bruce@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Bruce Burkhalter) (08/18/90)
Sorry I have been offline for the last two weeks. Went to Boston for MacWorld and then took a little time off to try to get back to a "normal" life. Glad to see I have not been forgotten! :) I have gone over the AD 2.0 posts from the last couple weeks and have summerized them. Upgrade and Upgrade Notices Several people write: > From seeing After Dark 2.0, all I can say is that I'm impressed with > the work that was put into it... What really bothers me is that being a > REAL registered user, that I wasn't aware of this or still haven't gotten > an upgrade letter in the mail... Come on!! Support the people that bought!! > I called them last week and the girl who answer the phone said that the >registered user will get the upgrade letter sometime in the mid August. And >no, I did not receive my letter yet, either. > I am a registered owner of After Dark 1.x and have STILL NOT RECEIVED the > long awaited upgrade letter. Hows come everyone else has the upgrade? > I didn't think that Berkeley Systems played favorites, but maybe that > impression is incorrect. Seems to me that if the product was shipping I > should have been informed of an upgrade opportunity well before now. > > Bruce Burkholter (sp?) if you are listening, what the h*ll is up?? > Do you really care less about the people that supported you and didn't > rip you off before than you do about new users? >Me, too! I called them about the third weeks of July, the girl who answer >the phone said the the upgrade letter will be mail to registered user in >the middle of August. And there's already lots of posting about how good >it is.....from those who brought it from MacWorld. Where is mine? So I >can post how I am fond of the product. > >Probably, by now, my name must have been already bumped down the list of >receiving the "upgrade notice" by several notches. Ha! I would like to apologize to everybody about the upgrade notices. We screwed up, plain and simple. The notices were supposed to go out the first week of August. The person in charge of it dropped the ball and we (like you) are very unhappy. We are a small company and one person's screw up can really hurt us. It really tears me up that the people who supported us from the start are the ones who are getting the short shift here. Believe me, I am doing everything I can to get the upgrade notices out. I just hope you can be patient. I want to thank all of you who have posted these complaints. It is good to know when you are doing good and when you are doing bad. I will also use them when I talk to my boss about this whole situation. Changes definitely need to be made and I am not going to go through this again and our users should *never* have to. Another person writes: > But why, WHY, do I, as a registered user of After Dark, have to pay the >same price as Pyro's user who wants to switch to After Dark? Should >registered users have a higher rank than the users of the competitor product? The street price of AD is $20-25. To entice people to switch to AD we have to give them an incentive. The incentive is an upgrade price of $14.95. As you can see, there is not a lot of room to play with pricing. We want people to switch to AD but if the only incentive is saving a couple of bucks off of the street price then most people won't do it. I know this might sound like a "half full, half empty" argument, but you aren't "paying the same price as a Pyro user". They are paying the same price as you. If we didn't have the Pyro offer, you would still pay $14.95 for the upgrade. We aren't "subsidizing" Pyro upgrades by charging AD owners the same price. Upgrade Policy Someone felt our upgrade policy was overpriced and gave this example: >Bruce, please note that Microseeds Publishing (sellers of Redux, Rival, and >INITPicker) have a standard offer concerning upgrades: if you want a fresh >manual and everything, the upgrade costs $10. If you only need the program >itself, the upgrade is FREE. That's right, they'll send you a disk, no >package, >no manuals, but WITH THE UPGRADE, absolutely FREE. And this isn't restricted >to minor updates. INITPicker 2.0, which is an entirely different beastie from >1.0, with many major additions, features, etc., falls under this very policy. I think Microseeds should be commended for this policy. It is very generous and, frankly, I don't know how they can do it. I can't think of any other company that does this. I don't know what the economics of their company is but for us it would not be feasible to do this (though I wish we could!). For AD 2.0, there have been 5 programmers working full time on it since March. In addition to the quality assurance people we have, we hired another one to work on AD 2.0 full time. This is not to mention 3 people working full time on a new manual, art work, box, advertising, and fliers. The effort put into AD 2.0 has been quite substantial (I would not recommend writing a screen saver!). One might think that adding a couple of modules and adding a couple of features would not be too hard. Well it certainly was a lot more than I expected. Suffice to say, I think our upgrade policy is fair because I think you get a lot of bang for your buck. AD 2.0 is pretty neat. If only we could get the upgrade notices out on time... Possible problem? I couldn't find the original post but I will give some info that might be helpful: >>Dark 2.0 and found that the sound features did not work under >>MultiFinder. I first thought it was SoundMaster's fault, but >>SoundMaster and After Dark co-exist fine in the Finder. MultiFinder First, sound is a royal pain in the butt on the Mac. Apple has done a pretty poor job with sound since day 1. I hope they get their act together. Since AD is a "guest" trying to use sound, we have to be careful when we use it. First we check to see if someone else is using sound. If they are we don't do sound. If they aren't, we will use sound. If someone needs sound while we are using it, they will get it and AD will not try to do sound again. HyperCard always reserves the right to do sound so AD will not use sound if HyperCard is the frontmost application. If you use MasterJuggler, make sure you turn off the "Use sound play" checkbox in the options dialog if you are using System 6.0. This feature allows pre-System 6.0 users to play 'snd ' resources. Alsoft (the publishers) recommend turning it off if you have System 6.0. We recommend you turn it off because it will cause a crash with After Dark 2.0. Other Stuff Please feel free to post questions or comments. If you are having any problems or suggestions please let me know. And, once again, I would like to apologise for the upgrade notice screw up. Bruce Burkhalter After Dark Guy Berkeley Systems, Inc.
daven@svc.portal.com (08/21/90)
Bruce, You and the gang at Berkeley Systems are doing a great job! Don't let a few sour grapes let you think that us adoring fans of AD have gone rabid. Looking forward (patiently) to the new AD! Even if it does cost me the ridiculously low amount of $14.95 to upgrade. *grin* Dave -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Newman - Sofware Ventures | daven@svc.portal.com | AppleLink: D0025 Berkeley, CA (415) 644-3232 | AOL: MicroPhone | CIS: 76004,2161 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------