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Apprently asking for or talking about features leads to M$ Word

I’ve been a loyal Yojimbo user for a while, and no am not. I posted the why’s of it before. I am on a support list thread though, because of the question I asked. There’s a thread going on about “best note taking app” Ironically it started as a “hey you guys, Yojimbo isn’t listed, but look at the other options…” and quickly turned into a Flame war. Here’s the thread for those interested

I chimed in expressing my sadness at leaving the Yojimbo family, agreeing that baseless complaining serves no purpose, but open dialog with the software creator should be a good thing. I really wanto post again, but as is always the case in flame wars, no one cares what anyone has to say.

A few choice points are made (wrongly IMHO), that I want to share with the broader community and software dev audience.

Steve from barebones, joined in early with this gem, “We don’t ship new Yojimbo releases daily, and won’t share our product
roadmaps and calendars with the public. So what? The last time I
needed Yojimbo (about an hour ago) it seemed to work just fine.
We have more than one product, fewer than infinite engineering
resources, and speaking for myself only, less and less patience for
trolls.”

My read on this is, “we’re doing what we want and if you don’t like it, STFU. I will say, as it is their company they’re entitled wo tbuild what they like, and act how they want, but as a consumer and ‘disruptive brander’ as Tom calls us, I can say, F that. As in every other industry, you (barebones) exists to serve your customers. you can hate us, publicly and privately but in 2008 that attitude is less and less tolerated.

The last time I needed a VHS tape deck, it worked just fine too, but then I threw it out, because it was outdated, Seems an odd model for a software company to adopt, shoot even Microsoft realizes ‘innovate or die’

Dennis had this little trinket for the list, “There isn’t much more that I want from Yojimbo as it does pretty much
what I bought it for. I’d still like to be able to sync between two
Macs without going through .Mac/MobileMe, but I’ve since moved my
installation to my laptop and my work situation is different so it’s
much less of a big deal than when I was traveling more.”

So it does everything Dennis wants, except one thing… mmm Dennis slams Adobe by comparing post sales support at Adobe to post sales support from Barebones. Having never had a need of either, I can’t comment on that.

fanbo Scott reasons that, “i needed to clip a web page a few hours ago. yojimbo worked.

i dropped about 20 pdf’s into yojimbo over the past 2 days. it worked
just fine then too..

his point is. it isn’t broken. yojimbo works just fine. no glaring
bugs, it works exactly as intended, with the functions clearly stated
on the web pages and hell you can even try it out as a demo.”

Great. So Scott must still use Lotus 123, since editing text is editing text. why add features? I’m guessing scott browses the list on Lynx, since the web is the web, why add new features like rich text or UI.

Yes Yijimbo does what it has done since it was released. great no reason to add new features or keep up with the times. Since using evernote, I’ve gotten maybe 3 update releases. Yes one was a bug fix. I can’t recall the last time Yijimbo updated, monthsn easily. a year not unlikely. I wonder if barebones knows that many of us are using smart phones now, we’ve moved from the flip phone.

A great one from Rich is, “Not according to the list description. :-)

<http://groups.google.com/group/yojimbo-talk/about>

Folks, out of respect for those who are interested in discussing
Yojimbo’s existing features and how to make the most of them,
please continue (or start) any arguments regarding policy or
list etiquette off-list.”

Apparently BB doesn’t want discussion of new features or requests, or heavens, complaints on their lists. Fanboys only. I particularly like “out of respect for those who are interested in discussing
Yojimbo’s existing features and how to make the most of them” As a software developer, I hope my customers never say this. I don’t want any product I’m involved in referenced as “let’s talk about how to make the most of what we’ve go (since it’s all we’re getting)” Wow.

I’ll end my (admittedly) rant with fanboy Scott, “it’s one thing to request features. it’s something else to whine about  lack of sub-folders, lack of iphone version, lack of web version, etc. we’ve heard it all before.”

ok 1. Those are all features that current software shops either are working on or support. Evernote; desktop client (mac/PC), Web UI, iPhone app. It ain’t hard BB. You don’t ahve that many products so crying “we’re busy” is pretty piss poor. 2. “heard it before” that’s really telling, and the bais of my final post on the list, it’s sad when feature requests are “heard it, it ain’t coming, let’s get over it”

I can’t say BB is destined for non existence, but I can say, they won’t be getting my money and I can’t recommend their products or attitudes to anyone I know.

I as I said in the list, the only recourse is take your business elsewhere. I did that. My only other recourse as a business owner, learn from BB and be 100% the opposite towards my customers.

Tags: Yojimbo

How Barebones lost me as a customer

I’ve been using Yojimbo since I got my MacBook pro, almost 3 years ago. Great app, love it! I sync across mobileMe to my macbook AIR, and all my serials, passwords, useful terminal snippits, etc, are all easilly reachable.

Then i wanted to extend that useability to my iNewton, and soon iPhone. No go. I started a thread on the support forums, which met with a few “me too”s and a “Barebones doesn’t share their release time line or product roadmaps with the public” case closed. The FAQ has this to say,

We’d like to offer an iPhone version of Yojimbo, but can’t currently say if/when this may happen nor what its feature set might be. As soon as we’re able to provide more info about our plans, we will do so.

I understand, not all companies believe in or like transparency or dealing with customers outside a help forum of their control. Fine I get that, lame, but hey, not my company.

But as a consumer, I have to say, that’s not cool. Shoot, even Apple let’s the rumors fly, vs flat out saying, “unlikely to happen now or anytime soon”. The only reply as a consumer I can make to statements and behaviour like this is to stop using the product, so I did.

I exported every Yojimbo record to a text file, imported each into Evernote. I’ll be the first to admit, it’s not Yojimbo. the UI is less clean and easy to use. the feature-set is nice, with OCR, etc. But the real clincher was iNewton app. It’s not the greatest at the moment, input only, and once you sync you can’t edit it or any other note. It’s completely view only on existing notes. But oyu can snap a picture note (iPhone obviously) and enter text notes.

The iPhone app UI needs some love, but there’s an app, so already it’s ahead of Barebones. And unlike Barebones who seem to think customers enjoy the dark, evernote posted to their blog about iDevice compatibility, and live updating of data from those devices.

So sadly, after years of being a Yojimbo fan boy, I’m leaving the fold. Yojimbo is off my dock, and no longer running. I’ll propbably leave it installed for a while, just in case the export missed a file or two, but new data is not going into it.

Tags: Yojimbo