Wow Logos on the Mac is so sub-par
I would like to kindly and respectfully say that it's troubling that Logos sold this package as a viable piece of software. I have never used an app on my mac that runs so terribly and is laden with so many bugs, spinning beach balls, crashes etc. I used to love this company, but I will not invest another dime in this company until I've seen real change in their business model and in the quality of this program. In the meantime, I'm on the fence about whether I will even keep logos. I need Bible software that works. It's such a tremendous letdown from a company that I used to be an outspoken advocate for.
I'm still hopeful, but I'm doubting they are going to actually do much about these issues.
ps- what's the process for selling logos resources?
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iamk said:
I have never used an app on my mac that runs so terribly and is laden with so many bugs, spinning beach balls, crashes etc.
Have you come to the forum for help? I see that you post pretty infrequently. If you are having problems, why don't you come and ask for help? I will follow up in your other thread.
iamk said:ps- what's the process for selling logos resources?
Find a buyer somewhere other than the forums. Contact Logos and pay the transfer fee.
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Thanks Alabama. I don't want to seem angry or obnoxious. I am simply trying to communicate my thoughts that it seems to be an unacceptable business model.
I often come to the forums and search for my issue and find solutions. If I'm not mistaken, this should be our first step. Perhaps, I'm just lazy, but even having to come and search for fixes to problems often is not acceptable. It's very un-mac-like. On the mac, most apps simply work and get out of the way. I know that troubleshooting will be needed at times, but the frequency of it on logos4mac is too often.
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iamk said:
Thanks Alabama. I don't want to seem angry or obnoxious. I am simply trying to communicate my thoughts that it seems to be an unacceptable business model.
I often come to the forums and search for my issue and find solutions. If I'm not mistaken, this should be our first step. Perhaps, I'm just lazy, but even having to come and search for fixes to problems often is not acceptable. It's very un-mac-like. On the mac, most apps simply work and get out of the way. I know that troubleshooting will be needed at times, but the frequency of it on logos4mac is too often.
You're not alone in your opinion or feelings concerning the Mac version of Logos. Logos used to be my #1 bible software package until I switched to Mac a few years ago and bought into the L4 hype. I am considering abandoning the Mac version altogether and returning to limited use on one of my Windows PC's or thru virtualizaiton which I don't use much anymore. It's a shame, Logos has so much to offer and has been such an awesome product in the past but L4 has been a big disappointment for me and turned Logos into my #2 app now.
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That is Logos Mac main problem, as pointed out elsewhere I do believe the programmers are doing their best, but they have certain limiting factors due to the fact they are forced to use inferior programming setup. Mac programers using the early alpha versions warned Logos it was a dead end, Bob admits now it was a mistake, but what has done can not easily be undone. Logos mac will likely always have it's limitations until it is completely revamped and that seems unlikely. It has also been pointed out that Logos is having trouble getting more good mac programers. I have simply come to accept Logos Mac for what it is, I have a large Library in Logos, but if it were using some universal standard (no such thing) i would switch all my items over to a more stable mac friendly software. While Logos Mac may truly be sub-par, their selection of resources is tremendous and for me keeps me using the software.
-Dan
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From what I understand, Logos uses .Net3.5. Mac shares the code with windows. .Net 4.0 has issues. When Microsoft releases .Net 4.5 on October 26, Logos will adopt it, and this will remove some limitations that they have and make the program much better.
XP and the mac Os that they plan to drop may not be able to handle .Net 4.5. Lets see what happens when .Net 4.5 is implemented. Hopefully, the mac users will get an update on their program which will improve responsiveness and stability.
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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Lynden Williams said:
From what I understand, Logos uses .Net3.5. Mac shares the code with windows. .Net 4.0 has issues. When Microsoft releases .Net 4.5 on October 26, Logos will adopt it, and this will remove some limitations that they have and make the program much better.
XP and the mac Os that they plan to drop may not be able to handle .Net 4.5. Lets see what happens when .Net 4.5 is implemented. Hopefully, the mac users will get an update on their program which will improve responsiveness and stability.
Does anyone at Logos blog about things like this so we can have some visibility for what's in store for the future?
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.” ~Chesterton
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Mr. Micawber said:
Does anyone at Logos blog about things like this so we can have some visibility for what's in store for the future?
Found the info on the forums. I think Bob Pritchett mentioned it, but not sure.
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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I'm curious what the OP has done to resolve his problems with Logos 4 Mac. I'm using it regularly on an older Mac and while it's not as nimble as on the PC, it works OK and they keep improving it. The biggest problem I have with L4M is my machine, not Logos.
The mind of man is the mill of God, not to grind chaff, but wheat. Thomas Manton | Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow. Richard Baxter
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Dan Francis said:
While Logos Mac may truly be sub-par, their selection of resources is tremendous and for me keeps me using the software.
That is also my situation.
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I can imagine the Logos employees reading these forums can get discouraged at times. I would. I have tried to present my critique in a way that is clear, but does not make it personal. I sometimes think part of the reason people turn up the volume on their critique is that the marketing claims and optimism does not alleviate the worn patience of users that have hung with this process for three years or more.
Personally, there has not been a release that I have been at ease with. Even in this most recent release there is a bug that has made my fonts in my notes large. Over the weekend it crashed twice and I found three UI problems. Did I get the job done? Yes. But with that and even cutting it slack knowing that no software is perfect, it's just feels like beta software.
What keeps me using it instead of solely using the other program I have? A sizeable investment in resources I made prior to going to Mac. Though the software would be stunning if it could do all that it is supposed to, this is what is carrying the momentum forward.
A solution that I am working on is setting up Logos under Parallels again the next time I am in the States. This is less than desirable on many levels though, but if the Windows version returns some sanity to this again, it will outweigh running it in a native OSX environment.
In closing, where there is a void commercially, there will be an answer. I know many friends who switched to Mac because they were fed up with Windows issues. If this continues, it will feed competition and all of us will benefit as they get stronger, and we have other options for resources. In the meantime, the consumer has to struggle through it. I am glad for some of the things Logos can do but I am also glad I don't have to fully depend on it.
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Donovan R. Palmer said:
I can imagine the Logos employees reading these forums can get discouraged at times. I would. I have tried to present my critique in a way that is clear, but does not make it personal. I sometimes think part of the reason people turn up the volume on their critique is that the marketing claims and optimism does not alleviate the worn patience of users that have hung with this process for three years or more.
I hope that all the programers realize I appreciate their work, when you are provided hamburger to work with, you do we'll to make salisbury steak. It may not feel overly mac like to me, but I have seen the windows version and am very thankful for the interface they have given us. It is frustrating but they are competent, errors pop up but are corrected quickly. It was disappointing to hear them tell us optimizing is no longer considered a priority but such is life...
-Dan
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Dan Francis said:
errors pop up but are corrected quickly
Your definition of "quickly" must be different than mine. I know of plenty of bugs that have been there for two years.
Dan Francis said:It was disappointing to hear them tell us optimizing is no longer considered a priority
Where did you hear that?
Mac Pro (late 2013) OS 12.6.2
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Dan Francis said:
It was disappointing to hear them tell us optimizing is no longer considered a priority
Bob didn't say that. I assume you refer to the user voice comments. He said something like "we know this is an ongoing issue, we are working on it, so I'm going to release the votes for other issues."
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iamk said:
I would like to kindly and respectfully say that it's troubling that Logos sold this package as a viable piece of software. I have never used an app on my mac that runs so terribly and is laden with so many bugs, spinning beach balls, crashes etc. I used to love this company, but I will not invest another dime in this company until I've seen real change in their business model and in the quality of this program. In the meantime, I'm on the fence about whether I will even keep logos. I need Bible software that works. It's such a tremendous letdown from a company that I used to be an outspoken advocate for.
I'm still hopeful, but I'm doubting they are going to actually do much about these issues.
I'm sorry you are disappointed with our current Mac offering. We value our Mac customers and continue to put great effort into improving the Mac product. If you look at the last few releases (4.5c, 4.6) you will see a lot of effort has gone into making the Mac more stable, faster, and closer in parity with our Windows offering.
The next beta 4.6a, which should be available next week, will continue the trend of maturing our Mac platform. This will include better performance when doing verses/aligned bible/morph searches, improvements to loading maps in places, plus 50+ bugs and parity issues.
I understand your frustration of not having software that just works and appreciate your honest feedback. If there are particular issues that seem to cause crashes, bugs, or beach balls feel free to send an email to logos4feedback@logos.com. I hope that our track record of continuing to offer frequent updates to the software give you confidence in our commitment to this platform.
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Todd,
Thanks for your thoughtful post.
I suppose one of the things that perplexes me is the bewildering array of projects that Logos seems to take on that seem - perhaps I'm wrong - a bit peripheral when compared to getting L4Mac up to par. FaithLife, Vyrso....and who knows what else.
I even saw the other day that Logos is going to make a virtual flashcard reader - a great add on, if your core software is already stellar. If it's not stellar, why do it? There are plenty of very good virtual flashcard makers out there - and these people are focused on just that: virtual flashcards. Even if you do end up producing a better flashcard program, isn't that diverting resources unnecessarily?
I love and appreciate what you guys do - just feedback from someone who may completely misunderstand your business model, et cetera. Just my two centavos.
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.” ~Chesterton
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Mr. Micawber said:
I even saw the other day that Logos is going to make a virtual flashcard reader
...because it is repeatedly asked for. Personally, I could care less about it (but I reserve the right to change my mind [:)])
Mr. Micawber said:I suppose one of the things that perplexes me is the bewildering array of projects that Logos seems to take on that seem - perhaps I'm wrong - a bit peripheral when compared to getting L4Mac up to par. FaithLife, Vyrso....and who knows what else.
Some of those things are needed to keep the company heading in the right direction.
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alabama24 said:
...because it is repeatedly asked for. Personally, I could care less about it (but I reserve the right to change my mind
) I use anki presently; I would find it useful actually. I just think it's insane to make this a priority when L4Mac is still so unstable.
alabama24 said:Some of those things are needed to keep the company heading in the right direction.
I see.
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.” ~Chesterton
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One wonders what is this "right direction" of which you speak? It sounds to me like another instance of marketing and sales taking precedence over quality.
Rich+
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Monroe R Miller said:
One wonders what is this "right direction" of which you speak?
The "right direction" is to keep the company competitive. Logos doesn't make one cent from the software... the sale of resources is what keeps them in business. To develop the software takes capitol... which means that Logos must be looking at where the market is going. Logos is doing just fine financially now, but that could change overnight. For example: Consider that five years ago the world had yet to see an iPhone and Nokia and Blackberry reigned supreme. Both companies are shells of their former selves.
Monroe R Miller said:It sounds to me like another instance of marketing and sales taking precedence over quality.
As I have said, the company needs to sell resources to raise capitol in order to further develop the features and quality of the software. The development of Faithlife and Vyrso help to ensure that future.
I am a diehard Mac Addict. There are other Mac Addicts who cringe at the success of the iOS devices. I know, however, that the success of those departments help to keep Apple a great, vibrant, and relevant company. Faithlife and Vyrso will perhaps do the same thing for Logos.
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alabama24 said:Monroe R Miller said:
One wonders what is this "right direction" of which you speak?
The "right direction" is to keep the company competitive. Logos doesn't make one cent from the software... the sale of resources is what keeps them in business. To develop the software takes capitol... which means that Logos must be looking at where the market is going. Logos is doing just fine financially now, but that could change overnight. For example: Consider that five years ago the world had yet to see an iPhone and Nokia and Blackberry reigned supreme. Both companies are shells of their former selves.
Monroe R Miller said:It sounds to me like another instance of marketing and sales taking precedence over quality.
As I have said, the company needs to sell resources to raise capitol in order to further develop the features and quality of the software. The development of Faithlife and Vyrso help to ensure that future.
I am a diehard Mac Addict. There are other Mac Addicts who cringe at the success of the iOS devices. I know, however, that the success of those departments help to keep Apple a great, vibrant, and relevant company. Faithlife and Vyrso will perhaps do the same thing for Logos.
That make a great deal of sense. Thanks!
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.” ~Chesterton
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Here's my problem with what you say: When L4 first came out (for Windows), I wondered why Logos would release a product that clearly did not work. I received a reply from Bob that they did that because they wanted to offer it for sale during the Fall Christmas shopping season. Thus, a marketing strategy lead to the release of an inferior product. Logos does this over and over. That type of action does not increase profitability nor raise capital. It does do great harm to the company's reputation.
The same thing is now happening with L4 Mac.
Rich+
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alabama24 said:Dan Francis said:
It was disappointing to hear them tell us optimizing is no longer considered a priority
Bob didn't say that. I assume you refer to the user voice comments. He said something like "we know this is an ongoing issue, we are working on it, so I'm going to release the votes for other issues."
Sorry I did misinterpret that…. but I do mean taking it off the issues makes you feel it is no longer a priority and yes f lots of things have yet to be resolved but the items coming up for my day to day use seem to be resolved in one or two builds…. I am not a "power user" so some of the specialized bugs may be overlooked by me.
-Dan
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I'm new to the Mac version of Logos. It is a little slower than the PC versions that I have. But otherwise am very happy with the software. I use it daily for my homework and am glad to have the platform on my iOS devices as well. Don't recall it every crashing or hanging. May God bless you all for what you are doing.
I'm running a MacBook Pro 2.3GHz, 4GB, mid-2012.
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Kurt Shimada said:
Don't recall it every crashing or hanging.
Pleased for you that your experience is so positive. Some of us experience moderate performance hits and crashes. Others have serious problems with even the most basic operations. The more problems a person has—along with a substantial financial investment—the more likely they are to post on these forums with negative comments.
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Monroe R Miller said:
That type of action does not increase profitability nor raise capital.
Bob may be a better judge of that than those of us looking in from the outside.
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alabama24 said:
Logos doesn't make one cent from the software...
Come now, that's really not true. All the resources in the world are meaningless without the software. They cannot sell the resources without the software. They often advertise their resources with reference to the software. It's all about the software. No software, no money for Logos. Better software, more people jumping on board.
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Donovan R. Palmer said:
What keeps me using it instead of solely using the other program I have? A sizeable investment in resources I made prior to going to Mac.
This is the part that bugs me. I've already invested a lot in resources, but I really have a hard time seeing sticking with the Mac version if it isn't going to have real improvement. If it is going to continue the same path in the future, it's just not worth it. That makes it hard to justify spending even more money on resources. That's why I want to know what the future brings. Yes, there have been a lot of updates and patches and bug fixes, yet the overall experience hasn't changed much for a while. Some of the biggest early problems have been fixed, but it's still a bulky, unresponsive program.
Logos, why should I continue spending money for resources when the Mac version has shown so little real and significant progress?
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I've been following this thread anxiously for several days now. I'm a long time logos user on windows, since 2.0x. I also have an iPad and I'm encouraged by what I see happening to the app on ios. I'm using windows 7 right now (since its release in 2009) and I LOVE it!
However, I think he handwriting us on the wall for windows. HP and DELL are both taking major hits financially. I fully expect windows 8 to tank even worse than Vista did! And will completely ignored by business.
Couple that with the steady market share increase of the Mac platform, and I think Logos should be working hard on the Mac version. It is extremely likely that my next computer (within the next year or so) is going to be a Mac. I am hoping that the Mac version of Logos will be the showpiece by then instead of the windows version.
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John Kaess said:
Couple that with the steady market share increase of the Mac platform, and I think Logos should be working hard on the Mac version
I can see this, at 78% Windows to 3.7% Mac who knows, in 50 or 100 years Mac's may be the machine of choice [Y]
(although there are contrary warning signs since Mac growth has leveled off this year at just above 9%)
"As any translator will attest, a literal translation is no translation at all."
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It's not what the market share is now, but in what direction it is going. And your stat must be old. Mac's market share is around 15% right now.
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Paul Golder said:John Kaess said:
Couple that with the steady market share increase of the Mac platform, and I think Logos should be working hard on the Mac version
I can see this, at 78% Windows to 3.7% Mac who knows, in 50 or 100 years Mac's may be the machine of choice
(although there are contrary warning signs since Mac growth has leveled off this year at just above 9%)
That probably includes businesses.
Methinks you'd have to look at target markets for Logos - such as, households where there is significant interest in the Bible - for any stat to be meaningful
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.” ~Chesterton
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John Kaess said:
It's not what the market share is now, but in what direction it is going. And your stat must be old. Mac's market share is around 15% right now.
July 3, 2012:
http://mashable.com/2012/07/03/mac-vs-pc-sales/
Haven't seen that 15% number since March of last year.
"As any translator will attest, a literal translation is no translation at all."
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I am very sorry you're unhappy with Logos Mac performance and quality. As Todd White has pointed out, we are working hard on it and releasing updates every few weeks. While it may appear that "not much is happening," much is happening behind the scenes, and we're getting more stable.
As you can imagine, I am very concerned about staying profitable and in business. I know that if we annoy / frustrate all of our Mac users, (or users on any platform), we will lose them as customers and go out of business. I also know that if we don't keep making new things to sell, and put 100% of energy into fixing this, we will run out of cash before we fix everything everyone is unhappy with. (Because even what people want keeps changing, with new platforms, versions of OS X, etc.)
Having visibility into our financial situation, I know a lot about what we can and can not afford to do. And I also hear all the complaints. :-)
Logos employs more than 300 people; my goal is to keep us all employed, and ensure that we're all here into the distant future so that we can continue to serve you. I have to balance many priorities every day, and I call things wrong all the time. Fortunately, I call enough right -- so far -- to have kept us alive and growing.
I believe that a future-safe strategy must A) plan for things that aren't true today, but will be tomorrow, and
involve experiments that might be turn out wrong. Because while we don't know the future, we do know that it won't be exactly like today. We have to guess.I was late to the Mac. I was late to iOS. Bad calls. I was late to BlackBerry. Good call! Glad we didn't spend too many resources there...
I was maybe a bit early to "the cloud" for storing user data, but I'm very happy with that call. Now, in the era of iCloud, DropBox, EverNote, SkyDrive, etc. it seems both obvious and essential.
You can stop arguing over industry platform stats. What matters to us are our user stats: Today Mac is 30% of our user base, and that's what drives our decision making. So, if you're worried we aren't taking Mac seriously enough, you shouldn't. 30% is really, really serious to us.
However we must keep the doors open, and no matter how unhappy Mac users are -- and how important 30% of sales is to us -- stabilizing and bug fixing doesn't generate revenue. So we have to ship new products, new features, and new books even while we work on the Mac. And we had might as well, because people aren't interchangeable: everyone working on new books can't be magically turned into a Mac programmer. You can't even hire a Mac programmer for the same money. You can barely hire a Mac programmer at all, for any money! :-)
Yes, to be fair to the accusations, I am not putting all of our resources on "fixing the Mac." Conceivably we could retrain our Android, iOS, and even Windows developers to code for the Mac. But we'd make some of the 70% (okay, some of the 100%, since Mac users have Android and iOS devices too) users unhappy by doing so. And sometimes more people don't actually speed things up; re-architecting a technology component isn't always parallelizable.
And yes, we are putting some resources (again, different skill sets) into new/emerging products, like Faithlife and Proclaim and even Windows 8. But that's part of planning to be here for the future, and those things all connect together to build a stronger platform -- for Mac, Windows, mobile, web, etc.
Next week's 4.6a beta will have a lot of Mac improvements, and more are being done. I think that if you look at the release notes, and pattern of regular releases, it's just silly to say that we aren't doing anything significant on the Mac. We are, and we have as many people working on the Mac as on any other development project.
Moreover, while I completely agree that we have performance and stability and parity issues we still need to address, the Mac user base does appear (based on what we see from inside Logos) to be split into "it never works for me" and "it always works for me" camps. I'm not sure what accounts for the split -- if it's the age of hardware, amount of memory, version of OS X, or intensity or pattern of use of the product -- but as you can see even from posters in this forum thread, many people aren't having daily problems with it. 30% of the user base isn't up in arms about the Mac; 30% of support calls aren't critical Mac issues. The pain appears to be spread unevenly, and I'm sorry if it's affecting you worse.
We are working on it. The Mac is a top priority, including performance, feature parity and stability. But it's going to take time.
In the meantime, you're welcome to keep beating us up here in the forums, threatening to switch to competitors, return the product, etc. While it consumes time "rushing to the forum to re-post the same things we've been saying for months", it does serve a purpose of keeping it top of mind. And you can be assured, it is. I rarely go to a development meeting internally where "making Mac users happy" isn't brought up. :-)
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alabama24, We need your help.
Bob Pritchett just stated that “the Mac user base does appear (based on what we see from inside Logos) to be split into "it never works for me" and "it always works for me" camps. I'm not sure what accounts for the split”
How do we get Mac users to report their system specs when they have a problem? [in some standard format that all Mac users could relate to] The obvious things are OS and Revision, Memory, Hard drive space. What other items might help Bob’s Mac crew?
And how do we report type of usage? [what other progams you have running at the same time - and does Logos still fail if you quit all the others - might be one]
[I am a PC person so all I can do on this problem is ask Alabama24 for help [but I can show charity (1 cor 13)] [and I did say ‘We’] ]
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Dear Mr.Pritchett: Thank you for what seems to be a very honest report.
There is much in your post I can agree with, much, I cannot.
The Business Model you present is not an uncommon one, the difficulties you present are not uncommon either and, my heart goes out to you on running a company. No small task in running a company like yours and I appreciate your desire to keep your employees working.
However, if I may be so bold, I would like to make a suggestion for your thinking processes.
Apple, not so very long ago, used a business model somewhat like the one you explain. It did not work well for very long and they finally brought back Steve Jobs.
They were , for all practical purposes , on the razor edge of complete failure.
Steve Jobs did many things which are now history with the result of Apple becoming the single most valuable company in the World . ( I think that is now correct ).
Of all Jobs did, one thing enabled all the success and, the ability to overcome failures ( which is part of business and, I applaud you for being so open about the things you have tried and failed, hit and missed. Hey, your trying, can't fail or succeed without trying).
This "one thing" that Jobs planted in Apple and insisted on was: Quality, things just have to be done well, it always pays off to do things really well.
The second things he did was to trow out a lot of product and simply try to do a few things- extremely well.
In my humble opinion, I honestly believe if Logos would just "focus" on trying to make what they already have be truly excellent, then everything else will take care of itself.
Lastly: I have to agree with the assessment that some have no real issues with Logos, others seem to have issues almost constantly. Does seem quite strange. As a person who spent most of their adult life in the music industry as an Engineer and has had to trouble shoot equipment and situations on a large scale, I feel very sure of what I am about to say: Something is wrong with the way your staff is doing the trouble shooting. There is a common denominator somewhere. I have taught many people how to trouble shoot equipment, installs etc. This is with extremely complex equipment, digital processors, digital consoles, fiber optics and more channels of information streams than most can imagine , both digital and analog. In every situation where there would be " recurring problems" that often seemed random ( Some have it, Some don't ), with time, proper information gathering ( testing, recording results ) eventually we were always able to find the common denominator which then led to the weak link that was the cause.
In the case of Logos, well, it must be driving your folks nuts. Logos works well for some with older gear, less Ram, for some, not well at all.
For some with newer gear, it works great, some, not well at all.
There has to be a reason, there is a cause, it just hasn't been found for you yet. Often we tend to treat symptoms without finding root cause. Imho this has been and is plaguing Logos.
Perhaps there could be some sort of program that could be run on machines that have an unusual number of issues. ( Owner permission required I would guess) A program that would give you the information you need to look at what is happening with these machines/installs and the interaction between : User/Use/Install/Hardware/Memory/Gpu/Internet/other programs and operating system settings.
I for one would be more than happy to provide any information from my machine, that might help Logos and thus, other owners into the future.
Perhaps non-Apple memory causes a "ever so slight" change and this affects Logos on those machines, things of this nature.
Ok, I will close now. As One who has "busted your chops" by complaining about Logos, I wanted to also offer something other than "just complaints" ( well, and my money-smile).
You have the best Library system available , yet, the future is not bright if you cannot deliver that Library well into the future. As you pointed out, the Iphone hit and other handset makers that were on top, now fight to survive.
Why?
Apple does one thing better than anyone else and brought that to making a different handset, they pay attention to details, they try to do things the very best way they can . They do this because they know, people vote with their money.
Thanks again for a great post, Pray I have not spoken too far out of turn, I mean no offense at all and, hope you come to know even greater success.
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Yes well I have never had Logos 4 work flawlessly for me.. It almost has never let me quit normally, always with a forced quit or unexpectedly quit. 70% of the time i can get most of my daily use done with no issues (using stable release last night it keep unexpectedly quitting on me so I am very much looking forward to the next beta). I was a user of Accordance many years before i ever had logos resources, I like both programs and could never imagine not having both. As I said earlier in a perfectly interchangeable world I would love to have Logos resources in Accordance, but I no that is never going to happen. Logos mac is getting better in many ways and I am willing to wait for it to become better.
-Dan
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Bob Pritchett said:
Moreover, while I completely agree that we have performance and stability and parity issues we still need to address, the Mac user base does appear (based on what we see from inside Logos) to be split into "it never works for me" and "it always works for me" camps.
I think your analysis might be a bit too binary. Maybe I'm the only one in the Logos ecosystem that is in this spot, but I'm in a third camp. It works for me, but I experience regular issues. The experience is not what I expect from full release software.
I also know from giving technical support that there is a percentage of users who will never take the time to file bug reports or call in, particularly if they got the job done in the end. Regardless...
I used Logos for Mac last weekend for research and crashed it twice. I found three UI issues. I reported three of the five things I found. My Mac is a few years old, but the problems of everything else installed on it... and I mean this literally, combined together does not give me this sort of experience. Logos 4 Mac is the single biggest most problematic software package I have by miles. I'm not exaggerating this and I wasn't abusing the software last weekend!
If the software was beta and version 4.0 was only months old, this could be understood. But it is not. So, did it work for me? Yes, I got my work done, but the experience wasn't what I expected, plus it cost me time and effort. A huge amount? No and it does remind me of my earlier Windows days when I built our own machines. We got the BSOD regularly, but the fun of building and experimenting was too much fun to care about frequent issues, bugs, lost work and rebooting while we did our computing. When I got a bit older, I moved onto other pursuits and started to want our computers to 'just work'. Being from this technical background, I know very good and well computers will never be perfect (a quick check the OSX forums on the Apple website will confirm this), but I expect more now. So whether Logos likes that or not, there are users who want it to 'just work' at least on par with the other software packages on the OSX platform.
What I find extraordinary is that the release notes do show in general way more bugs being fixed on the Mac than Windows platform. So I know you guys are trying. Question is, why? Are things being broken as much as they are being fixed? Is it just the deeper that you dig the more you find?
[quote]In the meantime, you're welcome to keep beating us up here in the forums, threatening to switch to competitors, return the product, etc. )
Going back to the alpha days, over the past four years I wouldn't even venture to guess how many screenshots and logs that I have sent in. The critique has always been aimed at getting better because I thought I had shared vision for where you were going. (which I assume is the kind of customers Logos would like, particularly when it comes to testing) I had a high sense of ownership, but I'm certainly not going to beat anyone up over a piece of software because life is too short. Logos 4 is, what it is and I am at a point of diminishing returns here particularly if this is how critique is now taken. After all, it's just a tool to get something done which could be better. Thanks for listening.
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Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:
Perhaps non-Apple memory causes a "ever so slight" change and this affects Logos on those machines, things of this nature.
Interesting possibility, but I have few real problems—more annoyances than problems—and the RAM in my desktop is mostly third party—1 GB Apple 10GB 3rd party. Of course, it could depend on which 3rd party supplier was used.
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Donovan Palmer's post perfectly summarizes my experience and concerns. (Since machine specs have come up, I have a Mid 2010 Mac Book Pro with RAM maxed out and the 2nd fastest process option.)
***I think that Logos need to exegete and find application in each and every one of his first four paragraphs.
Donovan R. Palmer said:Bob Pritchett said:Moreover, while I completely agree that we have performance and stability and parity issues we still need to address, the Mac user base does appear (based on what we see from inside Logos) to be split into "it never works for me" and "it always works for me" camps.
I think your analysis might be a bit too binary. Maybe I'm the only one in the Logos ecosystem that is in this spot, but I'm in a third camp. It works for me, but I experience regular issues. The experience is not what I expect from full release software.
I also know from giving technical support that there is a percentage of users who will never take the time to file bug reports or call in, particularly if they got the job done in the end. Regardless...
I used Logos for Mac last weekend for research and crashed it twice. I found three UI issues. I reported three of the five things I found. My Mac is a few years old, but the problems of everything else installed on it... and I mean this literally, combined together does not give me this sort of experience. Logos 4 Mac is the single biggest most problematic software package I have by miles. I'm not exaggerating this and I wasn't abusing the software last weekend!
If the software was beta and version 4.0 was only months old, this could be understood. But it is not. So, did it work for me? Yes, I got my work done, but the experience wasn't what I expected, plus it cost me time and effort. A huge amount? No and it does remind me of my earlier Windows days when I built our own machines. We got the BSOD regularly, but the fun of building and experimenting was too much fun to care about frequent issues, bugs, lost work and rebooting while we did our computing. When I got a bit older, I moved onto other pursuits and started to want our computers to 'just work'. Being from this technical background, I know very good and well computers will never be perfect (a quick check the OSX forums on the Apple website will confirm this), but I expect more now. So whether Logos likes that or not, there are users who want it to 'just work' at least on par with the other software packages on the OSX platform.
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Jack Caviness said:Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:
Perhaps non-Apple memory causes a "ever so slight" change and this affects Logos on those machines, things of this nature.
Interesting possibility, but I have few real problems—more annoyances than problems—and the RAM in my desktop is mostly third party—1 GB Apple 10GB 3rd party. Of course, it could depend on which 3rd party supplier was used.
Jack Caviness said:Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:Perhaps non-Apple memory causes a "ever so slight" change and this affects Logos on those machines, things of this nature.
Interesting possibility, but I have few real problems—more annoyances than problems—and the RAM in my desktop is mostly third party—1 GB Apple 10GB 3rd party. Of course, it could depend on which 3rd party supplier was used.
That seems unlikely, but would be interested if Logos' macs are all supplied with apple only memory. My mac has kensington memory in it as Apple would have charged me an arm and a leg to have 8GB in my macBOOK Pro. I do know memory can cause issues but with only one program, that seems unlikely.
-Dan
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This is probably irrelevant, but I feel like I should clear this up before anyone spends money on new RAM.
Memory is a shared commodity, and applications don't do any of their own error correction. The OS handles all of that. So if it's a problem with memory, all of your applications will act up equally.
That said, if your computer is acting up in general (not just Logos) with unpredictable crashes and stalls, it's probably a good idea to test your RAM. MacRumors has a useful guide to applications available for that purpose. Memory failure is never a bad guess when it comes to sporadic issues, but it's completely testable, so I would encourage anyone having problems with Logos to run these tests before jumping to that conclusion.
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[y]Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:Quality, things just have to be done well, it always pays off to do things really well.
This is simply good business. This is also what Google and other businesses are doing.Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:The second things he did was to trow out a lot of product and simply try to do a few things- extremely well.
[y][y][y][y][y](or management is not letting the developers test their code.)Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:Something is wrong with the way your staff is doing the trouble shooting.
I am not sure on this. Bob has stated several times that Logos made mistakes in the development with L4 (Windows and Mac). The problem is how to fix it. To fix it, Logos basically must rewrite the entire program. The problem comes from the fact that Logos did not drop what they were doing when they first saw the problems. They were thinking newer faster computers would correct the issues, and newer faster computers have not corrected the issues.Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:Often we tend to treat symptoms without finding root cause. Imho this has been and is plaguing Logos.
Now the question that Logos must ask, "Where do we go from here?" Do they go back a step with the platform they used to build L4? [FWIF, I think it is too late for this option. This should have happened several years ago.] Do they go forward and take another guess with Microsoft and their direction with Windows 8 (assuming that the Windows platform leads the development for L4)? [FWIW, I think this will be a very bad decision. There are too many question right now with what is going to be happening in the development arena.] Or do they sit still and wait for the development area settles down somewhat? [FWIF, this is what I would do.]
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Bob, I totally disagree with this statement. Because of my bad experience with L4, I have shared my experience. Because of this, no one on my campus has purchased a L4 package. Because of the bugs, Logos has lost income.Bob Pritchett said:stabilizing and bug fixing doesn't generate revenue.
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Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:
In my humble opinion, I honestly believe if Logos would just "focus" on trying to make what they already have be truly excellent, then everything else will take care of itself.
I appreciate the value of focus, too, but what if you focus on perfecting your vacuum tubes and the transistor comes along?
I read the Steve Jobs biography, too, and have a long, deep familiarity with the industry. (My dad was a computer distributor in the 1980's -- I literally grew up in the industry.) Steve's "focus" is a lot of what drove Apple into trouble in the 80's. Then it got worse without him. When he came back he "re-focused" on a few key products. But then how do you explain the iPod? Or the iPhone? Weren't they dramatic departures from what should have been his focus on "perfecting the Mac"?
There's no right answer here. But I don't regret "widening our focus" to include the iPhone / iPad / Android phones. I think that putting resources in that was and is a good thing, even at the cost of slowing down our desktop progress.
Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:There has to be a reason, there is a cause, it just hasn't been found for you yet.
True. An unfortunate side-effect of our multiplatform project (and the platforms chosen to enable that multiplatform coding) is that we don't have as mature a crash-reporting system on the Mac as on other platforms. On Windows and even iOS we can find out exactly what happened; on Mac it's still difficult, in part because Mac development tools / ecosystem aren't as advanced, and even more because of our use of Mono.
This is a solvable problem, and we're working on it -- integrating better error handling, crash diagnostics, etc. But it takes time.
We've written Logos "from the ground up" four times. I believe that was the right decision every time, and has led to much of our success. Each time we went with "the state of the art" platform. In this fourth round, with Logos 4, we (and, to be fair, much of the industry) got caught off-guard when things didn't go the way we expected. The Mac resurgence, the move to mobile, HTML5, and the influence of the iPad on Microsoft's platform design all came together to make the choices in this (the fourth) ground-up rewrite wrong.
We'll recover, and move past it. And some parts of the platform aren't "wrong," but just didn't go the way anyone expected. And we hadn't planned on dual-(multi-)platform code -- had specifically planned not to do it -- so we are still refining and improving our particular mix of platforms and tools. This is a problem every company with multi-platform apps has, and we're getting much better at it, and building a much more stable platform. It just takes time to get right.
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tom collinge said:
Bob, I totally disagree with this statement. Because of my bad experience with L4, I have shared my experience. Because of this, no one on my campus has purchased a L4 package. Because of the bugs, Logos has lost income.Bob Pritchett said:stabilizing and bug fixing doesn't generate revenue.
Yes, but there are some practical realities. Having bugs costs some sales. But if it will take 6 months to stabilize something (actually, multiple years with a really complex product like ours that has 20 years of features / expectations / existing-code), very few organizations can afford to defer new-product revenue that long.
And there is the real-world truth that not everyone wants everything held until it is perfect. It's easy to say "You shouldn't have shipped this half-baked!" But people rarely mean that. What they mean is, I wish it was fully-baked today. Because if you only want things fully-baked, you can just ignore every new product until it's been out 3 years and has stabilized. That's always an option.
We all forget that the reason it was three years till "fully-baked" is because that's how long it takes. It's not like there was some malicious choice to "not bake it all the way." The choice was to ship what we have now if it's useful enough to enough people.
As I keep pointing our, the Logos Windows platform has 20 years of experience, code, history, knowledge, etc. in it. It isn't a lack of commitment or poor management or bad decision making that keeps Logos for Mac from being as stable, mature, and refined. It is a lack of 20 years!
Yes, we could choose to only release Logos for Mac in solid, perfect form. That choice could manifest itself in two ways: never deliver any version of it until around 2014 (just guessing), or build a new, solid, Mac-native product from the ground up that doesn't have to read 20 years of file format, user notes, documents, or data, and which isn't expected to match the mature feature set.
Do we have competitors who are more stable on the Mac? Whose apps crash less? I'm sure. But I'm also sure you'll find they either have 20 years of experience building there, and/or a less-featured, Mac-native (from day one) product. Probably both.
What do you think? Should I have chosen to not have a Mac product even now? To still be working away making it perfect and stable, and coming into the forums for the past three years to repeatedly explain why we aren't on the Mac platform? Or should I have written a new Bible software product from scratch, with a "version 1" level of features, no compatibility with existing Logos books, no sync, no reading your existing notes, highlights, etc. and shipped that in 2009?
Because those are the only two choices. Having it be at feature/stability parity, and file-format compatibility, with the mature Windows product at any date before now was simply impossible. Holding us to that standard isn't just unfair, it's completely unrealistic.
The funny thing about this whole debate flaring up again is... we're almost there. The parity issues list is way down. Stability is up. Our tools and processes are refined. New code isn't "ported" to the Mac -- at the weekly Thursday development "Demo Day" every new feature is dual-platform, and the UI layer is often implemented on the Mac first, before we even get to Windows. We're much closer, and once we get there we have a platform and process that will work in the future.
Really! :-)
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Bob Pritchett said:
What do you think? Should I have chosen to not have a Mac product even now? To still be working away making it perfect and stable, and coming into the forums for the past three years to repeatedly explain why we aren't on the Mac platform? Or should I have written a new Bible software product from scratch, with a "version 1" level of features, no compatibility with existing Logos books, no sync, no reading your existing notes, highlights, etc. and shipped that in 2009?
Because those are the only two choices. Having it be at feature/stability parity, and file-format compatibility, with the mature Windows product at any date before now was simply impossible. Holding us to that standard isn't just unfair, it's completely unrealistic.
Personally, I am glad you made the choice to go with L4 on Mac. I would like full parity with L4 Win, to see less spinning pizza, and purchase Anchor Yale Bible for $50.00 [8-|], but overall I appreciate the progress.
I know there are some Mac users who have very serious issues, and I hope you can find what is causing this. I also know that we have a few who will complain and criticize no matter how well L4 Mac (or Win) works.
On that track, the XP thread makes me even happier to have chosen Mac thre decades ago [:D]
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Logos 4 Mac has been such a blessing to me as I utilize it much. I extremely rarely get any spinning beach balls. Just about every time there is an update released, it just keeps on getting better! I'm glad I have Logos 4 Mac, rather than having to use Windows to get this great tool! Plus it has better suited and interested me more than any other Bible software for Mac!
Jason Saling
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Bob Pritchett said:
What do you think? Should I have chosen to not have a Mac product even now? To still be working away making it perfect and stable, and coming into the forums for the past three years to repeatedly explain why we aren't on the Mac platform?
I've been a Logos user for a while and remember the Libronix 1.0 on Mac days.
I also ran the first release of L4Win on Parallels and participated in the Mac Alpha program while completing my dissertation.
Even though the current version is not perfect, it has revolutionized my ability to research the Biblical text and relevant secondary literature.
I never cease to be amazed that I am always just a few clicks away from most of the major scholarly commentaries and a wealth of primary texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the OT and NT Pseudepigrapha in Greek, Josephus in Greek, Philo in Greek, TLG, Apostolic Fathers in Greek, etc.
Whether I occasionally get a spinning beach ball or if the program does not seem as responsive or snappy as I would like is a minor issue compared to how much L4Mac empowers me to do serious research in an incredibly efficient way.
Maybe I'm showing my age . . . but anybody that has actually done significant research on a Biblical text by going to a real library and spending 45 minutes to an hour pulling all the physical books required to do the kind of research that L4Mac makes possible in a few seconds has to appreciate what a powerful resource this software is for Biblical studies.
Bob, I'm glad you made the decision you did to release the Mac version.
You're vision and leadership with Logos has blessed my life and helped me to be a better student of the Bible and minister of the Word.
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Back in the olden days before Libronix/Logos was available on the mac, I was using it on a pc, totally frustrated with the pc world (not Libronix), and wanting desperately to go to a mac. But, I wasn't willing to give up my Libronix. As soon as I could justify the expenditure (2008) I moved to the mac and have been overwhelmingly satisfied, Logos and all. [:D] So, thank you Bob for what you have provided.
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Bob Pritchett said:
Moreover, while I completely agree that we have performance and stability and parity issues we still need to address, the Mac user base does appear (based on what we see from inside Logos) to be split into "it never works for me" and "it always works for me" camps. I'm not sure what accounts for the split -- if it's the age of hardware, amount of memory, version of OS X, or intensity or pattern of use of the product -- but as you can see even from posters in this forum thread, many people aren't having daily problems with it. 30% of the user base isn't up in arms about the Mac; 30% of support calls aren't critical Mac issues. The pain appears to be spread unevenly, and I'm sorry if it's affecting you worse.
Personally wonder if network lag time is affecting Logos 4 Mac performance (sync delay) ? Observation: a number of Logos 4 Mac forum posters with recent performance issues are located thousands of miles away from Logos headquarters.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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