When you say misleading, exactly to what are you referring? I would not feel mislead unless the software was offered for sale with a feature that simply doesn’t exist. Even though I have a fast computer I recently uninstalled ON1 2019 because it ran so slowly as to not be usable on three different newer machines. Other people claim to have no issues with performance and speak of how fast it is. I will periodically reinstall it to see if there are updates that have improved the performance on my machines. I frankly didn’t care for it that much anyway and probably won’t upgrade to the 2020 version when its released, but I certainly would not expect possible performance improvements to the 2020 version to be retrofitted to the 2019 version.
I can say with complete confidence that ALL software is buggy. It comes down to which bugs you can live with and which you can’t. My tolerance for bugs may be quite different from yours
Mark
Misleading means it is sold and does not perform as advertised. If, using your experience, software cannot run on my machine and I am in spec then it has been mis-sold to me, even if unintentionally. At the very least a 100% refund should be the option - which to be fair Skylum have always done. Yes it does come down to what one is prepared too live with but as I said a bug is a bug and should be fixed - I do to care that another person may be able to live with it if I can’t.
Your choice then is simple, get a refund and/or don’t use that vendor’s software any more if you are unhappy with their product. But, expecting vendors to fix bugs in previous versions of their software is just unrealistic.
Mark
me too and englisch isn’t my native language, and this entry device hasn’t a englisch module to autocorrect.
So no worry’s i do the same.
yes and that’s lame to 
( by the way big defects got callbacks because of the fear of lawsuites not out of kindness to the customer…)
About total stop of update of the former version when the new is released.
let’s assume you buy a new body at may 2018, they don’t support it yet and you wait for the update to process your new raw files wile using DNG converter, and instead you get the module in august you get a offer to upgrade to v2.1 which allows you to use raws of your new camera. It’s not the upgrade new features it’s the fact you need upgrade in order to work your new rawfiles.
And i am not convinced that the rawfile converter is wrote completly from scratch every new version so the module is most likely backwards compatible. So a 6 month overlap isn’t a buckload of extra work imo. Just a way to push gently to the new version.
Then maybe software houses need to be tested in court. And certainly if you are saying this is how DxO will behave then I am finished with them. It matters not incidentally why a car manufacturer fixes issues so long as it does it. Being aware of legal responsibilities is no bad thing - so it is not lame and to suggest it is says a lot. I have a new car, it has no identifiable bugs so I am happy.
This conversation is going off on a tangent. We were discussing why it is totally impractical and unrealistic to expect vendors to update previous versions of their software with bug fixes and new camera and lens profiles. If they actually spent their time doing that would you be annoyed when it significantly impacted enhancements to the current version?
How big do you think DXO’s development team actually is? If I had to guess, based on my 35 years as a software developer, I would estimate that the entire team covering both the Windows and Mac platforms is no more than 5 to 8 developers and testers and I’m leaning closer to the lower end of that range.
i am a service engineer and modifications made by the manufactorer are availbe for us to place when we have problems that fix the trouble /error we encounter. only at rare ocations we got the call to mandatory place a modification. We encounter problems we report and if more do the factory is thinking out a solution. which we get later to resolve issues in the field.
I don’t apply all technical reports / modifications on all machines only the one’s who got problems which i need to fix out of contract oblication.Edit: and yes modifications are build in in the new manufactored machines in factory so we can see in serial number which state it is in the field. So we fix backwards so to speak…
).
Cars can have live treathing issues and those are called back for repair if they think its a factory fault. Software doesn’t.
It’s not a big issue more a itch. that they stop immidiate with updates after release of new version.
I really do not care how big the dev team is, they have a responsibility. If they cannot live up to that then they should sell with a health warning and an option for a full refund if the software does not work as advertised. The only practicalities here seem to revolve around some people wanting other people’s money irrespective of the quality of the finished product. And there is absolutely nothing that will convince me otherwise. Given your background I would suggest your views are somewhat biased. I have no more to say and I stand by what I have said.
No but software has a usability requirement and given the different types of software and the deployment thereof bugs could give rise to significant operational risks to the user.
Of course my views are biased. This is a field in which I have expertise as a software designer and software support manager.
With regard to the content of your current post, I’m a bit confused by the harshness of your wording since I have no significant issues with Photolab other than the lack of meaningful new features in the most recent upgrade. Any issues I’ve come across in the year I’ve been using it are minor compared to all its positive attributes. Clearly you and I are viewing things so very differently that it almost seems like we’re talking about a completely different software package.
Mark
We are not talking about DxO specifically - I just said if that is their business model then they are not for me. I do not have any specific issues with the software myself. What we were talking about I thought was the software industry in general, a subject that arose on the back of the debate about whether lens updates should be added to past releases (I agreed they should not but questioned how punters know when a release is passing to legacy).
And of course my views are entrenched as I am a consumer who (along with others) pays the devs wages 
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Yes but it seemed that your frustration was, at least in part, aimed at DXO. My comments on the subject of supporting previous versions of software were general and based on my experience in the field, which I why I was earlier trying to explain in a couple of my posts the specific tasks and effort required, and the general impracticality of supporting software that is no longer current.
Keep in mind that when I purchase software I am also a consumer spending my hard earned money, no different than you except perhaps for my understanding of the effort require to implement even small updates into production.
Then you have read my position wrong and I am sorry about that. My position with DxO is neutral, completely neutral at this time. I bought into PL and indeed Nik as I have used Nik as a Lr plugin for years and the DxO progression into PL looked/looks promising. Version 2 as you say did not add a lot but I still have hopes for the future. PL is not however my go to app, that is still Lr with Nik as a plugin. I do use PL from time to time for fun and in an endeavour to learn its ways but at the moment I do not find it or its interface intuitive. If that does not change or a monumental event that unlocks the secrets of the software for me does not come about I will just walk away. That will not be because of bugs, perceived or otherwise, it will purely based on my hands on experience. I do however think the devs are trying to communicate and be constructive. That I find refreshing and helpful and I guess V3 and the updates between now and then will be crucial.
I most certainly have taken into account that you are a consumer of the software. However, you have said you are buying on the back of an understanding how the industry elects to work and treat its customers. You are therefore in a completely different position to the ‘average joe’ who works outside software development. As I said, if the industry disclosed its methodology then it would be for the best. That would put us ordinary consumers in much the same place as you.
To conclude - I have no specific issues with DxO. I do have issues with the software industry generally in the way it handles marketing, post sale bugs and the way it moves software from current to legacy without any forewarning.
I never said anything about how an industrial elects to work. It’s how businesses must work if they want to stay in business and be able to charge their customers a reasonable amount for their software. Increasing the resources needed to support prior versions of software will increase the development costs to the vendor which will in the end be passed on to you and me, the consumer. There is no consumer software developed anywhere by anyone with the idea that the versions released to the public will be 100% bug free. To do that would be so expensive, and take so long, that the cost to the consumer could double, triple, or quadruple over the current prices. Software design and implementation requires a number of trade-offs. That is the reality, like it or not.
Yes, no one advertises bug free software or products. Each product on the market has its lifecycle, where bugs are only adressed during that lifecycle or even shorter during a very limitted guaranty period. Afterwards the sold product instance is dead and not of interest. Sometimes bugs are even not adressed on new products in the middle of their life cycle, if only a small amount of people are affected. The only exception is where lifes or health are in danger. As long as it is not the case it is cheaper to pay of people after being successfully sued, than solve the bug in general for all. That is reality.
I am in the middle of this discusion as a consumer.
If i buy a appliance it has a (economic) lifetime lets assume 5 years and a factory warranties of 1 year.
But after the first year the manufacturer has a legal obligation to support when the product fails to do work according to reasonable expectation. This can be discount for repair, or swopping product if it is a defect caused by development.
This is not effected by a new updated product of the same kind.
Software isn’t a physical product so it’s is only broken when there is a flaw build in or by external things like changes of OS specs.
And if i pay 200 plus euro’s i expect it to work according to the advertised statements for at least 5 years. (economic lifetime) The fact the renewing cycle of the software is brought back to 1 year doesn’t matter in my eye’s. So from this point of view the companies have the obligation to support until the economic lifetime is past. (if my computer got infected true a older software because they know about that backdoor and didn’t do anything to fix that it’s by law there responsibility with in economical lifetime as guide line.)
Software isn’t 5 years but 2 to 3 years should be reasonable as support time.
So in that point of view it is rather strange that update after 1 year or shorter if you bought closer to the upgrade release all repairing support is stopped. And if money is a issue then it 's brought on the consumer which paid on the wrong time.(they pay much more for less product because the use is less before frozen application.
I earlier spoke about a stepped upgrade price which is divided in 12 months, so the shorter you got the software the less you pay for the upgrade. (after 1 year you in the normal loop as fixed upgrade price.)
So i am confident that if you let people use camera updating for 1 year after new version on former version they still go for a upgrade later. after 2 years or maybe on a good offer. And force them to use a other application to develop there rawfiles is a opening a door to the competition and you lose there support as a customer.
My two cents.
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Which means that is the model the businesses have chosen/elected to work to and it is wrong, or it is unless customers are made aware of it and the potential downsides. What can possibly be wrong with full disclosure?
I honestly don’t want to get into a discussion of the moral or legal obligations of companies towards their customers. And my points on fixing bugs had nothing to do with catastrophic errors that rendered software unusable. I was trying to describe why software vendors do not as a general rule apply bug fixes, or functional updates like new camera profiles, to previous versions of their software.
Recently an inconsistency was discovered in PhotoLab local adjustments where after local adjustments are applied, if the image is then rotated the local adjustment masks shift from their original relative position. Since this is an unexpected phenomenon and is unlikely to have been a planned feature, it can be categorized as a bug. Many, if not most people would never have noticed it. Certainly I would not have. I don’t rotate images often and when I do I would most likely have rotated the image prior to applying any local adjustments, assuming they were even necessary. And a work around to this phenomenon is easy to do.
I don’t know the status of this anomaly. I’m not sure whether it was fixed in PL2, or even on their list of bugs to be addressed. I can say with a high level of confidence that any resolution to this bug in the current version of Photolab will not be retrofitted to the previous version for all the reasons I’ve indicated in my previous posts.
PL1 users who have no intention of upgrading, and are impacted by that bug, might be upset by a decision not to retrofit a fix, but, they still have some choices. They could try to resolve the issue to their satisfaction by employing several approaches. They could ask for a refund. They could pay for an upgrade, or ask for a free upgrade. They could even attempt to seek legal remedies. They could also decide to take their business elsewhere. Or they could decide to live with the anomaly. But regardless of whether some customers are annoyed or inconvenienced by this particular bug, it is highly unlikely any corrective update will be applied to an earlier version of the software.
All of us have run into these frustrating situations at one time or another where the only solution to getting some software issue resolved is to pay for an upgrade. It can be very infuriating but it is the reality, and expecting older software to be retrofitted with updates is an extremely unlikely scenario.
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Oh wow what a huge talk after my simple question 
Well as someone said we are not living in a perfect world yet but it is up to us to build it.
How many people are forced to update a software, sometime the operating system, sometime even the computer, just because a new camera is supported only by the latest release ?
If there is a simple mechanism to give an old software a new camera support, I am okay if those persons can benefit for it freely while I pay and update my software to keep up to date with all new features -that I might not even use-.
Flickr paid users are sponsoring free users.
ProtonMail paid users are sponsoring free users.
…
Why would that not be possible for the support of new cameras in previous software version ?
That was my thought.