From what I've seen, Smith-Micro hasn't been a bad parent.  They've allowed development to continue and there are definately positive things in Poser Pro 2010, namely a 64-bit native application that I didn't expect to see.  I did expect the 64-bit "renderer" but it does feel like from Poser 8 and forward, they are trying to gut more and more of that legacy code for a more flexible future platform.

Maybe the improvements have come slowly from version to version but honestly, the price point has also stayed low in my opinion.  There has always been some debate over the upgrade pricing with each version released but Poser PRO 2010 seems fair, obviously depending on what you have purchased prior.

I do think that Poser made a mistake by closing its forums at Content Paradise and I think that truly adds to the generic or corporate feel.  However, when the forums were open there seemed to be a greal deal of bashing and thrashing around by posters and perhaps it wasn't monitored as well as it could have been - in other words just seemed like a lot of ugly going on.  I could see in that case why they'd decide to close the forums down.

The facebook system seems like an attempt to re-connect with the customers on a personal level.  However, I think that facebook is an extremely generic platform in many ways - there's very little in the way of customization (graphics, colors, etc) and it feels like one huge diversion rather than a way to effectively communicate (Farmville, Mafia Wars and so on).

I would have liked to have seen another attempt at a community forum, even if to collect information, tips and tricks, see announcements without the impulsive "what's on your mind" jumble of facebook.  It is nice to see developers post here on occasion but there should be a native venue for that as well.

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