... And it goes worse.
Have a look here, "Are you going to wait for Windows 9?":
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/i...?topic=32935.0
Interesting reads there, among others not so smart. One thing seems to be evident: MS is trying, by all means, to copy Apple's "Closed Circuit" concepts, and some fear that this might bring the de-professionalisation of the Windows system as a whole, most people needing pc's - or not, when there will be enough slates one day - for the web (incl. mails and films), and - Apple has proven this - are willing to get into closed systems, with DRM, applics only when approved by the hardware vendor, etc.
So people say, prices for professional equipment will skyrock. Well, I remember those times in which I paid a fortune for my rather weak notebooks. Then, "everybody" got a notebook, and that meant that even for prof. users (= people who need a notebooks, instead of just wanting to see films, etc. at home with them), notebook prices went down in a spectacular way.
And so, when the "everybody" and the prof. markets will again split up, it's perfectly possible that these augurs will be right, and slates and such, and the respective sw, will be accessible for anybody, whilst "real pc's", with "real sw", will again become a thing for few people willing to pay the price.
Example: Micrografx Flowcharter 3 cost me 1,000 bucks then, and was totally bug-ridden, incl. loss of data. Then, some day, that same FlCh3 got into the bargain counters, for some 15 bucks.
But back to near-standstill: The real problem with FlCh3 was that there wasn't any shortcuts for adding another specific symbol (meaning, you would have needed about 10 or 12 (min.) shortcuts in order to insert them into your map, instead of having to change, with the mouse, the needed symbol first, within a palette, and then inserting with the mouse, then again going to the palette, select another symbol there, put it into your map.... The same with connector lines: Everything was purly "manual", no shortcut for, e.g., connecting the current symbol you were inserting, with the symbol you had insert previously.
So, FlCh 2000, the last I got, nothing new here, re smooth working. And the current FlCh (yes, there is one, I'm not exclusively mentioning defunct sw here) doesn't seem to have such shortcuts either. They bloat their sw with any remote functionality, but that functionality that you need 3 times the min., isn't there, and will probably never get there - the same with competitors:
I know of NO such flowchart sw that facilitates this (neither does Visio), and in fact, one of the premier "advantages" of mm sw, whenever you can manage to do an mm map instead of a flowchart, is, that mm sw allows for very quick working, whilst doing similar maps with flowchart sw is extremely strenous, for its lack of easing your burden of multiple, endless repetition of meanial tasks.
Technically, there is no problem whatsoever: As well as MM allows for assigning 9 different, often-needed symbols (of your choice) to 9 different key combinations, any flowchart sw could allow for assigning symbols / stencils to key combinations - they simply don't do it, and then, you have the great "please" to try to write mouse (!!!) macros in order to automate this by having macroed mouse clicks in fly-up palettes and such - in a word, terrible.
And to say the truth, I've been wandering for some time now that kinook's persistent silence could be explained by the possible above-described future environment in which future sw will have to exist:
Mr. Everybody will get almost nothing since the prices will not allow for thorough development, hence "portability" from pc to Android or RT or even future slate "pc" 's, but strictly on that amateur level that will certainly not stress the basic user.
And as for "prof" sw, well, developers think that given the (low) numbers, people will have to buy anyway, so no real effort needed, and given again the low numbers, they presume that competing sw will not be developed, their possible developers deciding that given that the narrow market is taken, another such sw will not be able to succeed.
Adobe with its Photoshop- and Lightroom-type programs (but certainly not with Illustrator and such) are in-between: Not slate-fare, and not profs-only: Will be interesting how they will position these progs when there will be less and less desktops out there, in the housings of the general public.
In other words, an era is possibly nearing to come to its end: That era where the limits between everyman's sw and prof.'s sw have been largely blurred (i.e. by taking everyman in the (formerly, prof-only) boat. And now it's possibly an era where everyman's sw gets really dumb (Evercrap, anyone? It's been deliberately dismantled, deconstructed!), whilst prof sw is low numbers, expensive and another market (cf. crm or laywers' sw that both were never popular with your neighbour).
And now let's come back to UR. They regularly go to bits (as said, 19.50 for them for prof., 9.50 for them for standard): That clearly indicates they go "consumer market", or more precisely, they continuously try to get out of the consumer market the max that it'll bear for them, and on the other hand, they make NO effort whatsoever to make a break into any possible large prof. market (except for having made UR network-compliant (but without access rights, i.e. half-heartedly): no doc M, no crm made easy, let alone lawyer functionality or such. (And I don't see any advertizing directed to such prof. markets.)
This all means, UR HAS MADE A CHOICE: Offering some good functionality to everyman, and that's it, since everyman's market will be brought down, functionality-wise, no more sophistication needed - which was there as a product of that simili-parallelism between prof and everyman markets -
and which era seems to come to an end now (with rare exceptions (Adobe)).
And possible UR (and others) will have mused around such considerations - when the inherent "tragedy" here is that in the past, UR has realized so much of what'd be needed in order to make it a prof. program within a future dual market, that the additional effort in order to succeed there, instead of just getting some crumbs out of everyman's market where there's lots of progs much easier accessible to that everyman.
In other words, kinook seems to be lacking the guts to see that they could make UR prime time-ready for that secondary, the prof., market, with applying rather restricted effort and means to do so, and would not have to look out anymore for bitsdujour crumbs in the 10 to 20 dollar range, only attaining a remote position in that everyman market since it's not slick enough in order to spontaneously please.
About 12 years ago, Adobe bought Macromedia and buried FreeHand. I was outraged then, as were thousand of loyal FH customers. Looking at it from today (i.e. from Win8 desaster point in time), I brood if back then, there might not perhaps been at Adobe very smart people who foresaw that the seemingly so democratic, in very large portions "common market" for profs and everyman that existed in 2000, wasn't just a transitional period that would soon come to an end.
We seem to be leaving that passage soon (the first big step out being made by the iPad 3 years ago), and UR is stuck, by its lack of courage, within the consumer market where it could claim a very remote, minute position at best: from a consumer perspective, there are lots of "better" progs.
And that's the explanation for what we see.
kinook don't have a communication problem, as some disappointed ex-user stated in another forum this year, kinook have a perception problem: They rightly see the consumer market and know there's nothing to gain from that, for them, hence their unwillingness to further invest within their program.
But they don't see their possibilities within the prof. market: They only see UR isn't ready for that market, but this undenial fact seems to blur their perception that it would not take so much of an effort in order to get it ready for professional prime time - and that their position there could become a rather comfortable one.
This analysis could refocus kinook's percption, though, and that would mean very good stuff to come from them.
Or, when they don't consider it "the new element" that changes the lot, then some of us had better leave. (And yes, normally you'd had to pay for marketing consulting.)
EDIT:
Just for the joy of it:
"And again. And again. And again. And even after that the freshly marked up document will remain the same unstructured presentation soup bulk
as one finds in any braindead blonde's Word file."
from once-and-only poster "Brains" (not me) in the MI forum, a highly instructive post anyway, deserves to be read: Both parts are current probs for UR, too, so the link is not just for fun. He's bold as brass: "Data taxonomy and research capabilities: Mesozoic fossils" - but he delivers his points! 265 visits to this date, let's see if we cannot get them some more page clicks here:
http://forums.milenix.com/viewtopic....9f4dc756dfd1e9