Dear Bob Pritchett, may I have a moment of your time?

Stuart Robertson said:

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your candid and open response. I appreciate your willingness to answer the questions posed and issues raised.

Your comments seem to indicate that Logos resources are spread very thin. And this makes me wonder about the what the future might hold. Perhaps more focus and less scope would improve things?

You mean like cutting the Mac platform? That would really speed things up!

Joshua Garcia said:

Stuart Robertson said:

Hi Bob,
Thank you for your candid and open response. I appreciate your
willingness to answer the questions posed and issues raised. Your
comments seem to indicate that Logos resources are spread very thin. And
this makes me wonder about the what the future might hold. Perhaps more
focus and less scope would improve things?

You mean like
cutting the Mac platform? That would really speed things up!

Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:

Very unkind Joshua, very unkind.

I'm guessing Joshua is being a little sarcastic at an attempt to humor us. [:P] I smiled. What he said brings the real issue to the forefront. Each one of us believes our needs and wants should be the first priority or only priority of Bob Pritchett & Team Logos. Meanwhile Logos has a huge and diverse customer base to service. It is not unlike a church Pastor or Priest. If there are several different interpersonal problems in the church, you don't wait until you have finished getting Bob & Sue's marriage back on track before you begin dealing with Timothy's substance abuse, or Mr Jackson's terminal diagnosis. You practice a little triage and attempt a little balance. And you pray you make the right choices and trust God to keep loving everyone.

You know users have expressed selfishness in the forums over many things. We demand Logos focus on OUR study needs, OUR doctrinal resources, OUR hardware platforms, OUR budgetary restrictions, OUR study styles..... I am happy Logos is multi-tasking or they would never get around to MY interests.

Stuart Robertson said:

Yet, to use your analogy, imagine a pastor who attempts to deal simultaneously with 20 different cases. What level of care would each individual experience?

At the risk of sounding like I give Pastors all the credit for church growth (I do not.  Acts 2:47 ) a Pastor who can not delegate will not see his church grow beyond his individual ability to manage. We have Jesus praising the Centurion for understanding how to delegate authority in Matthew 8:9 . The parable of the talents in Luke 19:12-28 also bears out the principle of delegation. As Jack has pointed out, Logos is not a small company. (Are you aware of the tiny operation QuickVerse had become for several years before WordSearch bought them? Try a part-time staff of 2, working out of a strip mall store front in Nebraska.) Logos has a dedicated Mac development team who have written Logos 4 Mac to run under Mac OS. The good folks at WordSearch can only run their program on a Mac through emulation. (Emulators are always slower than running native code.)

If I want to "Spring clean" my whole property, inside & out, I will assign one son to mow grass, a daughter to clean the fridge out, someone else to pack away the Winter wardrobes. If a sudden thunderstorm comes up and a downpour starts, the mowing obviously gets shelved for a few days. That setback should not require the other chores to halt. Just because you see the Pre-Pubs rolling out the door does not mean the Mac development team is sitting on their hands. Proclaim is having a noisy beta cycle while Vyrso appears to be progressing quickly.

I am grateful the departments stick to their own specialties. I'm impressed with the programmers, the book keepers, and the marketing folk. It just runs smoother that way. If the local church could recognize individuals in the body are gifted to accomplish different ministries, the church would run a lot smoother too.

Dear All: If I may be so bold: Logos Bible Software is not a ministry, it is not a Church, It is a Product, Produced by a Company.

That is not to say Logos the Company cannot take part in some Ministry or that it's people cannot do Ministry.

But what I Bought is a Product, pure and simple.

Example: How many of you have ever needed a new Refrigerator , went out and bought one, got it home and then freezer section would not cool or freeze.

Would you react the same way you are asking people to do here?

Would you make excuses for the manufacturer of the refrigerator while you just go without being able to freeze your food, would you go through all sorts of things to fix it yourself, adjust and readjust it?

Would you be willing to want until some unknown time when they might be able to fix it?

Would you make excuses for the company if they could not fix it?

Would you be willing to say: well, they have so much to do you know, so may refrigerator customers and so many models, there is no reason for me to be upset, most people do not try to use all the features anyway?

I don't think so.

You probably bought the refrigerator to use, now, to keep your milk cold, your meat frozen-now.

You can replace refrigerator with anything, car, bike, cell phone, clothes, your electric company.

It's only when we get to Biblesoftware that people act in this matter.

The last company I saw go through this, with customers acting in a codependent fashion of making excuses for the company, went under finally and had to be sold to others.

Logos Bible software is, Software, it is a product, created by a Company, as far as I can tell, a For Profit Company.

Certain amounts of grace can be given to any company/product. If the fridge/computer/cell phone etc is delivered defective- they can fix it, and all is fine.

But if they cannot fix it properly and in a rational about of time, then the company and it's product has failed.

I get rather sick on my insides to see otherwise rational Christians act as if a company is a ministry and therefore has an excuse for doing poorly.

And No: It's not I want my deal fixed, my bug being fixed is more important than someones else's bug being fixed.

It is simply wanting what is being sold to work as advertised, thats all.

Just like any other consumer/ product relationship.

Logos exists to make Money, thats it reason for existence .

If it quit making money, it would not come around and see you , minister to you, be there when you are sick.

Logos is a thing, not a person, it's a business, not a Church, it's a Product, not a Ministry.

Thanks 

Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:

I get rather sick on my insides to see otherwise rational Christians act as if a company is a ministry and therefore has an excuse for doing poorly.

Perhaps it is a matter of perspective. I don't excuse them for doing poorly. Rather, I think they are doing a great job. I have things that I'd like to see fixed and that I'm not "happy" about. For me, I am troubled that reading plan sync is not working perfectly between Mac and iOS. However, Bob and other have explained that it is a known issue and will be resolved once Sync V2 (or whatever it is called) is released. So, sure, I want it fixed now, but the reality on a technical level is that fixing it now is a stupid idea. It is a bad business decision because you use twice (if not more) the man-hours to fix and then refix with v2. Plus you take programmers off other projects and those slow those down.

The reason I continue to support Logos is because I am rational (though taking the time to write the following forum rant about my rational decision to support a company may prove otherwise) . The reality is that every single issue that every user encounters on the multitude of devices simply can not all be fixed immediately. Further, if Logos waited until every program for every platform was free of all issues, they would NEVER ship ANYTHING. I support Logos because they have a proven track record of listening to their customers and resolving issues. The people, in my estimation, who are not being rational are those who encounter a bug or issue and expect it to be fixed immediately. That is simply an unrealistic expectation. A reasonable expectation is that it will take some time to fix issues that come up.

I have numerous product and companies that make products I use every day that fall into this category. Evernote has spacing and formatting issues in landscape mode on my iPad. Pages and Numbers don't sync via iCloud automagically on my Mac. My iPhone takes like an hour to update when I plug it into iTunes. I can't merge my apple id and my moblie me id. The water line in my refrigerator freezes some times. My Chevy requires me to turn the key twice for it to start. Bank of America online won't allow me to use bill-pay for individuals. My house thermostat can't be changed to trigger at the 1 degree increment. My printer doesn't work if I try to use it on any wireless network other than my own. I could go on and on... But, because I am rational, I don't expect that every problem that occurs should be fixed immediately, or maybe at all. Sure, I'll bring it up with the company if it really bothers me (I've taken my chevy in twice) but at the end of the day, I like these products and rationally chose to continue to support them because their sum total of usefulness in my life are not tied to the problems I encounter with them. My truck is amazing outside of the start issue. My iPhone is amazing. I'm sure Mac will eventually get iCloud figured out. And so on.

So, sure, if Logos isn't working for you in the ways you need it to and this is the largest sum total of its usefulness, then, yeah, it is irrational to support them. Call CS and return the product. However, the reason so many of us continue to support Logos and take time to write long post on the company forum is because we want the product. I want Logos. I use Logos. I want it on my mac, iphone, ipad and eventually my kindle fire. When I get my Fire and Logos isn't on there, I'm not going to freak out and call it quits or unload on the dev team on the forum. And if it is on there and glitches occur, then I'll report the bug and trust they will get fixed. If it doesn't, I'm not going to return Logos all together. That isn't rational. I will continue to support the company.

Alright, enough from me. I've spent an irrational amount of time on this post.

Good Grief Charlie Brown-smile.

Things get list in long threads.

I'm not looking for every bell and whistle, I am just looking for Program to do as advertised.

I just want it to load without crashing, operate without crashing.

Here's a novel idea, would like to prepare a Sermon without having to restart logos several times.

There is a difference between a car that it takes two try's to start and, one that will not get you to work.

I have. Ever thought it unreasonable to expect something to perform as advertised.

Its the nature of business transactions that there is an agreement to thee change of things based on certain values.

As far as I know Logos does not advertise this as broken software that crashes a lot.

I know they don't mean for it too, there is no malice intended by Logos and, none intended by me. 

The fact remains it is highly unstable for even simple tasks.

Thats what is not ok.

Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:

The fact remains it is highly unstable for even simple tasks.

Let me suggest that while I am often one of the harsh critics of Logos (wow here I go again defending it) I have seldom had a crash while performing simple tasks. What do you define as simple. Let me give you a list of what I think are simple tasks with Logos.

1. Looking up a bible verse

2. Doing a simple search for a word

3. Opening a book

4. Looking through my library

I haven't had a crash doing any of these simple task even running the first version of betas in over a year. Sure it occasionally dumps on me doing some more advanced things. But as for simple tasks I would be that if we took a poll here, very few of the users would say that the app has crashed doing any of the above in quite some time.

Can you name me a simple task that it often crashes while doing?

[

Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:

As far as I know Logos does not advertise this as broken software that crashes a lot.

I know they don't mean for it too, there is no malice intended by Logos and, none intended by me. 

The fact remains it is highly unstable for even simple tasks.

Speak for yourself and yourself only. It is not a fact that it is unstable for even simple tasks. I have an occassional crash that I expect because I am a beta user. When I use stable I have no problems at all. I am still on an old computer with Windows XP. I still use Office 2003. Old school and no problems whatever. You are mistaken. I do not have any issues with the software.

I have been a very harsh critic of Logos 4 Mac over the past two years. I thought they managed the rollout poorly and communicated the state of their software incompletely. And if I'm honest, I was a bit put out that it took the development team ten months to get into a useable beta. 

But some of these criticisms for minor bugs are absolutely ludicrous. Some of the commenters on this thread are making it sound like the software doesn't work at all. In point of fact, it works quite well 99% of the time and the issues people are having are minor ones. As Bob pointed out, developing a platform like Logos 4 over several OS structures is a HERCULEAN effort, but if they didn't try, then people would complain about how limited Logos is.

Here's the truth. Logos 4 is, BY FAR, the most advanced, most comprehensive, most OS-inclusive Bible study platform ever thought of. Bible study software is a niche market. It is not like LBS is getting rounds of massive investments like Evernote or Facebook gets. 

The critics are thinking of Logos 4 as an extension of Logos Digital Library, but in reality, it is an entirely different platform. I can understand being frustrated by the flaws in the software, but don't forget that Logos is doing something that has never been done before on a scale that has never been considered before.

I still recommend Logos 4, even though I know it is quirky and buggy. I can't wait for it to be finished, but is a fully useable product now. I have no problems with it shutting down on me or jamming up. It runs perfectly on my MBP mid-2009, Dual Core with 8GB of RAM. I have no complaints. 

Fot all whom it works well, I am so glad for you, it has not and is not for me.

I have done all one is supposed to do, again: Read the wiki's, watched all the videos from Logos and the English gentleman, many several times, set things up as recommended , called Logos support, screen shared, all is up to date, Mac is fine, plenty of Processor and Ram.

Turned off internet, all the speed and help tweaks.

Simple task: Click on Logos and have it open= Failed task.

Click on Logos and have it open+ opens in little windows, try to resize, crashes= failed task.

Get Logos open: Try to use interlinear=freezes after a few moments, wait, then working again, they to close , button will not work= Failed Task.

in this period, could have done much more work using books=failed simple tasks.

Not saying Logos is junk, not saying they do not have good ideas.

Am saying they did not advertise software with this many issues, bugs, faults etc.

Advertised properly working platform.

Have asked for help, nothing wrong with this, have asked for some things to be tended to in a timely way, nothing wrong with this.

Regularly recurring crashes is not ok?

Several years ago, there were a lot of rollover accidents that happened with one type of tire, from one manufacturer.

One of the defenses given was that: this does not happen to everyone, lots of people have really good performance with these tires, this, it is not the fault of the tires or manufacturer. Only a very, very small percentage of people are having issues with the tires, much less accidents.

In the end, they found there was indeed a problem with the manufacturing of the tires that caused them to fail at times when they should not.

It was not the vehicle owners fault the tires did not perform as they should. People paid for proper tires, they did not pay with faulty money.

The point is simply that there is something wrong, some peoples installs work decently well, some do not, some work well and the greatest and newest hardware, some do not.

So, I did not come here to argue with everyone, do not pay to do so.

I just wanted to help make the point, that is so often minimized here, that all of us pay for this product, thus we all have a right to a decently working product, All customers have a right to a decently working product that does what is advertised.

Dear ST: I do indeed rejoice that this is working well for you and anyone it is working well for- hate I suffer the sin of envy in it though-smile.

I enjoyed your interaction greatly. ( a Klein man myself, although I use EstWing Hammers, still have my Dads.)

Did not mean to upset anyone here, not a territorial issue for me.

Only desire is for product to "perform" better, nothing more.

Blessings all.

Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:

Dear All: If I may be so bold: Logos Bible Software is not a ministry, it is not a Church, It is a Product, Produced by a Company.

Logos is a thing, not a person, it's a business, not a Church, it's a Product, not a Ministry.

Thanks 

Hey Chuck,

I like their way of doing it better than your way of not doing, but rather criticizing, it.

[;)]

Fr. Charles R. Matheny said:

Again, was not trying to be a cause of trouble, understand the mac platform is not a priority here, was just trying to get some help,sadly that did not come.

As someone who replied saying it works, let me say I'm sorry. I thoroughly misjudged your intentions with your first post. Reading again just now it still reads more like a gripe post rather than a request for help. So again, I'm sorry for misunderstanding.

I have a MacBook Pro that began to have all kinds of stability issues. I reformatted and reinstalled everything. And one of the programs that greatly benefited from this process was Logos 4. It seems a bit snappier and works better.

I know that's a drastic approach to fixing a problem, but might be worth a try.

A less drastic approach might be to delete Logos 4 and all traces and reinstall the latest stable release. It might take you a long time to do this, but you can read the Wikis to see how to restore without having to download everything anew.

When you experience a crash next time, post your log files and some here or the Logos gurus might be able to find out what's going on and help. This will be more productive in finding a solution.

Finally, if you are running the beta, then assume it will crash alot. That's what a beta is, unstable and not-ready-for-prime-time software by definition.

I too have complaints about the usability of some features, but for the most part do not experience any crashes and fewer still since reformatting.