Thank you @Jamespipe
I think your reply has provided me with possibly the most insight I have gathered of your company in one hit. It goes a long way to explaining the difficulties your development team face and with that, I hope you are able to continue to be as candid in the future. Much of my frustration comes from the seemingly lack of openness regarding the software and it’s refreshing to learn what’s going on behind the scenes.
It is reassuring to know that indeed the software is being tested extensively, although disappointing to learn that the people struggling with the beta version opted out, rather than provided feedback. Probably would have saved a whole deal of grief for both DD and the consumer. That said, V4 came out several months ago, and although you appeared to be on the way to improving on the performance side of things, something recently broke again which has grounded a number of people. Why not roll back a version or two to where we knew it was reliable?
I don’t accept that you aren’t able to provide a legacy version and maintain that you are wrong for not doing so. Especially if you are to continue releasing unproven and unreliable versions of the app at the rate you are, I am using older equipment, as well as many others out there. Time has stood still for our hardware so to speak. I can’t remember the last firmware update for my drone and some only use their devices to fly with, again, leaving them in a frozen state of no-updates - me included. My setup was working perfectly well before V4 came out, and I haven’t heard of a single person that hasn’t been adversely affected by its release, whether it be overheating, lag, failing to take off, or simply losing 30% of their device’s battery capacity. I was using an IPad Pro spec’d by your staff, only to be told it was no longer any good just one year later. If people are using older kit and firmware, setups they know that work, why not allow them to continue using that stable version on the version they can rely upon? There is no conflicts or incompatibilities. Allow the consumer to choose what they feel comfortable operating their drone with. Plenty of companies operate this way. Why not DD?
Furthermore, I don’t think it is appropriate to update users with app versions that are clearly not fit for purpose. It’s one thing updating to change the interface etc., but I can’t understand how it can be considered acceptable to update our app, rendering it useless. I refer to it as our app, since we have bought the rights to use it. Are we to expect a rebate for the down time we’ve had to endure? You’ve effectively taken the subscription, and then albeit unintentionally of course, have removed our ability to use it. Personally I’d rather pay more for being left alone and not interfered with, if it’s the only way I can be guaranteed to be able to fly when out in the field, but if things go wrong, why not remedy the problem? Why continue to have us grinning and bearing the unstable app for the best part of 9 months? Again, why not just roll back temporarily? It would make so much more sense. No?
Again, thank you for your explanation above and I look forward to receiving many more honest and open views in the future.
James.