This was nearly a post in the Lemmings Thread, but as that thread developed, it became increasingly clear to me that there were no Lemmings. Both the "Buy it Now"s, the "Wait a while"s and the "The upgrade should be different"s were putting strong thought into fitting timeframe and desire into their best ways of moving forward.
And more specifically, I feel I would not have given sufficient acknowledgement to Johngar’s and Artedecer’s comments or to the discussion they prompted in me.
This triggered an image in my mind: Kitchen Alert Message: steak.meat cannot be transferred from My Refrigerator to My Oven … it is already in use by dog.rxe
Well, it was soo bloody funny that I laughed out loud - then choked on it as I invoked a variation on rule 34.
My ‘joke’ could, like Artedecer’s be already in development.
Dear reader … the next joke YOU generate at this moment …
I mean go for it … imagine now some combination of object and functions which you’d Never want, much less pay for. Now go forward 7 years and see it as a mandatory everyday object. How do you feel?
… yup. Same principle. You’ve got a gut sense of what I’m talking about, now let’s cut to the chase:
Decreasing Stability in Balance of Form and Function
Internet-Enabled Fridge. It’s another possible creeping case of planning features over development or stability of main function … whether function be a matter of ‘What jobs can it do’ or ‘can it do its basic job for a long time’.
Can it do its job for a long time:
My mother’s cooker is 55 years old and working perfectly without a service. A fridge freezer I gave and installed for her … oh about 
30 years ago is going strong, and it had been ten years old when I had got it. I had calmly expected that that should be so, and it was. ‘Planned obsolescence’ was a phrase which I learnt about thirty years ago, and I thought that meant that things which should last 50 years would be kind of sabotaged so they’d go wrong in 20.
I was well displeased.
What jobs can it do
My first introduction to multifunctionality was the Swiss Army Knife. The second was my Atari 1040 STE. As Cubase evolved, I kind of was OK about it coming to do more actual things, so that it’s development was a balance between doing what it already did, either better or more stably, and it being able to do ‘more things’. The reason was because that computer … inside it … Everything was possible. Data defining different functions … programs, resource files, data files. Heck … and a keyboard and mouse and monitor. heck … limited sources of input, and a black box which would change internal relationships to produce … a myriad of output.
I was overwhelmed.
New paradigms and technology for information
This dethingification has since spread into mobile devices and damn it. The Newtonian Model of the universe has been replaced in its effect on our consciousnesses by the Einsteinian and soon, the post - Einsteinian. With phones, for example, selling Things has been replaced by selling ‘services’ and ‘solutions’.
I had lived either side of a cusp.
Then and Now
My historical background for ‘having’ things
"This is a tape recorder
"This is a guitar
"This is an Amplifier
"Here is something to put them in and wheel them about.
Progress meant I upgraded to:
"A better tape recorder … which does more Tape-recordy things … e.g. auto bias adjust to work dynamically with a given tape.
"A better Guitar … The Strat hack of balancing the three pole switch to get put of phase gets replaced by the world shattering FIVE pole switch.
This Side of the Cusp: my present, and my hopes and fears for the future
I am trying to be ‘Generous’ or flexible in my thinking, however, I feel increasingly threatened and frightened by my being expected to pay for the building blocks and research which goes into BLOATWARE - whilst at the same time trying to acknowledge that my ‘Arg that’s bloatware’ might be someone elses ‘Oooh at last it does This’.
I am a hobby 
photographer who does not listen to music for pleasure 
, so I gritted my teeth when finding I could not buy a mobile phone without forking out for irrelevancies. My choice had been taken away, and some of my ‘paying power’ had been vampired away from my next specific audio or photo purchase. NERO cd and dvd burner is a software example of this worst case scenario. And in private conversation, I have been known to scream, whilst regurgitating beer and pizza, “Loopmash? LOOPMASHHHHH? How can LOOPMASHHH help my Prrecious Music?” into my Skype connection, whilst crouching and grimacing like that little fecker in LOTR.
I DO want to honour people’s right to have ‘suites’ and ‘portals’ if they want them. However,I do not want MY ability to choose components to be taken away from me.
“you don’t have to use the bits you don’t want to use” does not answer my concern, because I only want to pay for what I am going to use. If I HAVE to pay for ‘this’ … my ‘power’ to afford to buy ‘that’ is injured.
I accept that there is a negotiable threshold. I always thought that ‘Loudness’ buttons on hi fi were ‘silly’, but I had no strong objections, because I was paying for ‘choice of modifications within relevant context’ … whereas I’d be horrified if I found I had to pay for a function like ‘upload today’s sequence of played tunes to your Facebook profile as a song list’ choice. UI’d be as horrified as I felt when I realised I could not get a phone without a camera and mp3 player.
Steinberg’s Latest and Where it Stands in my Firmament of Evolution
I reckon Steinberg is nothing like as bad as some software/hardware providers. This recent update does not seem to me to have sold out on developing basic functionality. Cubase’s original mission of simplifying - making more accessible the studio process has, IMO been moved forward. The ability to edit multiple tracks is one helluva slap-forehead obvious Good Move which I would emoticonly applaud. It tightens up the basic functions. I HOPE the multi-lane comping will NOT take away my own present way of working with multi lanes, but that too, is bang in the centre of Good Things. The further developments of VST expression are continuing to increase the gap between Dr T’s midi editor which had nothing but Lists, and a midi experience which gives increasing ease of access to parameters for both editing and realtime playing. Other developments within Cubase seem to be at least Relevant to the process of creating music.
I’ll sketch my least liked and a most liked development strategy
Nero had a function, thought about anything which could be possibly relevant, and incorporated it into a suite. The core engine is good, but someone who wants the simple UNdumbed down version is supporting a raft of irrelevancy. That’s my least desired scenario, and Steinberg has not emulated this.
Adobe have added programs to their portfolio AND have developed an integrational shell plus the option to buy the whole lot. Individual programs have been robust in their development AND Bug Blasting … and semi-public beta testing … WITHOUT blurring the boundries between the programs. This is my most desired scenario, and one which I would like to see Steinberg create a taskforce to model.
I do not see Steinberg’s biggest next steps to be be in the area of bugfix/stability/development of core/feature creation. I believe they are good at this - that is how they set up, and their pattern of introducing incrementals and majors has been more or less stable. I believe the biggest steps are to be found on the road less well traveled … for the eyes to look beyond the competition, so that they may look at those highly successful companies who are NOT competition, but who are simply displaying excellence in roadmapping.
To conclude:
I’ve tidied up this statement as well as I can. I’d certainly appreciate it if people with thinking skills pick it apart [all or bits] so that it becomes sensible and somehow useful rather than just sincere/heartfelt but without concrete direction.
All the best
Glyn
[edited one time after Conman’s post, to correct typos. Also to add coloured text - another statement of belief, which, though more directional, is limited to my experience of Adobe ]
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