I’ve always said that basic functionality needs to be rock solid.
With that being said I would like to point to the thread about Autodiscovery being unusable.
As for the letter:
The core product has to be good. Many companies that neglected their core strengths and went after “new markets” went under - so Xojo neglecting desktop like this is hard to understand.
In my opinion Geoff decided to take a page out of Apple’s book. “Forget about the Pro’s - go after the consumer mass market”. But what he failed to realise was that Apple prepared that move diligently. Steve Jobs came in and put MacOS on a stabil footing: MacOS X has Unix underneath. Then all the übergeeks that learned and loved Linux, earned their money with Windows (but hated it), and didn’t even look at that Mac “toy computer” were running around with Apple’s PowerBooks. [I realised that Apple was onto a winner and wanted to buy shares back then at USD8 but my government insisted on me repaying my student loan instead - those shares would now be worth over 76 Million UD$]. That had a trickle down effect - those geeks started recommending Macs … and the rest is History as they say.
Without Steve Jobs Apple has lost its way a bit under Ivy, and the Pros were leaving, but it seems they are now getting back into it. Because the Mac is an integral part of the platform experience.
Xojo is trying to go after the consumer market without having laid the ground work - as a shortcut they tried to distance themselves from the “bad” BASIC moniker and renamed themselves. But with the Pro’s giving Xojo bad reviews left, right, and center, will consumers be willing to shell out money … especially when other products start approaching Xojo’s ease of use (I just love Swift) and are free to boot, with better job and long-term prospects?
Or as Bob said: What is good for the Pro, is good for the “Citizen Developer”.
And that is where Xojo’s strategy falls down.
If Xojo is just for “home use”, has a bad reputation among Pros, and costs a lot of money (not for Pro’s but according to everyone else) - then why not use B4 or Python or Swift or Go or whatever instead? Where users rave about it, Pros recommend it, and people flock to it?
If Xojo had done its homework and was a mature and stable development system that Pro’s rave about - then it would have a chance and a much larger user base. But they made the capital error of not just neglecting the most influential user group, but actively driving them out.
I’m pretty good at spotting long term trends and predicting long-term consequences. Watching their “strategy” unfold hurts, because it has more holes than a Swiss cheese …