Zebra 2.8/3.0 misleading hype

[BMoore]

heh... you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

That's the mantra of people doing things wrong.

[zvenx]

Yep here come the fanbois to defend u-he.
The OP has a point. It could never be that Urs had ideas he wanted to bounce off of us and the product and ideas are taking awhile to develop, it being probably the u-he's flagship product. And along the way easier to develop products that will earn money to keep u-he afloat were developed. And that if we wait patiently indeed it will indeed be something to marvel at. And that u-he is taking their time to ensure the products have as less bugs as possible at release.

I think it is either:
1) Urs clearly is an incompetent programmer who needs to think before he posts.
2) He just loves to damage his company's well earned great reputation by just creating hype and then floundering in incompetence and slacking off.

Quite frankly in future, he should not communicate at all, never give us work in progress reports, bounce ideas off of us, get feedback with his customers. Instead, he should be very uncommunicative, keeping quiet whilst developing products and only announce when it is ready, whether it has features we want or not.

And to hell with stable products, just release 2.8 already, bugs and all.
Slacker...


oh right /start sarcasm /endsarcasm needs to be included.

fanboi.


rsp

[pdxindy]

heh... you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

That's the mantra of people doing things wrong.

define 'wrong'

[bftucker]

I'm a loyal customer (owning most of your plugins). But Seeing hype about v3.0 YEARS ago and THEN hype about v2.8 MONTHS ago with NOTHING ever resulting from it is silly. Just saying...

Great FIRST post, highball!

Have to thank the OP for giving us ANOTHER opportunity to praise the harD-wORKing team U-He!

[QLNE]

Well, each new OS update for Linux, Windows, and Apple require tweaks to the code. As I understand it, U-He has been working on a “ consolidation” of programming for their various products to expedite these tweaks across platforms. In addition, Bazille, Hive, Repro—1, NKS, etc have all been introduced. Add in the joys of relocation, staffing, and all the blessings that come with owning a business, as well as R&D for new products, and I’ll be surprised to see Z3 or Repro 5 in 2017.

In addition, I’ve NEVER paid for any update, so trade show appearance are a must to build sales. Speaking only for myself, I did not buy Z2 and HZ just to get Z3. I have my hands full with what I have. I will be thankful for what I get. I’m not really concerned when I get it.

Now if you will excuse me, there is an alligator at the door and she looks pissed.

[Urs]

Well, each new OS update for Linux, Windows, and Apple require tweaks to the code. As I understand it, U-He has been working on a “ consolidation” of programming for their various products to expedite these tweaks across platforms. In addition, Bazille, Hive, Repro—1, NKS, etc have all been introduced. Add in the joys of relocation, staffing, and all the blessings that come with owning a business, as well as R&D for new products, and I’ll be surprised to see Z3 or Repro 5 in 2017.

That's pretty accurate, add a short but time consuming venture into Rack Extensions, the demise of RTAS, the unfortunate first attempt at VST3 and the need to support AAX with all the iLok bullshittery that it entails and yeah, growing from 2 person business to 16. Which means moving to different project management software and all that. It's a lot of stuff, which I had no idea of in 2012.

But... Repro-5 will appear in 2017. I'm pretty sure of it. It's just ironing out the final quirks of the preset browser.

[mholloway]

Oh no, I got called a 'fanboi' again, how will I sleep at night ?!!

[experimental.crow]

Oh no, I got called a 'fanboi' again, how will I sleep at night ?!!

since it's october ,
i'm going to go for ' hanging by your feet , from the rafters ' ...

[lnikj]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-GF1bnlLWY

[analogo13]

I'm a loyal customer (owning most of your plugins). But Seeing hype about v3.0 YEARS ago and THEN hype about v2.8 MONTHS ago with NOTHING ever resulting from it is silly. Just saying...

Great FIRST post, highball!

Have to thank the OP for giving us ANOTHER opportunity to praise the harD-wORKing team U-He!

Sorry Urs, but that just had to be said!

Five(!) years ago Zebra 3 was announced, and not even Zebra 2.8 was released so far. Too many other projects were preferred, and it almost seems as if the team has decreased from 16 to 2 persons..

[egbert]

I think it is safe to say that features in the Dark Zebra/HZ version and in 2.6-2.8 were not envisioned as 2.x features when V3 was announced and quite possibly they had not even been thought of yet.

The benefits of the evolution of U-He ideas have been made available along the way without a paid upgrade - the HZ deal (which is effectively a prepurchase of V3 bundled with the extra features of that version) complicate that picture a little.

[Urs]

it almost seems as if the team has decreased from 16 to 2 persons..

I worry about that a *lot*

It is however also so that the customer base went from 5000 to 40000. Which is also an 8-fold in interaction - and responsibility. This is the main reason for the man power we require. Without it I would not get to write a single line of fresh code. I'd be answering emails and fixing issues (new systems, new formats...) forever. As it stands now, I still spend most of the time fixing issues, but as a team we get *something* done, on a much more professional level than five years ago.

(gawd... the time it took me to create halfway decent renderings of Diva's knobs... glad that's taken out of my hands by someone who actually knows 3D inside out)

[pdxindy]

Sorry Urs, but that just had to be said!

Five(!) years ago Zebra 3 was announced, and not even Zebra 2.8 was released so far. Too many other projects were preferred, and it almost seems as if the team has decreased from 16 to 2 persons..

5 years ago, Zebra 3 would have been nothing like what it will be now. Those other projects have dramatically advanced the skills of the company.

Also, it is not like Zebra has been neglected. It has had various updates that have added valuable features and improvements.

Also, no offense meant, but perhaps you are a bit hung up on a number. I purchased Zebra 2 10 years ago and in that time, the number of improvements, new features etc. is enough that it could easily have been called Zebra 3 or maybe even 4. There have been at least 3 major updates worth of new goodies that numerous companies would have charged for.

Also, back then, there were a small but vocal number of users who complained about various bugs. Zebra was solid in that it did not crash, but there were a number of small issues that lingered for a long time. Part of the quiet work that has happened was solidifying the code base across plugins and dealing with the various non sexy stuff. Some of those issues took significant work.

[jbw]

Not sure I'd call it misleading. Not sure I'd call it hype either.

While it's true the Zebra 3 Info thread started over 5 years ago, as stated in the first post of that thread it was done out of excitement.

In a perfect world we could get the developer interaction and super ninja coders. For now I'll take the interaction.

[Urs]

as stated in the first post of that thread it was done out of excitement.

It was actually merely a reaction to people posting "I'll hold off my Zebra purchase until V3 comes out". So I came up with a scheme that makes buying Zebra2 more enticing than waiting for Zebra3. The reason for this can be found e.g. in the Improvements thread around that time: When features were requested that I could not possibly implement in Zebra2, I would say "let's keep that in mind for Zebra3". Which unfortunately became kind of a meme, as it propelled itself into the expectation of a relatively soon release. The Zebra3 Info thread came about to inform that this release is far away - obviously it was much further away than what even we thought at that time.