Help me understand Alsoft policy on DiskWarrior 4.1 support?
 

CDs for the Leopard-compatible DiskWarrior 4.1 have been shipping since at least Jan. 21. Ah, but here's the rub, only NEW customers have been getting DW 4.1 since Jan. 21.

OLD customers, who have been waiting patiently (or impatiently!) for more than 3 months since Apple released OS 10.5 for support for Leopard are still waiting.

On Jan 21, Alsoft posted on its support page:
And just below the promotion to new customers:
When I queried Alsoft Support in January, I was told that it takes longer to develop a download CD updater. It's now February 3.

Why would it take so much longer for Alsoft to make that available?

Is it normal procedure for a company to get CDs in the hands of new buyers weeks before making the downloaded updater available to its old customer base?

Here's the page from which got my information on Feb. 3:
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/support.html

FYI: the email address is Tech.Support@Alsoft.com They also have an online web-support form they say is faster than going through email: http://www.alsoft.com/Support/techsupportform.html

When they ship a boot CD, they test it on all Mac models and OS versions that they support.

When they post a CD updater, they do the above, but in addition, they also have to make sure the updater can assemble and burn the disc properly on all Mac models and OS versions. It's a little more complex and uncertain than when they control the disc manufacturing process. But I guess they calculated that development and testing of an updater would cost them less money than manufacturing a bunch more discs and just send them to us.

Ah. I had not considered the complexity factor.

But CDs in mass volumes are so cheap and the cost of normal postage so low one wonders why the company insists on its option.

Beyond that, it would seem to make sense to release an update to your loyal customers and new customers at the same time rather than seem to favor the new source of income.

New purchasers of DW get both a CD AND a download. I wonder if you can install the application directly from the download and if new customers have to wait as long as us for whatever download made available to them>

Another option would be to charge a nominal couple dollars to any registered user of 4.0 who wants to pay the costs of the disk, the mailing and the processing rather than wait and then spend more time and tedium running the updater and burning a new disk. A goodly proportion of users run DiskWarrior from a 2nd hard drive, TechTool Pro software equivalent of an HD, or other options than really slow CDs.

While complexity may or may not be a significant factor, I expect the primary reason is that they are focussing on their revenue stream, and not on any "loyalty".

They already have your money - they will not increase their revenue in the near term by doing anything for their "loyal customers". New customers, on the other hand, mean new income. Therefore, any prioritization of effort will favor the new customer.

As far as the medium or long term is concerned, they are betting on the fact that your need for the next version of S/W will determine your purchasing decision, not their behavior in having made you wait.

This can be seen to be pretty much standard behavior for most businesses: most of the time when you are in a place of business being assisted by a salesperson, that person will answer the phone to help a caller, leaving you to wait. The reasoning there is that you are already in their store and are likely to make a purchase even if you are kept waiting for a "short" time, while a caller is more likely to come into the store (and then make a purchase) if he is not kept waiting. This is often part of a salesperson's general training.

Doesn't work for me, though -- if a sales person answers the phone while waiting on me and doesn't put the caller on hold pretty promptly, I leave after about 30 seconds -- but then I'm one of those folks who will abandon a shopping cart at a checkout if the line is very long and new cashiers aren't called for pretty quickly. Halifax isn't a big city, but there is competition for most things I buy.

Same goes for "bait" ads. If I go to a sale and the store has already sold out (making it obvious that they had very few of them in stock for the sale), I never go to another of that store's sales and resist buying there again. I feel the same way about service (can you tell I'm an old fart?) -- if the salesperson thinks they're doing me a favor I find another quickly without apology to the first or leave. If I get to a checkout and the price of an object won't scan, I tell them I don't want it the minute they lift their phone for a price check.

Of course, this attitude comes with retirement -- I'm no longer in a hurry -- I'm just impatient.:)

What a brilliant way to drive the message home!
Perhaps with a note to the manager? Thanks for sharing.

Re: Regrettable delay in release of 4.1 download update
 

.
Norm, I just wrote the following email to Alsoft:

Interestingly, other folks seem to catch on by watching -- my wife and I started an avalanche of three in a big box store the other day. As we pushed our cart off to one side of the line, excused ourselves behind those in the the checkout slot, and were leaving the store, I noticed that a man our age behind us did the same thing, followed by a younger woman with a fussing child behind him -- three carts of goods in a row, not only not sold, but to be restocked because the store was saving a few bucks on too few checkout clerks. I loved it.

I'd hate to find out what you'd do if your sub sandwich coupon was for the wrong store.

Doesn't happen here in Halifax -- don't know what I'd do, but I'd probably toss the coupon and stop using their coupons after that.

Neste Kapittel's letter to Alsoft Tech Support quoted in his ArcticStones Feb. 4 post is elegant and, hopefully, will get them to invest more person-hours in moving the DW 4.1 CD updater from beta to general release.

I called Alsoft Sales to inquire about the cost of just the 4.1 CD for those of us who can provide our serial numbers for 4.0. $12.95 plus another $8.95 for shipping. (In my not-so-humble opinion, $22 is a lot to ask for a mass-produced CD that could be mailed on the cheap.)

I asked the 800-number salesperson to communicate to Alsoft Marketing that the company should invest more in consumer relations with long-time, loyal DW users and recommenders by investing now in expediting the development of the CD-updater. I said to pass on that I appreciated the quality control efforts but felt that readying the CD-updater might have been assigned too-low priority between Leopard's Oct. 25 debut and DW 4.1's Jan. 21 release, and, perhaps, since Jan. 21.

I got the same response we've been hearing for months. 4.0 registered users can expect release of the CD updater "soon."

Any wild guesses on the Alsoft operational definition of "soon"?

Norm

Well, Alsoft has not yet given me the courtesy of a response.
If they do respond, I’ll post immediately.

I’m curious; isn’t this dismal delay a serious lapse from Alsoft’s normal policy?
.

Recall that in previous upgrades (3.0 -> 3.0.2 -> 3.0.3, in my case) you burned a new CD using your old one and the upgrade to manage that, and at the end of the process, still had to insert the upgraded disk to use DW?

Wouldn't you imagine that they can get 4.0.1 on a CD, but haven't figured out how to alter 4.0 and get the result on a CD with full copyright protection in place? After all, they don't want you to be able to make a new CD for yourself and then give the 4.0 disk to your brother.

Response from Alsoft
 

.
I just received the following rather terse response from Alsoft -- after I sent them a new email imploring them to respond. (See below for my original email to Alsoft).

.

Quoted directly from Alsoft's Disk Warrior 4 website:

Doesn't that contradict the tech support response above? By their own admission, 4.0 is not "completely compatible" with Leopard. Thus, although you can run Disk Warrior 4.0 with Leopard, you do not have a "completely compatible" solution.

I must confess that I am unable to read that any other way than the one you’ve just indicated. Furthermore, I find the opening line in Alsoft’s response more than a bit galling:

Of course it does!
.

Count me among the long time Disk Warrior aficionados who are becoming increasingly disgruntled with Alsoft. About three weeks ago I had problems with Leopard after installing the Adobe CS3 suite.

I immediately pulled out my Disk Warrior 4 disk, and repaired permissions and rebuilt the directory. What a mistake that was. At the time, I was not aware that DW 4 isn't what I'm used to from DW, and I was functioning with the understanding that it was compatible with Leopard. It never occurred to me to go to the Alsoft website and read all the fine print about what I was and wasn't supposed to do with my "compatible" DW app.

After doing an erase and install to undo the situation that DW made worse, I went back to Alsoft and submitted a support request. Here for your enjoyment is their (inadequate) response:

Indirectly squeezing us for every dollar.
 

Clearly, this long a wait is meant to squeeze those who use it and need it most to pay up for a new copy. The majority of their revenue is coming from people who know and have the product. Existing customers are their largest revenue stream. The offer for a "free upgrade soon", is a failed attempt to appease and show good will. I don't doubt the legitimacy of the software complexities, just their motivation. Individual calls and emails should have been met with expedited upgrade offers at a small charge of 5 to 10 dollars.

The overwhelming majority of new mac buyers tend not to be interested in the sales pitch for spending more money on a utility. Too much learning curve for most.
Don't get me wrong. I love the product. I use it extensively. However, the communication on the website is still not as clear as it should be. You know and they know that most of the impatient will pay up for an early copy. Apple has already conditioned you to pay up frequently.

Personally, I would have accepted and respected a nominal charge of $25.00 right off the bat, rather than being strung along and risk doing the damage that others have done accidentally while trying to follow poor instructions. I have several utilities. Micromat (TechtoolPro) handled this leopard transition faster and more fairly as well as smarter. They had an update download before they released their leopard compatible upgrade, mostly to prevent users from destroying their machines. I respect Alsoft's research and care for producing a fully ready product, but not there handling of this transition. Honestly, who's brother doesn't already have a copy of DiskWarrior. If the only reason for delay is to prevent piracy, they are as deluded as the music and movie industry. They are not stopping the criminals. They are only inconveniencing the honest loyal customers.

What a shame.

Hadn't thought of that take, Jeffrey. Unfortunate indeed if it's the case. I too would have paid an upgrade fee to get a prompt copy.

Jeffrey,

I fear you may be correct about Alsoft's misguided "marketing" effort. For my part, I would have paid $10 for a new, updated CD in about two seconds, and, had the price been higher, it would just have taken me a little longer to decide to pony up $25 or $30. As it stands now, they are fast eroding all the good will I have toward them.

Alsoft Sucks
 

First I want to say that I love DiskWarrior. Good product. Now let me ask what's the darn deal with Alsoft? DiskWarrior 4.1 has been out for over a month and yet no updater for the loyal DiskWarrior clients, who have stood by Alsoft for years buying every new upgrade and extolling the virtues of DiskWarrior to everyone they know. Now they're like 'Yeah you want the update? Plunk down your $50 and buy the effin' disk. Then you can get the update, sucka.' I know, they say it takes longer to do the update, once the upgrade is ready. But, come on, guys. Did this sneak up on you? You never put out an update before? You have one guy working on it on his lunch break? What?
I'll tell you what. They want us to pay. They want us to buy 4.1. The update is free. Why would they want to give it away, when they can make more money off of us? I'll keep using DiskWarrior because it's a good product, but I need to vent. It's just not right. You know it's not. I know it's not. Alsoft? Probably, but they just don't give a damn.

I wrote them and got the same response. Except the service rep said " Like the web site says: Soon! I was a bit offended by this and called him on it. We went back and forth as I tried to explain to him that if he would have just tried to ask someone for an answer, I would have appreciated the effort. He was a total ******* to me! Unbelievable. Alsoft has got some serious PR problems.

.
Let me ask the obvious question:

For those who have invested in DW 4.0, what are the technical limitations to taking advantage of a colleague’s/friend’s newly purchased DW 4.1? (Clearly there are no moral limitations -- at least not in my mind.)

-- ArcticStones


PS. If anyone can dig up the cell phone numbers of Alsoft’s CEO, Chairman of the Board, and key shareholders, please post them here. In Norway we have a time-honoured tradition of addressing our gripe to the top of the pyramid of greed/incompetency. :D

At least I do, and with a modest success rate. But that is a story for another time...

.

Well I got tired of waiting. I own a license for 3.x and 4.x. So I went to my favorite neighborhood torrent tracker and viola. New version with my serial. Yes it is not a cd boot disk, but I never used those anyway. They take too long to use. Kind of sad that I have had it for months and Alsoft STILL has yet to officially release to their current customers.
Truly, just send us the same freaking discs in the mail. I'll pay 5$ for shipping and materials. Your cd updaters don't work for a lot of people anyway. But the snow job of how the cd updater is a complex piece of software. BS. Photoshop is a complex piece of software. CD image merging is pretty straightforward. And Apple gives them the base OS to work with.
So base OS is given to them. They add DW to image and recreate. Them they ship the thing to us using upgrade serials. WTF is hard about that? Ditch the CD updater thing. It makes your customers work unnecessarily for a service their $100 should have bought. Thanks.

Sad thing is, once they push their paying customers to pirate sites, those customers will remember the "alternative" when they are greeted with "Diskwarrior 5, upgrade now for $30" at Alsoft site no matter how significant upgrade DW 5 would be.

About the patch thing. A complex game such as WoW with gigabytes of data patches itself including monster data files over bittorrent protocol.

If this issue comes from Apple since they ship their boot files, they should declare it too.

Just got an Alsoft form-letter email message with a link to the DiskWarrior 4.1 "CD Update". As I type this note, the 2.0 MB file is downloading.

Norm

OK, but a word of CAUTION for those who use CD after updating
 

The updater worked just fine.

I quickly dragged DW 4.1 to my Applications folder on each hard drive so I will not have to use the updated CD, which would take a great more time than re-booting into another HD.

The word of caution: Because DW 4.0.0 came on a Tiger CD, 4.0.1 also will use the identical OS. So, if you have Leopard on a hard drive, do NOT run the CD's Repair Permissions on a 10.5.x volume.

Respectfully, Norm

Norm,

Do you mean that even after burning a bootable CD we won't be able to use 4.1 with Leopard? :eek:

Gayle

It can be used with Leopard but if you are booted from the updated 4.1 CD, do not check Repair Permissions after selecting DW's "File" icon menu. Instead, wait until you boot back into Leopard on a hard drive and then launch Disk Utility from the hard drive to repair permissions.

I prefer to just set aside the freshly burned 4.1 CD and launch DiskWarrior 4.1 from a second internal or external hard drive.

(Another option is to use TechTool Pro 4.6.1 to create the electronic equivalent of a second hard drive. Then drag into the "eDrive" applications folder the DW 4.1 application. One boots into the TTP eDrive and then can run Leopard Disk Utility, DW, TTP or any other diagnostic and repair utilities that one may add to the apps folder.)

Respectfully, Norm

Norm,

Thanks especially for the TechTool Pro tip.

If I were you, I would stay away from "eDrive". Disk Utility on Leopard has "partition resizing" which can resize partitions/disks without losing data. It is developed by same company invented HFS+.
Set a 10 GB Leopard partition.(It _must_ be at least 10 GB for Leopard) Install all your utilities there. Set a personal policy NOT to install any kind of "system hack", "beta software", "preview software" or iLife there... There you have a perfect "rescue" disk.

Totally disagree.

In order to have a "perfect" (if there really is such a thing) rescue disk, it's gotta be on a separate drive, not just a separate partition.

I get an error when I am prompted for the blank CD.

Any ideas?

Still better than booting from CD (without swap functionality) or rely on a third party tool which is only designed to make a boot partition to boot their _own_ tool.

Ideally, all Macs should have a firewire external disk to boot from but in reality, it doesn't happen. My suggestion is for people who would have single disk to boot from (e.g. laptop owners) and spare a comical (in todays numbers) 10 GB to have a thing to boot from. It saved me even when I blindly upgraded to Leopard 10.5.0. I had 10.4.11 on the "Repair" partition and happily booted from it and run my games from there.

If one has no other drive, your suggestion is fine, but people need to understand that corruption can screw up the ability to access all partitions on a drive, making the "rescue" partition unusable in some cases. Thus, the reason for my original comment.

Disk Warrior 4.1.1
 

I don't see why they don't let you download a disk image that you can burn. Unless what they ship is copy-protected (this I don't know). -PJ

When you want to recover from a directory screw-up, you have to boot from their CD, which I assume is copy protected. The upgrade is a PITA, for sure, but again requires that you have the original CD on hand to do it. As I recall (it's been a while) even when using the upgrade, you have to plug in the original.