Saw this earlier today, so went and had a read of their announcement. For those (like me) who are/were not aware, ALK is described as:
Looper, Meet Sequencer
zenAud.io ALK is a cross between a sequencer and a looper. Like a traditional looper, clips are performed live and subsequently looped to create layers of sound. Like in a sequencer, the loops can be drawn, moved, copied, cut and pasted in a musical arrangement.
Martin’s (developer/founder) open letter is an interesting read; and maybe provides some insights into the challenges, trials and tribulations that some developers face; especially in a difficult, niche industry such as music production et al.
Ok so reading through his post…man, where to start…so for one, I paid like 100€ for the pro version, that’s not little. They didn’t sell, fair enough, but also, in a way they abandoned the software well before this dropped…and stayed silent about it. It’s explained here, but I don’t quite know what to make of that explanation.
He says about some of the stuff “but let’s be honest, who gives a shit?!” and my answer to that is “your customers do/did!” — I understand that this guy is tired and fed up and maybe drained his life savings to an uncomfortable level — and it sucks. I’m an entrepreneur as well and know the psychological, emotional and even physical pressures too well.
But man, starting a business and making promises to a marketplace is a responsibility/obliges and if you can’t keep up with that, then at least communicate it in more or less real-time.
Not a lack of empathy, only reflecting on the fact that as a customer I didn’t need to read this emotional and sort of resentful (towards self, towards decisions taken etc) post — a simple “we had a dream and it didn’t add up. Thank you for your support.” Would have done it as well.
Also, not sure how much effort went into this, but they could have tried to sell the product and user base to another company/developer to ensure continuity & support — even if it wouldn’t have been a profitable affair.
With that said, I of course wish him a speedy “recovery” and that he’ll be able to process this into something positive for himself down the line.
Always sad to see interesting projects come to an end like that, but better to pull the plug than to tread on hating the venture.
Appreciate the input @hausland. I think he said in that thread was looking at selling to another company/developer? Like I said, bit of an interesting read, only stumbled across it this morning.
…plans do not always work the way one wants them to. when things don’t work out though, there’s usually something to learn, whether it being good or bad; regardless, it’s something that can be used in the next endeavour
Looking back at some of the design decisions, I have to laugh about how insane they were. I’ve mentioned a few of them. (The GPU thing cost me 6 months - and, in retrospect, honestly: who gives a shit?)
I wasn’t implying that he said he didn’t care about his customers. I said that his customers cared about him/the product/the company. Specifically in response to the quote above which to me applies to his design choices, not his reasoning.
Really? 60fps GPU-rendered user interface is what the customers actually want from it, before other features get done? Is it a AAA video game, or an audio tool?
Not a lack of empathy, only reflecting on the fact that as a customer I didn’t need to read this emotional and sort of resentful (towards self, towards decisions taken etc) post — a simple “we had a dream and it didn’t add up. Thank you for your support.” Would have done it as well.
But if he’d written that, other customers would complain that they deserve more of an explanation.
Jokes aside, I mean the product as a whole customers cared about. And the (claimed) fluidity of the user interface was one selling point. As well as the key bindings were another. My point is, some people went along with the value promises, it’s not like no one cared actually.
Re what others would say to that post, cool, I’ve told you what I have to say about that.
