Why was Logos 8 Released?

You are so right that the notes can still be improved a great deal and I understand Logos is doing so. On the other hand,  Logos 8 is so much faster and better in many ways that it was well worth releasing.  I find it much more refined than a Beta. 

The Notes, for all their major improvements, need some work as you said. If the problems are bothersome enough you can certainly use the V7 note system in V8 or even stick with V7 altogether and don't change anything for a while longer.

Also, I believe that the software and its upgrades remain free.  All you actually pay for is resources and features.    

 

I understand that FL had a target release date and likely wanted to be released well before the Black Friday to catch people at the most opportune time. But it really did feel released a good month prematurely.  Now I understand that all bugs are never likely to be worked out but this was the first upgrade that made me seriously want to downgrade. At 8.1 we have what at minimal it feels like to me should have been the initial release. For any truly new user I can see the program as it was in 8.0 might have been enough to have them thinking twice of their investmeant of the software. FL my well has shot themselves in the foot with this release when 9 comes out I well may skip upgrading altogether knowing when the free engine is available it should be at least stable And working as intended. I may well be in the minority here but obviously I am not alone in my disappointment to the quality of 8‘s release version.

-dan

I think they needed at least 3 or even 4 more months just to get things functional, not including enhancements and improvements that people suggest as they use the new version. That's what usually happens, the latest version is released and overall it works great with albeit a few bugs. Then they use the updates to fix bugs, add enhancements based on user feedback, and add minor new features.

But now with Logos 8 they're spending all of their time just getting the product functionality back that people are used to having since so much functionality was lost. They should have just bitten the bullet and delayed the release. It looks like they bit off more than they could chew with trying to overhaul too many things at once (User Interface, Home Page, Notes) and still adding all new features like Canvas and Workflows. Now they're really going to struggle getting people to upgrade to Logos 9 and subsequent releases because of how poorly the Logos 8 release was handled. I personally will never upgrade right away again.

Rosie Perera said:

I've been with Logos since the beginning, even before 1.0 (beta tested it for them when Bob was still working at Microsoft and doing this on the side in his spare time), and this has always been their modus operandi. I disagree with it as a method, and have pushed back at him about it over the years. But it's pretty deeply ingrained in their DNA, and I don't see it changing any time soon.

Good perspective. I started with Logos 6 so I wasn't there for the Logos 4 overhaul. I knew people who had Logos 5, but I didn't even know Logos existed before that point. So was it really as bad for Logos 4 as people are experiencing now for Logos 8?

It's always risky changing the user interface but eventually people get used to it. But it seems like the changes to the notes tool is massively impacting how people work who've been using Logos for years and have a lot invested in notes. Thankfully I don't use notes as extensively as others, so for me it hasn't been so painful.

Sean said:

But while it looks good, the new home page is basically useless; it has very little functionality, and once you turn off FL's advertising feeds there's a bug that prevents changing it back again. For the first time ever, I've set Logos to directly open a layout at startup rather than the home page.

Yes the home page is useless. They focused on how it looks but not what it can do, and it doesn't even look that good on top of that. I liked the how the old home page invited you into the software, invited you into your library, sparked ideas for what you might want to study. Now I pretty much bypass the home page when I open the software. Hopefully they'll bring back the "From Your Library," "Excerpts," and "Media" tiles in the explore section. They were not only useful but they made the home page look colorful, interesting, and inviting. And I miss being able to see all of my lectionary readings in one glance.

Logos 4 release is also like this. It can feel a regression to some (because a lack of certain existing feature due to major revision) but a huge step forward to others (simply because it is a major revision.)

I think Logos 8 is a bit like Logos 4 in this aspect, although not as big of a jump (from Libronix to Logos 4). When they release Logos 8 they also claim that its design hasn't changed between Logos 4 to 7 and Logos 8 is a major change in UX. IMO it hasn't changed that much in terms of actual experience but it probably is in terms of internals which is what the staffs can feel.

You may think it like iOS 7 for Logos. Many people like it but some thought it's a disaster (because it crashed more often, slower, etc.)

In the computing world, major release should not be taken lightly in terms of upgrading, although many has. Major release should have some breaking changes. This is so called semantic versioning, where something like 10.14.1 means major.minor.critical. Major upgrade is backward incompatible, minor upgrade is backward compatible while new features added. Critical upgrade is bug fixes only, i.e. no new functionality but fixing old functionality oddness.

i.e. while their marketing would want you to upgrade immediately, be it Windows 10 XXX upgrade (like Fall, Creator, April, October, etc.), macOS 10.x upgrade, Logos x upgrade, etc. Whenever there's a major upgrade, you should test run it to make sure it works for you before a full migration.

I did that to all my major OS upgrade, but I'm more sloppy to any major software upgrade. I have sometimes bitten some bullets because of this. (e.g. I recall I did a major upgrade of Lightroom, which has its catalog upgraded, and made some changes, and later found out there's some performance regression and I can't go back.)

In short, while a customer could complain how a certain major upgrade is a regression and want the company alone taking all the responsibility, we should know that we also need to take some of that responsibility when we blindly upgrade without testing. (That's why I hate using Windows because it almost forced you to upgrade without your consent.)

Kolen Cheung said:

In short, while a customer could complain how a certain major upgrade is a regression and want the company alone taking all the responsibility, we should know that we also need to take some of that responsibility when we blindly upgrade without testing. (That's why I hate using Windows because it almost forced you to upgrade without your consent.)

Exactly. I'm lovin' my Logos7. No irresponsibility for me. Works fine. Sit back and wait for real Logos 8.

Smiling.

Along these lines, on the company's side they should facilitate running both versions simultaneously, and also downgrading.

Logos/Faithlife is doing great on this. e.g. in https://support.logos.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018336332 for switching back to old notes system, although it is not without caveats. Many other companies won't even try to provide tools like this. (If one use Apple product, one is almost impossible to downgrade (it is technically possible only when you want to downgrade very early, when they still sign their old OS, and even so one need to find a way to obtain the old version and download through iTunes, etc.) I learnt a lesson by upgrading my iPhone 6 Plus to iOS 11 making it practically unusable and left no other options but to upgrade to a new iPhone.)