It's disappointing that so much attention is paid to some aspects of the program, but in other areas, "good enough" will do.
It seems short-sighted not to support these things, when display resolutions keep going up.
Just because they aren't taking immediate action on something, doesn't mean they don't care. This is a very small software shop (though it got a little bigger recently, and I think we'll all see some big benefits from that). Prioritization is essential. You might not always agree with their prioritization decisions, but there are always factors "under the covers" that we can't see.
For example, in this case...
I don't know. I'm making this up, but it is certainly plausible that they completely agree with your entire point regarding image rendering capabilities. But, the image rendering engine they have behind MC needs to be incredibly high performance to support the smooth scrolling and scaling of TONS of images on the screen at one time in some cases. Go to some view that shows a TON of artwork (some kind of all-albums view), crank the thumbnail size all the way small, and scroll up and down. Watch how fast the views open and render the art on the screen.
So, that's all custom, and probably pretty low-level. Re-writing it all might take a huge development effort (sucking down months of Matt's time almost exclusively). Is it
that important? Are there other things more important first? Is it more important than supporting Theater View or Video on OSX? Is it more important than a high-end audio feature (that I don't care about) but which brings in a bunch of sales? I don't know what the back-end code looks like, and I also don't know what their corporate clients are asking for...
I do agree that, generally, it would be better to see some better cover art support (and, generally, retina support). But those high-resolution screens are all still pretty new, and what is their overall market share, and what kind of cost-vs-reward does it have for JRiver?
I don't know. I get that you're interested in seeing some UI improvements. I agree. I don't know if Matt does, but I bet he'd say "yes, those things are all important, but there's X factor in the way, and I got this stuff over here too". I been hanging out here for a long while. Give it time.
Just when you
think they've
forgotten about something for a
long while, they'll suddenly
ship a build with a huge change underneath (that has obviously taken a lot of work over months or years and which has all been hidden)...
I'll tell you this much. I've never, ever seen or dealt with a developer that is this open to the suggestions of and needs of their customers. They're listening. There's just only a few of them, and they don't (they can't) always explain everything behind the scenes. No comment isn't always no.