Where is Xojo Focus?

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Hi Everyone,

I have read a few posts here and in the ‘other place’ where I suddenly thought “bloody hell, I am paying loads of money for a licence and I am not the audience for the product”

many more experienced and long standing proponents of the product are unhappy with longstanding issues and company direction, along with me.

this leads me to ask the question in the title:-

who on earth is the focus of the product?

my limited experience, 2007 to now, seems to be that the focus changes dramatically depending on some magical whim.

the last ‘great’ thing was android, this was always to me an UTTER and complete waste of time.
who cares about android, well it seems since it was number one in the roadmap, and was never delivered… no one does, we now seem to have a new video (I have not watched it, pointless to me)
is that video a product of the company spying on the comments on this forum? who knows.

here we are, paying a lot of money to support a product that we are all emotionally invested in.

the company focus (to me at least) appears to be in the area of non programmers who are looking for a place to start their programming life? or something.
thats great, but not 95% new people focus and 5% real people who can afford to pay for the product.

for me this is the last purchase, I renewed at 19r1, within weeks they released 19r2 and since then screwed the product totally (in my own opinion), I have absolutely nothing from my latest update, there will be no stable product for a long time, yes this sounds negative, sadly the past experience will prove correct.

Apart from my RANT about the company direction, has anyone felt that they, as the paying customer of many years standing, are the target audience for the current direction of Xojo?

I am not for sure, but I would like to be the supporter, by throwing loads of money at them, oh shit, I have already done that and it does not appear to work.

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I recently did exactly this. Now I feel it was more of a donation than an investment.

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Yeap, that is the big mistake, xojo keep saying, people os ok with the product, they keep throwing lots of money yo us, so lets keep the same way. This is not a charity, we have to be objective, if the product works, Ill gladly pay for it, otherwise, they will only listen if there is no money flowing.

Will prove? That has being the case for a long, long time. with web 1.0 not moving in years and ios being a joke, I left PRO in 2018r3. For desktop, it was obvious web 2.0 will take a looong time to be usable, so I didnt renew and stay in 2019r2.

Lot of people renew or purchase with discount on May, but as i said in the forum, Web 2.0 is still a long way to be usable, if the release take more than 2 monts, you are actually LOOSING money using that discount.

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either they read this forum or someone passes information about whats said back to them

not sure which

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It wasn’t me! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Doesnt really matter either way

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If you don’t earn money with a payable product, you loose money. That is very naturally and not Xojo-specific.

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So many people moaning all the time.

If you don’t like it don’t use it - sod off and go buy something else then.

You’re not making a donation, you’re paying to unlock the build facility for the product you currently have

Bitching on here or anywhere else gains absolutely nothing. It just floods the forums with crap and dilutes the useful stuff.

There are so many alternatives, so use one of them, I’m sick of seeing these posts.

I for one love the product.

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That’s a rather simplistic assertion.

So in your book we should all be happy with our lot and sing Kumbayah? :man_facepalming:

At least here you are allowed to see them … :grin:

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Yeah, that sounds simple, but before you have to ask yourself some questions:

  • How many customers do you have who keep their business running using your software written in Xojo? Will you throw your clients/customers away and happily go out of business?
  • How many apps written in Xojo dou you sell online and how much money do you earn doing this? Will you invest a couple of years and rewrite all your apps with an other tool and while doing this not release any updates to your apps?
  • How many years do you code with Xojo? How many years did it take you to write custom modules/classes/controls etc. to make your work with Xojo more effective? Will you throw all that work and gained experience away?
  • How much money did you spend over the years on 3rd party Xojo-plugins to add required features to your apps?
  • How old are you. Is it realistic in your situation to throw away all work done with Xojo and start from scratch?
    …
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Rod, you are being very rude, if you do not like the post then do not reply to it, I can tell you the same, sod off and don’t include yourself in the discussion.

I hope reading that makes you as annoyed as me reading your reply.

expressing concerns about the state of play with the product is just as valid as saying how great it is.

and if you took the time to read it properly you might just have seen that the thrust of my issues are not so much the product (like most people here the point of the dissatisfaction stems form a very great attachment to the principle and use of the product) but with the direction of the company, that seemingly is away from the long time users and financially supportive group of people and aiming the focus somewhere, and I do not know where that is.

‘moaning’ as you call it, criticism and questioning legitimately is what I call it, is part and parcel of involved group of people.

if you have nothing to say related to the OP then why not leave it like that and not get involved, or post an opposing view saying how perfect the offering and support from the company is, anything except just shouting off and offering nothing to what I had hoped may be a legitimate discussion as to anyone else’s lack of understanding as to the current direction being taken.

If you, Rod, take the time to read a blog post by Bob Keeney, November 6, 2019, you will see an extremely well presented and much better version of my OP, I did not see it until after I posted this, it is a very sobering read.

Please do not take offence at my reply to you, none is intended.

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Imagine that the forum is a city and each threads is a restaurant. Just aply your own advice and keep away from the threads you dont like.

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Here everyone is allowed to express their opinion.
Good. Bad. Or indifferent.
But it has to be done respectfully.
Posts are not removed or edited by moderators
Threads aren’t locked.

Beyond that this is neither a fan club or a haters group.
Its a forum that is intended to be dedicated to cross platform development regardless of what tool set is used.

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Well, as an ‘amateur’ or ‘citizen’ coder or whatever you want to call it, i do want to like XOJO; it’s good at lot of things and for the most part is pleasant to use. There are many things i enjoy about it, and I will probably keep using it in spite it’s issues.
I use this primarily for in-house business and research apps and I have no financial gain from using XOJO.

I have however to agree with the view that the roadmap is focusing on things that maybe don’t play to what most users want, and I personally don’t see how this will be of massive benefit to XOJO either…
These things have been re-iterateted endlessly in this forum.

My personal gripe is that to design anything resembling an interface that isn’t 15 years old, I keep finding myself frequently fighting the IDE. I find i have to use canvas based controls for most things and spend an inordinate amount of time programming simple interface controls instead of the actual business logic of the app, which i think defies the claim of a RAD.
This also directly detracts from the value of XOJO to novice programmers, the market for which apparently many changes were made.

OK i guess i could shell out cash in excess of the licence cost to get better functionality from plugins but actually many of these functionalities really should be part of XOJO to start with (PDF etc).

Like many others have mentioned before, I do wish that XOJO would focus on it’s base market and improve the x-platform Desktop feature set, long term unfixed bugs etc.
X-plat mobile is a booming market with so much (free) competition, i don’t see how XOJO would thrive in that market anyway… so I personally don’t understand the time/effort/money being diverted into iOS/Android…

Kinda feel XOJO needs a ‘Steve Jobs’ type intervention with someone coming in with a laser focus on a key product and slashing all the non-essential products like Jobs did with the Newton, OpenDocs etc…

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I dont think the plan is for Xojo to be a tool people would look at solely for Android or iOS but a way for existing Xojo users to expand their offerings to include those platforms.

People might initially look at it for one platform (web, iOS, Android, Pi, etc) and then realize they can use it for other platforms as well.

Think “gateway drug” :slight_smile:

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printers, displays, etc etc etc

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Looking at the Roadmap you can see that there is no focus group but a wide number of users. Some may say it is too wide and for sure some of Xojo’s targets are not interesting for everyone.

The ultimate goal is to be able to create code for Mac/Windows/Linux/Raspberry/Web/iOS/Android

It makes sense that someone only interested in Desktop (M/W/L) gets frustrated that he can’t get all the fixes since 2019r3.1 until Web 2.0 is finished and they release 2020r1. If I as a developer will never use Android, then I feel that resources are wasted trying to deliver another platform that I don’t care.

Being new to Xojo, less than 3 years, it looks like paying customers of many years are not the main focus, but being able to deliver Xojo apps to more targets, modernizing Web, and updating iOS in the next couple of years.

I love Xojo, I am creating apps that I never thought I would be able to do and thanks to Xojo I have a job that I love. Even if I don’t need to renew my license I will do so, it is my small contribution or my way to say thanks, and I will keep creating feedback cases and testing new versions, trying to make the next version better.

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I think that’s the exact mentality Steve Jobs changed and made Apple so successful after being at the brink of ruin…

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Again, very simplistic.

Because of Xojo Inc‘s decisions I have not updated my license - so yes, I am voting with my money too. [and btw I’m getting into Swift as well]

I‘m happy to pay for a product that does what I need, but Xojo NO LONGER does that because they willfully neglected the Windows platform.

So in your book I have no right to complain and should simply write off my investment in money, code base, time, knowledge because you don‘t like hearing about other user‘s grievances?

Don‘t you think that is just a tiny bit arrogant?

What I want is for Xojo to get their act together, and not PRETEND everything is great but MAKE Xojo great.

And changing rodpascoe to anon18404023? If you can’t stand by what you said then maybe apologize, but trying to “dissociate” yourself from it is a very Trumpian thing … come on, be a man and OWN what you say and do.

[Norman wants us to be respectful even if others are total pricks so there - hope that is respectful enough]

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All Xojo users are going to fall into X categories… and in my opinion each of these categories has a right to exist.

  • Those who feel that Xojo is currently pursuing the most appropriate path in both their product offerings, and marketing approach

  • Those of us who feel that Xojo is misguided in their product and marketing choices, but wish thru our post to make that opinion known, so they can be better. But can no longer is good conscious continue to maintain a license for a product in this status.

  • Those who think the same as above, but for some reason think shelling out $$$ every year for basically no forward motion in the product is a “show of support”

You analogy about a restaurant while simplistic, is somewhat accurate… And you will notice that an ever growing number of Xojo users either have found another tool, or are actively looking for one. But if I eat in a restaurant and get bad food or service, I don’t simply walk out, I complain to the management, tell them what went wrong, and perhaps even offer suggestions on how to improve, especially if that restaurant happened to at one time been a 5 star location. If they can’t or won’t listen, and insist on keeping up with bad service and a bad product, then yes, there is another establishment just down the street.

As to “can’t and won’t”, I fear this IS where Xojo is at. As they seem to make “change for the sake of change” and not for the sake of a better product.

I tried to be respectful … hope I didn’t come across as “a total prick” :smiley:

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