This is not a happy time and there are so many contradictions in this clumsy transition. As a parting gift to the subscription model I would be feel it highly unethical to withold the slim and narrow changes from the departing subscription customers just as it was unethical in witholding the service pack changes from the newly baptised desktop/rental customers. Such an awkward transition should not really punish either party on each side of the divide. Each should surely be cherished rather than insulted in this transitory age? Also and in addition, doesn't the word extension semantically point towards a component of subscription rather than, or at least accompanying, rental?
On a separate though highly related note, I must say that I am really disappointed by the "content" of this extention release in terms of additional features. How little can you get away with? @BKMs good news thread, I myself, found quite comedic. It's really quite a pathetic 'extension' that feels like a conversation where the participants said to each other "how little can we move"? So it is my opinion that in a recent run of disppointing features over the past few releases this latest release really has to amount to the most disappointing of all of them. It really is so very bad that even Sparks are listed as a shiny new feature. It's certainly great that AD has swallowed their pride and fair play to them there, but to list this as a NEW FEATURE(!) of the latest release is like taking the save button away and then in the next release saying that this latest-greatest release allows for you to save your work. It's like those furniture sellers that put their prices up for a day and then say the day after that they've reduced their prices by 50%. To say that the latest release introduces Sparks (intead of OFX or AFX!!) is pretty comedic and I probably am not the first person to picture a figleaf in covering the lack of decent development here? It just seems to me like a Smoking suicide letter when compared with the competition. Such a shame. That this post is probably the first real complaint at such a lack speaks volumes for the lack of life here abouts. Would the taking away and bringing back of AFX plugins in AfterEffects have the same impact as this. Would the lead evangelical poster (@BKM) label that subtraction and addtion as great news in CC7.5? So the latest version of Smoke introduces Sparks, Matchbox in the timeline and.......well nothing else is really nothing at all to raise a fanfair for. At the very VERY least I would have expected to see dual screen and the larger expanded library that Flame saw. Why is that features something that cabin class cannot have? What makes such a feature such a special thing? Totally bonkers to divide two cabins on such a featureset and in terms of flight metaphors it's the sort of thing that would make you begin to think of switching from British Airways to Virgin. It's not like being a Catholic and so there's only here an argument for what you are materially offered.
There's so much 'cognitive dissonance' in the separation and contraditions and listening to Philippe Soeiro's FXGuide podcast just really reinforced the fractured and contradictory state that Flame(Smoke) is in. The answer that AD reached (and I took part in a long thread on the beta forum about this contradiction) is to protect the flame of Flame from the diminusion that Smoke seemed to be leading it towards. Instead of cheaper Flame the decision seems have been made to build the walls higher to protect the premium. That so little has been banded around here in relation to that may come across to AD as some blessed releif but I myself have notice a real slowdown of the traffic around here. The year could be 2006 but it really is not. I myself feel the urge to move on to other pastures where the software is not competing against something in its own stables. The latest extension of Smoke then, at least to me, is nakedly disapointing but just over there is a lot of movement with The Foundry, Mamba and Blackmagic and how know who else besides? AD's answer seems to be to dig its heels in and to deny deny deny such a voracious context. Hello Quantel 2.0? Yes they still sell but they are really quite bygone, as in VideoToaster, there's nostalgia in looking back at the world that once was ruled.
Cheers
Tony
P.S. If this sounds like a moany-groany reply to the good news IBC thread then that is more than intenstional. This discussion forum has become morgue of late (even the very vocal and caring MikeyP has bailed) and it seems to me to be symptomatic of message that has been sent. I myself went through a phase of loving this software and continually offering opinons of what could be added or tweaked. As a beta tester of Pinnacle Liquid I used to do the same, until one day it keeled over and died (like Softimage it was taken over by Avid and then dropped after a time when today it could have been great). With a lack of development and the inflation of .001 features as shiney good news, things really do seem to be pointing in the direction of software vendors who are not tripping over protecting their own offerings from their own offerings.
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