I find myself sharing duesy's feeling. I'd like to take a few minutes to explain my own customer case in the hopes that you might A) find it helpful and B) perhaps reshuffle or reword some information you're currently putting out to avoid situations like duesy's and mine.
A quick lookup of yours on my forum login and account will reveal to you just how long I've been buying MC, and MJ before that. I stopped using MC for a few years because, after having converted and cataloged my collection, I found that what I needed was not more cataloging and organizing and ripping. What I needed was software that was going to be good at changing the contents of my handheld, particularly when that handheld's capacity was smaller than the size of the collection.
MC was great at what it did back in the day(the early 2000s), producing and organizing my entire 500+ physical CD collection as digital. But the world changed. More and more it became about the handheld, and playing music through my PC didn't matter as much anymore--neither did ripping or burning discs. A lot of what I considered that MC was really good at didn't matter much anymore.
I made the mistake, if you will, of throwing my lot in with the Zune player, and owned just about every version of it right up until it got discontinued recently. Regardless of how you personally may feel about MS and Zune, I thought it was a great device, and was sad to see it go. I felt it was the better player than the iPod, and until it got discontinued I really didn't regret that decision.
So I went away from being a regular MC user and upgrader because MC couldn't sync to the Zune. And the same reason was given then as you're giving here now--the evil company's sync software is proprietary and they won't allow us to sync to their device, go beg them to let us. And that was fine, no hard feelings; I'm a .NET dev myself and I get it (which is one of the reasons I'm heavily invested in MS devices).
I kept hoping that things would change, though; I occasionally came back here to check if anything had. But in the main, I became a Zune software user--and still am, because I'm still a Zune Pass subscriber, and I'm still drinking that kool-aid through the use of an Xbox and a Windows Phone.
It eventually got to the point where I just didn't even reinstall MC, because the world has changed to the point where buying and ripping discs isn't the main channel by which I acquire owned music anymore. MC could neither manage nor sync my subscribed music in the ways that I needed it to.
However, with the death of the physical Zune standalone player, after weeks of contemplation I decided to go back into iPod-land. And one of the reasons that i did was, and I can't emphasize this point enough,
I told myself that as much as I hate iTunes, it's going to be OK because I know that I can use MC to sync the device.So, you can imagine my surprise when, after buying my new 64GB iPod touch today, and immediately, instinctively, reflexively also dropping $50 on you this same day for an accessory purchase of a shiny new MC license because I had that much faith in it--that no, MC now in fact does NOT sync to THE FLAGSHIP LATEST MODELS OF IPOD.
Jim, I get it. I get that you were burned by them; I get that it's a nightmare to try to do and provide; I get that you're not in any way anxious for a repeat of the experience; I get that your business continues to grow despite it. And I equally get that a whole forum full of whinging about it isn't going to change the situation either, whether that whinging happens at Apple or JRiver.
But what you need to change is your very public statement that MC does sync to iPod--this statement is, in fact, on the very opening page of MC. "Upload to iPods and Windows Media PlaysForSure Devices". You need to stop saying that because it is only technically true at best, and at worst it's totally deceptive. It uploads to SOME, OLDER iPods at this point. It does not upload to iPods across the board as a flat statement. That is a lie.
And, in fact, discovering that it doesn't sync to the newer iPods was quite an adventure. The first "notice" that you get is from clicking on the "iPod setup" link in the main window after clicking on the Drives and Devices node, which resolves to this poorly-worded and formatted wiki page:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Sync, as you know. Poorly worded because it at best waffles on the issue as well with its asterisked disclaimer. "may not be supported", "contact Apple", indeed.
Furthermore, to get the real story one has to delve into these forums, which I only know how to do because I'm a previous and longtime registrant. I seriously doubt a newb would get here anytime soon.
And the real story is, I'm sad to say, found in the form of a lot of snippy and poorly spelled statements from you and from devs, of which this thread is only one example. It's a good thing you're running this company, Jim, because if you were a support professional at MY company who said things like "Use Rockbox", "Contact Apple and complain to them", and other such responses as I've read out of you here...that support professional would be out of a job instantly.
Jim, I may indeed contact Apple to tell them for the umpteenth time what proprietary boobs they are, but I'm contacting YOU right here and now to tell you your software isn't doing what you're advertising it to do. So as a dev I don't have any illusions about getting the software to do that because I understand the issues, but as a consumer, I'm more than a little annoyed about the deceptive advertising. That I would ask you to stop, because it's in your best interest to do so.
I feel I have solid grounds to ask for a refund of today's purchase of MC due to all of the above, but I'm not going to ask that. You got me, my bad, lesson learned, you get to keep my money. Don't go spending it all in one place, now. And MC's still got enough occasional value to where I can still rationalize that it was OK that I spent that money. The money just didn't go toward the uses I expected it to.
However, not only will you not ever be getting any more of my favorite dollars, you won't be getting my endorsement for MC, which I used to hand out like candy. I've recommended you countless times over the years. Just last week I responded to a Facebook-posted question looking for alternatives to iTunes to use to sync up an iPod. And I of course pointed them at you, not knowing at the time that I was sending them (and whoever read that post) to get burned like I just got.
That annoys me to no end. I feel like I should apologize to the guy. I might just.
This kind of practice is hurting you--the deceptive wording, the bad help system, the poor forum responses. I would urge you not to underestimate how much it's hurting you. It's hurting you not in the growth and fandom that you see but the growth and fandom that you both don't and won't.
I'm now headed off to explore MediaMonkey to see whether or not THEY are playing word-games with their iPod support like you are, or whether I really am stuck with iTunes.
Thanks for listening. I hope you're able to see the constructive suggestions where they're made here, because I really did love your product back in the day and I really wanted you succeed. I'm still on your spam lists for announcements of your latest MC versions. I'll continue to read them when I get them, but unless you fix these matters, I won't be back. Fool me once, shame on you and so forth.
