[crooner]

I'm posting this only because there is so much talk on the forums lately about the 1.3 beta of SS and newer builds of TP.

For those of us not fortunate enough to be on the beta tester list, can Jason, or someone give a nutshell description of what, when, and how?

(And will new versions of both applications be released at the same time?)

[Dave-o�]

This is from Smeger in another thread about ShapeShifter:

Metric assloads of new end-user features: complete
Testing of same: 75%
Imperial buttloads of new theme-creator features: 98%
Testing of same: 60%
Panther compatibility: 90%
Integration with Unsanity's updated registration system: 0%
Integration of "featured themes": 0%
Update documentation: 0%
Package for release: 0%

As for the rest of the information you are asking about the testers are under a "Non-Disclosure Agreement" and will not/can not share that information.

[esXXI]

Originally posted by Dave-o�:
[Snip]

As for the rest of the information you are asking about the testers are under a "Non-Disclosure Agreement" and will not/can not share that information.

What Dave-o� said..

You won't be disappointed though.

[demograph68]

Originally posted by esXXI:
What Dave-o� said..

You won't be disappointed though.

Why such a high level of secrecy though? Yikes!

[Dave-o�]

Too keep the 'Monkeys' off Smegers back.. Could you imagine the you would have too put up with if you released all the details PLUS an ETA? Then to top that off with the unexpected 'ut-oh' and miss the ETA date... You would have better luck selling heroin in the Central Office of the DEA, than the you would have to put up with from members of this forum...

[Mike S.]

Metric assloads of new end-user features: complete

How many end user features can one put into a theme switcher to warrant the use of "metric assload"? Right now you can click a theme, it applies it, you can quit the dock/finder or not and exclude apps.

Is this hype or reality? Is a "metric assload" more or less than 10 new features that end users will really find exciting?

Would that be saying too much? No details, just a less than or greater than

[demograph68]

Originally posted by Dave-o�:
Too keep the 'Monkeys' off Smegers back.. Could you imagine the you would have too put up with if you released all the details PLUS an ETA? Then to top that off with the unexpected 'ut-oh' and miss the ETA date... You would have better luck selling heroin in the Central Office of the DEA, than the you would have to put up with from members of this forum...

I didn't say something wrong did I? I'm content so far with the progress being made in our humble community.

[.saNNic.]

Originally posted by Dave-o�:
You would have better luck selling heroin in the Central Office of the DEA.

You have that backwards...... they deal the heroin to the pushers that sell to us.

[esXXI]

Originally posted by Mike S.:
Metric assloads of new end-user features: complete

How many end user features can one put into a theme switcher to warrant the use of "metric assload"? Right now you can click a theme, it applies it, you can quit the dock/finder or not and exclude apps.

Is this hype or reality? Is a "metric assload" more or less than 10 new features that end users will really find exciting?

Would that be saying too much? No details, just a less than or greater than

How many ways do you want the reply: "We can't say"? It means what it says, you'll know when Smeger is happy enough with progress/done stuff to announce what's new and an actual release date.

[swiz]

You should just PM smeg, he'll get you more info than any on the beta team will. Even beta testers incinuating that they know something others dont is just adding fuel to the fire which Jason would rather be nonexistant.

[Dave-o�]

Originally posted by demograph68:
I didn't say something wrong did I? I'm content so far with the progress being made in our humble community.

Nope you didn't say anything wrong.. Just wanted members to understand why this is under wraps..

Demo.. and word on Siro icons? did you see my post in the icon thread?

[fireside]

Originally posted by Dave-o�:
Too keep the 'Monkeys' off Smegers back.. Could you imagine the you would have too put up with if you released all the details PLUS an ETA? Then to top that off with the unexpected 'ut-oh' and miss the ETA date... You would have better luck selling heroin in the Central Office of the DEA, than the you would have to put up with from members of this forum...

kinda like how everyone gangrapes colin for not releasing xtender two months ago?

[crooner]

Originally posted by swiz:
You should just PM smeg, he'll get you more info than any on the beta team will. Even beta testers incinuating that they know something others dont is just adding fuel to the fire which Jason would rather be nonexistent.

Good idea. I certainly didn't mean to stir up a hullabaloo over this.
I realize that Jason can't give an ETA, nor a new features list until each application is done and ready to be released.
I'm cool waiting for them, I'm just curious if both SS and TP will be updated to compliment each other.
Also, as I'm collaborating on a new theme with NetworkShadow, it would be nice to know what extra functionality can be added.

But I reiterate that I'm fine waiting (with baited breath). I just hope it's fairly soon.

[smeger]

Hype and Perception
The main reason I keep quiet about new ShapeShifter features is to keep people excited about the product. When you announce features for a product too far in advance of the release, what tends to happen is that people get very excited about those features, but after a few weeks, the features are old (even though they haven't yet been released!), and once the software is released, the final result is that people are like, "meh, that's it!?"

You can release the exact same software without pre-announcing the features and people will be thrilled with it.

I find it's best to under-promise and over-deliver, and to not begin hyping until I've got firm release date, and in any case, not more than a week before delivery.


Metric Assloads of Features
Regarding the "metric assload" number, lemme take a quick look at my version history doc for the upcoming release...

Okay, a quick count shows 12 major new features, each of which would be individually worthy of at least a point upgrade. The complete version history for the upcoming release has 79 bullet points, but a lot of those are changes between various alpha and beta versions and will disappear from the final, end-user tally. Anyway you cut it, it's definitely a "metric assload".


ShapeShifter 2.0
Which brings up my next point - we're not going to call this ShapeShifter 1.3, we're going to release it ShapeShifter 2.0. We have two major reasons for doing this:

The first is that the feature set warrants it. We've got tons of new features and we don't want to set a precedent of bundling tons of new stuff into a point upgrade. Hell, if the code was alive and we didn't call it 2.0, it'd hunt me down and do something horrible to me!

The other reason is that this lets us get away from the stigma that's grown up around the 1.5 version number. When we began talking about ShapeShifter 1.5, our idea was that 1.5 itself wasn't going to be that big of an update, it just meant that the features slated for 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5 were finished. But the public has gotten the perception that at 1.5 there will be this gigantic disconnect and suddenly everything would be totally different and all war would end and there would be peace on earth, etc. In other words, there's absolutely no way we could have met the expectations that people have developed for 1.5, and we would have pissed a lot of people off when we released it.

The features that were slated for 1.5 aren't going away. But I'm not announcing any particular version by which they'll all be integrated. Many of the important ones will be in the upcoming 2.0 release, anyway.

We're pretty sure this version number change will piss some people off, and we hope that they'll get over it. As I said, we feel we'd piss a lot more people off in the future if we didn't do this now.

ShapeShifter 2.0 will be a free upgrade to registered users. We do plan to charge for future upgrades for ShapeShifter, but we're not going to charge for this one. It hasn't even been a year since ShapeShifter 1.0 was released and we feel it wouldn't be fair to you guys to charge for an upgrade this quickly. So this one's free.

Last but not least, in that tongue-in-cheek progress report that Dave-o® posted, change "Imperial buttloads of new theme-creator features" to 100%!

[siMac]

No SS 1.5 = No Omega




Steps aside to watch snowball effect.

[smeger]

Originally posted by siMac:
No SS 1.5 = No Omega

I forgot to mention Omega, but I don't know anything about it. It didn't enter into the 2.0 decision.

[DaveV1.0]

My only question on this is if future upgrades are going to be paid do unsanity have any plans on finally accepting paypal as an alternitive payment method as I and many other people I know have no credit card but do own a switch debit card which is not currently accepted. I was lucky enough to have a friend buy 1.0 for me with his card but he no longer has the card. I have no problem paying for upgrades but I would like to be able to.

[NetworkShadow]

Originally posted by siMac:
No SS 1.5 = No Omega

That was just a rough estimate on Jason's part, it was a long while ago too so there was no way to say what was in store for SS development.

[servo]

Originally posted by siMac:
No SS 1.5 = No Omega

Oh screw Omega. I feel sorry for Omega Guy. He has had to deal with so much crap all because he wanted to deliver something cool. If Omega comes out it will be cool. Until then there are already many awesome Shapeshifter themes and I am sure 2.0 will prompt the release of many other great themes. I'm just hoping for a really useable dark theme with all major apps skinned.

Now, when is that release date?

[Mike S.]

Thanks for the status report smeger it sounds like it's going to be worth the wait.

On the 1.5 > 2.0 name change I can't help but think people are going to be expecting the over-expected 1.5 and more from something called 2.0 but as you say; they'll just have to get over it.

Looking forward to the coolness!

[Rosyna]

Originally posted by DaveV1.0:
My only question on this is if future upgrades are going to be paid do unsanity have any plans on finally accepting paypal as an alternitive payment method as I and many other people I know have no credit card but do own a switch debit card which is not currently accepted. I was lucky enough to have a friend buy 1.0 for me with his card but he no longer has the card. I have no problem paying for upgrades but I would like to be able to.

The answer to that would be a very loud "Hell no". We tried that in the past and then PayPal wouldn't release the money to us. They wanted us to fax many forms, we faxed them, then they asked for those same forms to be faxed again and seemed to not know we had been asked before to fax them. They wanted all kinds of proof of our identity, and they wouldn't let us close the account (and thus get the funds from it) because they locked our account.

Alternatively, we do accept checks and other forms of payment if need be.

[boy8cookie]

paying for upgrades... it ain't photoshop.
I strongly disagree. :

[Dave-o�]

Originally posted by boy8cookie:
paying for upgrades... it ain't photoshop.
I strongly disagree. :

Without 'paying' for something, how do you suppose these grand people make a living? I guess they could just charge $1200 for the app and then give the upgrades away free.. (i wish Adobe and Macromedia would do that.. upgrade for free at least).. I can understand the 'lifetime' free upgrades for all of Unsanity's products, but at last they do need to make a living.. Pirates don't help the cause either.. the more people hijack their software, the more the 'paying' user has to pay to make up for their revenue loss... sorry boy8cookie, this isn't an attack on you, just my thoughts on the subject..

[MacMan4000]

smeger, your my hero. I wouldn't mind paying something like half price for upgrades, but full price would not be cool... I'd still buy it though

[eme]

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
smeger, your my hero. I wouldn't mind paying something like half price for upgrades, but full price would not be cool... I'd still buy it though

yeah it should be half priced or something like it ala Candybar upgrade... like you said i'd still buy it if it would be full price, but i'll be bitching about it

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

Originally posted by Dave-o�:
Without 'paying' for something, how do you suppose these grand people make a living? I guess they could just charge $1200 for the app and then give the upgrades away free.. (i wish Adobe and Macromedia would do that.. upgrade for free at least).. I can understand the 'lifetime' free upgrades for all of Unsanity's products, but at last they do need to make a living.. Pirates don't help the cause either.. the more people hijack their software, the more the 'paying' user has to pay to make up for their revenue loss... sorry boy8cookie, this isn't an attack on you, just my thoughts on the subject..

My thoughts too.
I feel the least I can do by contributing, is to show my respect to the creators, plus to keep them motivated to go on developping.

[NetworkShadow]

Originally posted by eme:
yeah it should be half priced or something like it ala Candybar upgrade... like you said i'd still buy it if it would be full price, but i'll be bitching about it

I love to support good software, an upgrade fee isn't that bad as long as it's not too frequent or expensive... though I'm not complaining about free upgrades, Unsanity and Jason rock!

[FB Eye]

Yup, as a registered user, I wouldn't mind paying an upgrade fee for a major release. Like maybe every .0 releases...

But, it should definitely be half-price or something like that, sort of a thank you for being an early supporter/believer...

I clearly remember buying Audion at version 1.x and being charged full-price if I wanted to have the 2.0 version released a little while later. That made me sick, dropped Audion and Apple released iTunes a few days later. Thank you Apple!!!

Although I respect Panic and their products, they're not getting any money from me again

[NetworkShadow]

Originally posted by FB Eye:
Although I respect Panic and their products, they're not getting any money from me again

I hear ya, they also haven't done anything with the development of the app for years now. It's practically useless without AAC support now, and I really don't like their playlists setup.

[DaveV1.0]

Originally posted by Rosyna:
The answer to that would be a very loud "Hell no". We tried that in the past and then PayPal wouldn't release the money to us. They wanted us to fax many forms, we faxed them, then they asked for those same forms to be faxed again and seemed to not know we had been asked before to fax them. They wanted all kinds of proof of our identity, and they wouldn't let us close the account (and thus get the funds from it) because they locked our account.

Alternatively, we do accept checks and other forms of payment if need be.

Good answer lol I don't mind paying for upgrades at all even if it is full price so I guess ill have to find a way not to sure about sending a check as I'm in the UK and I've been burnt twice before with sending checks to the US.

[Link]

Originally posted by smeger:
Hype and Perception
The main reason I keep quiet about new ShapeShifter features is to keep people excited about the product. When you announce features for a product too far in advance of the release, what tends to happen is that people get very excited about those features, but after a few weeks, the features are old (even though they haven't yet been released!), and once the software is released, the final result is that people are like, "meh, that's it!?"

What hype? You killed off all your competitors by shoving the themekit package format down themers' throats.

I gave up on mac themes the day I couldn't open a theme without spending $20 or doing some voodoo on it. Sheesh.

*sigh* It's too bad the only alternatives are seen in the now dead theme changer program and duality - which was cool before gomac merged with that piece of crap called carpe starlem -- aka delay-the-****-out-of-everything company. *sigh*

Aqua's fine for now. The annoyance to top it off is that well -- that $20 is for a theme program, the themers don't get **** out of that and they're the ones that are selling the program in the first place. What a crappy deal.

[Sage]

So you're saying Smeger should never have made ShapeShifter in the first place? Try telling that to those of us who are happy to pay a measly $20 for the greatest themeing software ever developed for OS X. And yes, only $20 – I'm a high school student making $30 a week off of tutoring (while my friends make >$100 a week from retail jobs), so I'm not made of money, but this thing was worth every damn penny, and then some. If it's not worth $20 to you, then that's fine, but no need to treat Smeger like he's Satan himself for spending the time to make it.

Anyway, I do have one question – Is icon-changing anywhere in SS's near future? I don't want to pay for Candybar if SS will eventually support it anyway, but if not, then I'd gladly buy Candybar.

[MacMan4000]

Originally posted by Sage:
So you're saying Smeger should never have made ShapeShifter in the first place? Try telling that to those of us who are happy to pay a measly $20 for the greatest themeing software ever developed for OS X. And yes, only $20 – I'm a high school student making $30 a week off of tutoring (while my friends make >$100 a week from retail jobs), so I'm not made of money, but this thing was worth every damn penny, and then some. If it's not worth $20 to you, then that's fine, but no need to treat Smeger like he's Satan himself for spending the time to make it.

'nuff said

[SafariX]

Anyone wanna split the cost of Shapeshifter with me? PM me

[Holigen]

Originally posted by Sage:
So you're saying Smeger should never have made ShapeShifter in the first place? Try telling that to those of us who are happy to pay a measly $20 for the greatest themeing software ever developed for OS X. And yes, only $20 – I'm a high school student making $30 a week off of tutoring (while my friends make >$100 a week from retail jobs), so I'm not made of money, but this thing was worth every damn penny, and then some. If it's not worth $20 to you, then that's fine, but no need to treat Smeger like he's Satan himself for spending the time to make it.

Anyway, I do have one question – Is icon-changing anywhere in SS's near future? I don't want to pay for Candybar if SS will eventually support it anyway, but if not, then I'd gladly buy Candybar.

Hes too busy posting 3000 messages in a forum for a job man. Lay off him

[NetworkShadow]

Originally posted by Link:
What hype? You killed off all your competitors by shoving the themekit package format down themers' throats.

I gave up on mac themes the day I couldn't open a theme without spending $20 or doing some voodoo on it. Sheesh.

*sigh* It's too bad the only alternatives are seen in the now dead theme changer program and duality - which was cool before gomac merged with that piece of crap called carpe starlem -- aka delay-the-****-out-of-everything company. *sigh*

Aqua's fine for now. The annoyance to top it off is that well -- that $20 is for a theme program, the themers don't get **** out of that and they're the ones that are selling the program in the first place. What a crappy deal.

How sad for you...

*changes theme*

What Link doesn't seem to understand is that it was Panther that was killing off opensorce .dlta not ShapeShifter... Remember Panther almost broke themeing. Everyone was dyeing for something like ShapeShifter. It wasn't forced on anyone, it was welcomed. And why there's no competition beats me... Who knows what's taking Duality...? All that matters is that we have great safe theme changing software that is also quite reasonably priced (Look at the Windows theme changers prices) and continues to be updated for free.

[Holigen]

Originally posted by NetworkShadow:
How sad for you...

*changes theme*

What Link doesn't seem to understand is that it was Panther that was killing off opensorce .dlta not ShapeShifter... Remember Panther almost broke themeing. Everyone was dyeing for something like ShapeShifter. It wasn't forced on anyone, it was welcomed. And why there's no competition beats me... Who knows what's taking Duality...? All that matters is that we have great safe theme changing software that is also quite reasonably priced (Look at the Windows theme changers prices) and continues to be updated for free.

Bravo