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Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 12:40 pm
by ryanbuckner
I know there are no release dates discussed but it's been over a YEAR since the last Indigo Touch update. That's a million lifetimes in app dev.

Anyone have thoughts on when we might see a new release?

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 12:59 pm
by Sevilsivle
Despite the introduction of the „ up to date“ program, the main OS X Indigo Application has not been updated for over 9 months. I get the impression the developers have other daytime jobs and Indigo has been left to the independent plug-in developers to keep it „ up to date“. So don’t hold you breath in expectation.

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 1:43 pm
by MarcoGT
Sevilsivle wrote:
Despite the introduction of the „ up to date“ program, the main OS X Indigo Application has not been updated for over 9 months. I get the impression the developers have other daytime jobs and Indigo has been left to the independent plug-in developers to keep it „ up to date“. So don’t hold you breath in expectation.


I also have the same feeling.
I am also in the software development field, but in another completely different area.
I thought the idea of having the subscription scheme was to have more frequent update, but it got worse.
Also the introduction of new devices stopped, and this was one of the key features of the subscription scheme

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 1:10 pm
by jay (support)
ryanbuckner wrote:
I know there are no release dates discussed but it's been over a YEAR since the last Indigo Touch update. That's a million lifetimes in app dev.

The only big demand has been for iPhone X screen support. We're going to wait until we see what devices are introduced (perhaps next month) before we do any more work in that direction so that we can include any changes that might be required for those devices. Indigo Touch continues to work fine, though there are a few minor bugs that we'll also address in the next release. Longer term, in future major releases, we plan on additional large functional improvements. But to be honest that isn't on the near term radar.

Sevilsivle wrote:
Despite the introduction of the „ up to date“ program, the main OS X Indigo Application has not been updated for over 9 months. I get the impression the developers have other daytime jobs and Indigo has been left to the independent plug-in developers to keep it „ up to date“. So don’t hold you breath in expectation.

We absolutely do not have other jobs. There is a lot involved in running the company besides just new features including: support (this one takes much more time than you might imagine), sales, back-end Web development, working with our technology partners, and occasional marketing. On the development front there is a lot of work that is done that doesn't necessarily show up as an impressive marketing bullet points, like new macOS release compatibility (including significant work for 64 bit compatibility), architectural work required to continue to make Indigo an expandable platform, significant QA, and documentation. Our priorities have always been reliability and stability over new functionality, and that will not be changing even though it does sometimes delay our release schedules.

MarcoGT wrote:
I also have the same feeling.
I am also in the software development field, but in another completely different area.
I thought the idea of having the subscription scheme was to have more frequent update, but it got worse.
Also the introduction of new devices stopped, and this was one of the key features of the subscription scheme

Sorry, but that's incorrect. We've had one big feature release (7.1) with lots of new device support within a year of the release of 7.0 (which also included some significant backend work that was needed to move forward). We'll release 7.2, another big device addition release within a year of 7.1 which also contains some major plumbing that's required to get us to a 64-bit server which we'll need post-Mojave. Previously, you'd have to wait at least 24 months (often longer) to get a major release with significant new device support, etc.

All that said, we are both disappointed with the frequency of releases over the last year. There are reasons for that, some of which are mentioned above and some of which are not. Going forward we believe we'll be able to have more frequent releases, but as always the devil is in the details.

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 11:37 pm
by MarcoGT
I am in the SW Development area, but in a totally different sector. Therefore, I know what you are talking about (problems during development/integration).
But last year you promised more often release and this did not happen.

But nevertheless, I will continue to support Indigo :D

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 9:35 am
by jay (support)
MarcoGT wrote:
But last year you promised more often release and this did not happen.


We released Indigo 7 on Nov 2, 2016 along with the discussion of how we hoped the new strategy would allow us to release new features more often (rather than rolling them up into a monolithic release every 2-3 years). We released 7.1 (big feature upgrade) on Oct 16, 2017. We're on track to release 7.2 before October 2018. That is more than one feature release a year. Before Indigo 7, it was at least 24 months between feature releases. You perhaps are conflating feature releases with maintenance releases. We have thankfully had very few issues in Indigo 7.1 (only the 7.1.1 maintenance release on Nov 7 2017) that required a maintenance release.

How does that illustrate that we haven't released more often... :?

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:57 am
by siclark
If we are talking Indigo Touch new features, I would love the ability to see triggers in the app and turn them on and off. Saves using team viewer to get into my headless Mac mini if one of them isn't working properly.
iPhone X support ( despite having one) isn't a big deal to me. But them I use Homekit as the main user app and Touch as more of a maintenance app.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:27 am
by jay (support)
siclark wrote:
If we are talking Indigo Touch new features, I would love the ability to see triggers in the app and turn them on and off. Saves using team viewer to get into my headless Mac mini if one of them isn't working properly.


Thanks for the feedback. That one is on the list. One thing that we'll be considering in this direction is if Indigo Touch remains just a control client. We definitely want to provide some kind of configuration client as well - whether that's part of IT or a separate app is something we're still thinking about. On the one hand, it's simple: one app for everything. On the other hand, configuration is usually something you want locked down to a smaller subset of users (generally) so it might be better as a separate thing.

BTW, if you have a fixed set of triggers/schedules that you want to enable/disable on the fly, then you might want to add buttons that execute a script to do that. Not a general-purpose mechanism by any means, but it might help for more specific use-cases.

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 12:06 pm
by autolog
jay (support) wrote:
... We're on track to release 7.2 before October 2017. ...

I presume you mean 2018? :wink: :D

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 12:53 pm
by DaveL17
I think that was 2017 with Durosity Mode enabled.

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:34 pm
by jay (support)
autolog wrote:
jay (support) wrote:
... We're on track to release 7.2 before October 2017. ...

I presume you mean 2018? :wink: :D


No idea what you’re talking about... :lol: :wink:

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 2:58 am
by Sevilsivle
[url]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often[/url]

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 6:18 am
by DaveL17
RERO isn't right for every application. Having bugs in a system like Indigo has implications that could be very severe--like HVAC running 24/7 or sprinklers turning on and never turning off again. People install Indigo in remote applications like vacation homes and often aren't able to just restart the server. I don't expect Indigo to be perfect, but I'm willing to wait if that means there's a chance for a higher quality product.

As Matt and Jay have said many times, they need to balance their time between development, support and marketing and I, for one, feel they do a spectacular job of balancing these demands. I doubt that there are many two-person companies out there--producing a similarly niche product--that do it better than Matt and Jay do. IMO, Matt and Jay do it right.

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 7:50 am
by eme jota ce
DaveL17 wrote:
RERO isn't right for every application. Having bugs in a system like Indigo has implications that could be very severe--like HVAC running 24/7 or sprinklers turning on and never turning off again. People install Indigo in remote applications like vacation homes and often aren't able to just restart the server. I don't expect Indigo to be perfect, but I'm willing to wait if that means there's a chance for a higher quality product.

As Matt and Jay have said many times, they need to balance their time between development, support and marketing and I, for one, feel they do a spectacular job of balancing these demands. I doubt that there are many two-person companies out there--producing a similarly niche product--that do it better than Matt and Jay do. IMO, Matt and Jay do it right.


Well stated.

+1

Re: Next Update for Indigo Touch?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:42 am
by jay (support)
DaveL17 wrote:
RERO isn't right for every application. Having bugs in a system like Indigo has implications that could be very severe--like HVAC running 24/7 or sprinklers turning on and never turning off again. People install Indigo in remote applications like vacation homes and often aren't able to just restart the server. I don't expect Indigo to be perfect, but I'm willing to wait if that means there's a chance for a higher quality product.


Indigo is closer to mission-critical for many users than most other software/services (it certainly is for us as users of our own product). UTD allows us to do our version of RERO: an "O" of <12 months is a vast improvement over the 24-36 month schedule we used to have and one we hope to improve on even more. But what we won't do is put quality/supportability at risk just to deliver an update (delivering a release is, in itself, a very time and resource intensive process which is also yet another factor).

Here's a software development truth: the longer a bug remains in software throughout the process (development, QA, release), the more costly it is to fix in terms of money, time, and resources (not to mention opportunity cost and customer good will). Quite often by an orders of magnitude. This is a fundamental concept that any good engineering manager knows and lives by.

DaveL17 wrote:
As Matt and Jay have said many times, they need to balance their time between development, support and marketing and I, for one, feel they do a spectacular job of balancing these demands. I doubt that there are many two-person companies out there--producing a similarly niche product--that do it better than Matt and Jay do. IMO, Matt and Jay do it right.


Thank you. We don't always get it right, but we try really hard to ensure that we do.