a feature" page which, annoyingly, requires you to fill in name, email, etc.There are several reasons for this: Sometimes we need to contact the requestor if we have additional questions. Sometimes a feature is implemented in a different way than originally requested or is something the program will already do. And, while we consider all suggestions, a feature request made by a licensed user will be assigned a higher priority than a request by an unlicensed user (someone who has stolen or cracked license code). We have found that most licensed users do not feel uncomfortable entering their name and email address (Privacy Policy.) Finally, for users who request it, our tracking system can send an email when their issue has been closed. Independent suggestions made by more than one person are assigned a higher priority than suggestions made by a single individual. Plus nobody else gets to see those submissionsIf you had access to the list of things we were working on, what would stop you from giving the list to the author of AutoHotKey? For that matter, if the list were public what would stop the author of AutoHotKey perusing the list him/herself? We consider the list of suggestions from our users a valuable asset to be used to improve Macro Express and not to improve the competition's products. Interestingly, other companies must feel the same way because we have not been able to find lists of things they are in the middle of implementing. On the other hand, we are open with a user about the status of a feature they have requested. not listening to users is a recipe for disasterWe ask for feedback on nearly every communication we have with users. Today there are 774 Macro Express feature requests in our tracking system. Nearly all of these are user requests. These suggestions are used to decide what changes to include in Macro Express. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t.s.lim Posted April 21, 2006 Report Share Posted April 21, 2006 Right now we only have the "request a feature" page which, annoyingly, requires you to fill in name, email, etc.There are several reasons for this: ... I don't even remember there is such "request a feature" page. I suggest put a sticky and striking link to the top of this forum. Normally after I registered a software product, if there is a supporting forum I will usually visit it and hardy go back to the product home/support page. Finally, for users who request it, our tracking system can send an email when their issue has been closed. This is great, I have received such email on 8th this month: ... Issue [iSS120] submitted by you has been resolved. The change will be available with the next release of Macro Express. Description of issue [iSS120]: -------------------------------------------------------------- Macro Express - [sCHEDULED MACROS] Run once in a given time period Allow a way to run a macro once a[n] hour/day/week/month ... I also buy lot of software online. Among all, I think the Outpost firewall forum has the best way of suggesting feature, they put requested features into sticky POLL threads. Unfortunately, the forum is not an official forum supported by the developer, so even though a feature migh be highly requested by users - it can still be a dream feature which never come true. Since this forum is an official one, how nice if we could have something similar: http://www.outpostfirewall.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=41 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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