I’m leaving this post as is for posterity and because I think the point is valid… but the target definitely isn’t! Check out Ken Chase’s excellent reply below. If you look at this discount as a bonus for beta testers, it becomes really reasonable. I wasn’t aware that OmniFocus’s beta was that wide-spread. So this goes from a “Suck eggs, Omni!” to a “Well done, Omni!”
I remember years ago asking The Omni Group about a feature that was critical to me in OmniWeb. I’d heard they were adding it soon, so I asked them for details.
The guy who replied1 told me something very simple: “If it doesn’t do what you want, wait. Don’t buy anything that doesn’t already do what you want.”Over the years since, I’ve really appreciated this advice, and wished every customer would live by that rule, and every software company would advocate the same rule. It’s simple honesty, really. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like The Omni Group still lives by this rule, because OmniFocus is now available with introductory pricing that goes away as soon as the final release ships, pressuring people to buy now. How could beta software possibly deliver?2
Maybe it was a Wil Shipley philosophy that Omni has left behind. I must admit, I’m not sure that Delicious Monster lives by this rule, but I strongly suspect they do. Whatever the cause, it’s a shame Omni lost it. I like honest companies; they’re refreshing.3
- It’s been too long for me to still have the names, and at the time I wouldn’t have recognized an Omni Group Name (in the capital letter sense) anyway. [↩]
- Annoying sales push? Check. The only thing missing is a good sprinkle of starburst dust. [↩]
- Note that, for the record, I’m not calling Omni dishonest here. I just found the old policy aggressively honest. [↩]
November 19th, 2007 at 10:27 am
I’m still leading Omni, and that philosophy came from me. I still firmly believe that if our software doesn’t do what you want, we don’t want you to purchase it–that’s why we made OmniFocus betas publicly available at the same time as we opened it up for pre-orders.
You don’t have to buy OmniFocus today, but we’ve had people telling us for months that OmniFocus already does everything they want–except to let them purchase a license, which we’re now letting them do.
I’m not claiming we consider OmniFocus 1.0 done (if we did, we’d be shipping it today rather than on January 8), but many people (including me) have been living in it for over six months, and it already does what many want. (The features are all in, there are just some rough edges and bugs that we want to fix before we declare it ready to ship.)
In summary, yes, please do buy software that delivers, not promises. That’s always been part of our philosophy at Omni, and we still stand by it.
November 19th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Thanks Ken! It actually sounds pretty reasonable once you factor in the beta testers; this becomes a bonus for them, rather than a “buy it now” annoying sales push. I’ll put something in the top of my entry to point people to your comment.