So a week and a half ago I promised a private beta for preorderers would be available by Christmas. Now it is the day afterwards, and you guys are still Tubularless. What happened?
First of all, I would like to apologize to everyone who was expecting an early Christmas gift. I dropped the ball on the deadline, and there was nobody more upset at myself than, well, myself at not getting the release out there. I also know that this is not the first time that a release was promised and not delivered, and I recognize that all of you who supported the development of Tubular have been getting understandably frustrated at the fact that this was supposed to be out a month ago. So to all of you who have been disappointed, and I know there are a lot of you, I deeply and honestly apologize.
Software development can be a very difficult process, and even moreso when you’re a one man shop and dependent on another service. Tubular was written using code that depends on YouTube’s HTML format not changing (it was also designed so that, in the event of a change in the YouTube HTML, the application can be quickly updated with new site scraping code). One of the biggest delays during development was the need to fix the way Tubular read the site structure…every few weeks. I knew this would happen when I started the project, so it is not a terribly huge deal, but it is tedious and time consuming, and its a big part of many of the delays we’ve seen.
However, development trods on. I’ve added the last feature that’s been needed, importing your favorites from your YouTube account, and all that needs to be done is to make video playback work again (which is more trivial than it sounds) and make a few quick fixes to some of the iPod conversion stuff. Then you’ll all have it. Fortunately, I’m now on a two-week break from my university, and now that Christmas is over, I’ll have much more time to dedicate to Tubular.
Once again, I apologize for the delays and the undelivered promises. I’m as upset as all of you about it, because I don’t want the people who have supported Tubular to feel that I’m ripping them off or anything like that. If you’ve got any questions, comments, or if you’d like to shout at me, by all means leave me a comment on this post or click the Contact button at the top to send me an email. Hopefully Santa won’t come too late this year.
Sincerely,Steve Streza
Developer of Tubular
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Steve Streza Said
at 10:28 am on December 26, 2006,Also, I hope everyone had a merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc. I personally like Zamenhof Day, where we celebrate the birthday of the inventor of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof.
Bruno Stoekl Said
at 1:26 pm on December 26, 2006,come on, Steve. A month and a half ago I bought this thing, giving you money, on the good faith that it would be in order soon. Even after the purchase by google, I was still excited by what your service could bring, and felt confident that it would be available soon enough. That’s why I’m really disappointed with this whole thing— it seems as though rather than releasing a public beta, there is… well, I have absolutely no idea what there is! There very well could be all sorts of neat ipod conversion things, or this could all be a scam and the pictures are just photoshop renderings fishing for my cash. I’m really hoping that’s not what’s happening here, and I would like to finally see this software, in any state, as soon as possible.
David Said
at 2:10 pm on December 26, 2006,While I’m sad Tubular isn’t out yet, being a college student myself I can understand how busy you can get.
mike sheffeild Said
at 3:07 pm on December 26, 2006,The PC guys get lambcast, and we get delays.
D Said
at 4:30 pm on December 26, 2006,Based on the number of verified buyers for your account as reported by PayPal, you have made a minimum of $10,500 based on a pre-order price of $12.99. This does not include any money you made off the GiftZOT. This is the second release date you have promised and missed. Why can’t you do refunds? Have you aready spent our money, Steve? Mac users are a trusting breed when it comes to supporting indie developers and shareware. While $12.99 is not a lot of money to risk and lose on vaporware, if you are not able to deliver Tubular as promised in a timely fashion I am quite sure you will be finished as a businessman in the community. If you were not absolutely sure you would be able to deliver in a reasonable timeframe, you should not have taken money, period. Your excuses don’t fly in the real world. Can you imagine what would happen if I told my boss, who is paying me a salary on the promise that I will deliver results, that I’ve missed my own deadline by well over a month? By taking our money you now answer to your customers and lose the luxury of releasing your software whenever you want.
The least you could do at this point is offer refunds to those who don’t want to wait.
joe Said
at 6:45 pm on December 26, 2006,Gotta agree with the guy above. I understand all the issues that you are going through and how hard software development can be but you also have our money. Sure, getting the release date pushed back is inevitable but since we have nothing to show other than the vague fear that it will all vanish into ether, a money back guarantee (after release) for those of us who paid for the early release is only fair.
I think you might also want to review your development strategy. If the site-scraping is the single biggest cause of delay, it doesn’t make any sense to keep chasing it during development when nobody has a copy. You could set up a test environment and leave the scraping for last before release.
Overall, I feel like I was misled by all the wonderful screenshots. All the blog posts made it sound like an existing app in private, friends-only testing. Any reason why you couldn’t let paying customers in on the fun? It’s not likely that an app like this will crash your computer is it?
I also wish there were plans to incorporate other video sites. If you have a nice scraping system developed as you said, expanding this app for other video services would make it worthwhile.
I’m sorry if it seems I’m coming down hard on you but having paid for something that may or may not be delivered is an uneasy feeling. I’m glad that you are hard at work and I hope that you are able to deliver soon.
Bruno Stoekl Said
at 6:55 pm on December 26, 2006,The thing that gets me is the fact that you’ve taken our money prior to releasing a certain product. Every other time I’ve ever done that, it’s been for an item that I know will be on the way soon, (for example, “in the next couple weeks” as you said back in november). In the case of developmental software, the way of doing things is to release a truly public beta –whenever you want– and then follow that up with a full 1.0. See any of Dave Watanabe’s applications, the current one being xtorrent, for the correct implementation of such a system. After all these delays, missed deadlines, etc, there had better be something nice for us pre-orderers soon. Maybe even, dare I say, a youtube video showing off you using the software? Would that be too much to ask, or does this software not even exist?
EsEmKa Said
at 8:30 pm on December 26, 2006,Guys, it is/was Xmas. Why not wish Steeve a bugfree programm and an early release? We’ll get what we deserve
Chris Said
at 4:39 am on December 27, 2006,Woah! Everyone, calm down! You’ll get your software… I understand how busy college students can be, believe me. I didn’t really even have time to sit down before I came home from school for Christmas, let alone put out a piece of software that needs to be constantly rewritten. He’s working on it. He’s not trying to rip you off. Steve, I know you’re doing your best; just give it to us when it’s ready. Thanks for your hard work.
Tervor Said
at 8:27 am on December 27, 2006,Oh come on, college students are not busy at all they have time to burn compared to people in work.
No sympathy should be given to them at all.
David Barnes Said
at 10:20 am on December 27, 2006,While I understand patience and agree this isn’t life or death here I am mostly siding with the pissed off folks. He’s received a goon number of pre-orders without delivering anything, has missed at least two deadlines and has also been remiss in communicating any issues. We all understand delays but how about some better communication here?
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