Quote:
Originally Posted by prof_pixel
I just received a new hard drive yesterday afternoon to backup my wife's iMac Intel running 10.4.11.
When I opened SD to start the backup process I was informed there was a new version of SuperDuper! available for download - version 2.5. Of course I updated 2.1.4 to 2.5 (a BAD choice, as I later found out).
The first time I tried, I got within about 20GB of completion and the counter appeared to freeze although the drive light was still flashing even though I waited about 20 minutes. I was afraid the new drive was bad. I transfered about 50GB of files to another hard drive and tried SuperDuper! again, and again, I got to about 20GB of completion and the same thing happened. At this point I was worried my wife's drive had some bad files although DU said it was OK. Needless to say I was concerned.
It was late and night and before trying any heavy duty troubleshooting on my wife's hard drive I decided to check your discussion forum (a GOOD choice) and luckily found this message thread.
Today I reverted to 2.1.4 and everything worked great!
I suggest you add a very noticeable warning to the 2.5 update info page advising Intel OS 10.4.x users NOT to update to 2.5!!!!! (There may have been such a warning, but I certainly didn't see one.)
Such a warning would have saved me a LOT of grief.
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Me too! (Boldface added by me for emphasis.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by dnanian
This actually happens to a small minority of users, and only on some Intel Macs, which is why there's no warning... but we did announce the problem the instant we found it, on the blog, and there's lots of discussion here on the forums. Plus - you can just contact me at support.
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Wrong, wrong,
wrong way to deal with this! You should definitely post a warning, as Prof Pixel suggested. Allow me to explain why.
My wife's MacBook Pro broke down the other day, and I'm scrambling to get her data out of that MBP and into mine so she can continue working. It's the end of the month and deadlines coming up on all sides, so timing is critical.
Getting the data out of her MBP has already involved a tiring day-long trip into the city to get the hard drive out of the laptop and into a cheap USB2 enclosure. Today I wanted to make clones of both that drive and the one in my MBP, so I'd have backups handy in case I screwed something up while moving her data from the former to the latter. I thought that would take a couple hours, tops, using SuperDuper.
Boy was I wrong. I wasted a few hours stopping and restarting SuperDuper because it was apparently hanging partway through the cloning process. What should have taken a couple hours has wasted half a day that my wife would've liked to spend catching up on her work. That's a couple very valuable hours that you could saved us by putting a warning of some sort on the download page.
You claim that by having noted this problem in your blog and in the forums you have done enough to alert users to this problem and its workaround. You are wrong. What you need to realize is that
not everyone who downloads your product is going to take the time to read all your blogs and all the forum threads. Most will do what I did: I thoroughly read the product description, noted that you claim the current version is compatible with OS X 10.4.11, and downloaded it. That should be enough, no?
So what if I am one of the few people using an Intel Mac who have actually experienced this problem? Does the fact that I'm in the minority make my time any less valuable, or my circumstances any less dire? If it does not, then why shouldn't there be a warning on the download page?
Given a choice between (1) an explanation of what went wrong after I've wasted a couple hours trying to deal with a problem and (2) a warning that would prevent me from ever experiencing the problem in the first place, I will choose (2) every time. I will also avoid giving money to any company that tries to insist that (1) is the right way of doing things, for whatever reason.
And that is indeed your position, as stated in your response to Prof Pixel. You are essentially saying that I am to blame for the extra downtime I experienced using your product because I didn't look for this forum thread sooner. That is not a very kind attitude to take to a potential customer. Yes, I have indeed been toying with the idea of purchasing two or three licenses for SuperDuper! but to be frank my experience today has put me right off that idea.
I just thought you might want to know why you're losing sales. Please note that I've just spent several more minutes of my time explaining this to you because I feel SuperDuper is a good product that deserves to be supported better. If you wish to take umbrage at my tone and ignore me (as you did Prof Pixel) then of course you are free to do so; but you will only be doing yourselves and your customers a further disservice.
EDIT: I just noticed the slogan at the top of the page. "Software for an audience of one: you." ... Unless you're one of the small minority, eh? <sighs>