Quote - "Your programmers aren't that good.  Really, they aren't.  Reliablity is good.  DAZ should try it sometime. "

And you guys wonder why there's hostility in the forums? Sorry Studio doesn't work for you. It works fine for me, it's reliable, and this statement is just a baseless attack.

 

...and this, SS, is why I've been sitting back all this time. I wanted all the haters, the hand-wringers, the hyper-sensitive, and the overly-entitled to come trotting out and show their stuff.  At first, I thought I would have some fun with it, but after one deleted post, and one edited one, well, I figured I'd sit back for a bit. Though I did want to point out their juxtaposition to a post by RV complaining about some other forum's censorship... but I digress. 

But, a few pages back, when I said that this thread has been more instructive to the public than perhaps it should have been?

I didn't mean Randal's answers. I meant the attitude of a lot of the posters in here.

While there are obvious and very intelligent instances of well-thought-out postings, there are almost as many (if not more) examples of pettiness, back-biting, passive-aggressive sneering, a sense of being overly entitled, outright spam for competing products... 

All I can say is, Randal is a friggin' saint, and this thread proves it. 

Some of the complaints? Perfectly valid. Some of them however (like the one you illustrated)? Most companies would have simply blown those types off. I'm willing to wager that Smith Micro does that fairly often.

Let me give you a parallel example of how things work in the real world. I work for a multi-billion-dollar company that has banks around the planet as our customer base.  I know that we've told certain customers to simply bugger off at times. It is usually due to unrealistic expectations, an overly-developed sense of entitlement, or sometimes worse behavior on their end. In my experience, it's mostly the smallest customers that are the biggest pains in the ass.

The big boys (including most major US banks and CUs, BTW) are intelligent enough to either keep it realistic, or they are willing to pay for the resources necessary to acheive their goals.  The medium-sized ones are more than willing to work with us, because the competition can't even come close in ability or flexibility. Most of the little ones are pretty cool, and some of my favorites are the little guys. They know their limitations, and in spite of that we usually do go out of our way for them if they're willing to work with us.

OTOH, even in this industry, you get the occasional self-entitled asshat. Let me give you a heavily sanitized example here.

Dude runs a little credit union in some no-name town in West Bumblefrig, and has maybe $45m in total assets. Dude also has the attitude that he's Bank of America or Deutschebank. Wants massive modifications to his particular (tiny three-server) system. When he's told how much that would cost, he freaks the hell out, goes apeshit, tells us all to go to hell, and decides to hire some guy's cousin to do the mods instead (they're his servers, he's perfectly allowed to). Turns out the cousin in question just recently graduated from West Bumblefrig Community College (no-name Campus), knows only enough about programming to be dangerous, and ends up tearing the servers up from hell to breakfast. They still run, but just barely, and some customers are noticing errors in their monthly statements... the CU is flirting with regulator audits at this point. Dude is abolutely livid - blames us for it to cover his ass. Demands we "fix your mess!" We do what we can within bounds of contract, and then some... manage to clean up most of it but not all, since many components of the screw-up sit on some other server that we (by law and regulation) cannot have access to. We inform him of this, and of every other step we've taken along the way. He goes ballistic, threatens lawsuits, etc etc.

Our corp CEO himself ends up using a bunch of polite words to tell the guy in no uncertain terms that: 'we saved all the evidence, we'll see you in court if it comes to that, and by the way once contract ends, you can go f--k yourself because we do not want your money. It's your bed, you lie in it'

The point is that in most other, more serious industries, when someone acts the fool, they get promptly ignored.

• Just because you spent $10 on something does not give you the right to call the CEO on the carpet when your custom character's tits don't bounce perfectly.

• Just because your particular computer may be loaded with crapware, potential malware, hasn't been tuned in years, and has some oddball configuration (and likely contains mis-matched parts), doesn't mean you get to stomp your feet and demand attention whenever some free application doesn't load for you. 

Now there are some serious holes that DAZ needs to fill: the lack of a manual is a pretty serious deal IMHO. I know it can be a bitch to get a proper documentations person.. Hell, I wrote the first one, and I'm still amazed that it wasn't as lousy as I thought it would turn out. I know how much of a PITA it is to make sure the user manual explains the product cogently, while at the same time not forcing a steep learning curve. The CG shit ain't easy at all for the newbie; the apps are highly complex, no matter how simple the UI is. OTOH, it has got to be done, and not having one is pretty inexcusable. 

OTOH, the whole Genesis thing? Sorry, but if it doesn't work in Poser, it doesn't work in Poser. Until that situation changes? Either use it in D|S or do without it. If you got booted from their forums, then stop spending money there, and for the love of all that is holy, stop stomping your feet and whining about it. Nobody cares, my dear little precious. Take your ball, go home, and don't come back until you learn to behave like an adult.

Overall though, this thread has been highly educational... though again, in ways that I don't think many of the posters intended.