CodeWeavers,

I was disappointed to learn that I will be charged for an upgrade from version 8.01 to 8.03 of crossover. If this had been a major new release, I could understand charging for an upgrade, but as far as I can tell the latest update is addressing compatibility and stability issues, not introducing new features. Charging for extending a license just to get minor updates is a bad business model. Before I become a very vocal and visible anti-crossover customer, I thought I would give you a chance to remedy the situation. Thanks in advance for giving me access to your product upgrade.

Adrian Hanft

Adrian,

Interesting e-mail. Its a bit early for threats, isn’t it? Before you chastise our business model, I’d ask if you know our business model? Here’s the deal. When you buy CrossOver, you are really purchasing support. With Pro and Games, you get 12 months of support. With Standard, you get six months of support. Support includes all software updates, software upgrades, and help desk support. When your time runs out, you have the option (YOUR OPTION) to renew your support. We don’t charge for any one particular update. We don’t charge for any one particular upgrade. We don’t charge for creating a help desk ticket. We package all of that into your support that expires on a specified date. When your support expires, you need to renew support regardless if the next update is major or minor. That’s our business model, and our customer tend to appreciate the way we do business.

So let me review your situation and clarify a couple of points…

1.) YOU NEVER PAID FOR CROSSOVER. You got a free subscription to CrossOver during our Lame Duck Challenge. You took advantage of our promotion, and you received one year of support. You upgraded your software accordingly from 7.2 to 8.0 so that you would have the ability to run on Snow Leopard. So to clarify, you haven’t paid for anything to date and gotten 15 months of joy from the software. And we fulfilled all our obligations as stated in this free promotion.

2.) HOW BAD OF BUSINESS CAN IT BE TO GIVE AWAY YOUR SOFTWARE? If you do decide to be very vocal and visible anti-CrossOver, I’d ask that you at least tell people that you got the software for free. That you received two minor updates and one major upgrade over the course of 15 months. Then, you threatened the company that gave you the free software and free support with bad PR when you were told it was time to pay for future support. After all, fair is fair.

3.) YOU KNEW THIS DAY WAS COMING. Everyone that took part in the Lame Duck Challenge received e-mail (most would say too much e-mail) with notices, special pricing, deal codes in regards to renewing their support. At some point (well before you tussle with Jack), you were notified that your support had expired or was about to expire. The timing of your support expiring had nothing to do with a minor upgrade to 8.0.3 and was going to happen at some point. It just so happens that your support expired on November 9, 2009.

4.) YOU NEED TO RENEW YOUR SUPPORT. The only way for you to acquire 8.0.3 (and the major 9.0 release) is to renew your support. Threatening me with being very vocal and visibly anti-CrossOver will do you no good. Actually, I find your comments to be quite incredulous considering you received the software and support for free (even more so when I go out to your website and see how you interact with your customers). Being that you have an illness that prevents you from being happy unless you are creating something, I hope that you can appreciate that for my developers to keep their hands busy and create new updates to our software they need to get paid. This is how our software improves which hopefully creates a better experience for our customers.

5.) STILL A CHANCE TO SAVE MONEY. If you wish to renew your support of CrossOver and support our business model, I’d ask you to use SPECIAL DEAL CODE: DEADDUCK this will save you 50 percent on your purchase of CrossOver Mac. That’s roughly the cost (actually a few pennies less) then what we ask people to pay to renew their annual support. For $35.00 (USD) per year or less then $3.00 (USD) per month or less the $.75 (USD) per week, you can continue to receive our software updates, software upgrades, and help desk support. And with CrossOver 9.0 scheduled to be released by March 1, 2010, you will receive one of the better software upgrades as part of this support (no additional costs to upgrade to a major release). Just enter the SPECIAL DEAL CODE in the Special Deal Box in the cart screen (has to be the cart screen) of the order process. You’ll see the discount applied before you complete your transaction.

That’s the best deal that I can provide to you. If you don’t like the deal or feel that we’re still being unreasonable, I guess I’ll read about it on your many blogs (I’d just ask for you to spell my name right… its R-A-M-E-Y (pronounced RAY-me, not RAM-ee). Thank you again for your e-mail and interesting comments. My very best regards to you (and your father and son both named Adrian).

James B. Ramey
Vice President, Sales
CodeWeavers
[edit: contact info removed]

Dear Mr. Ramee,

Thanks for the email and personal attention. My email wasn’t meant as a threat as much as an attempt to show you the mistake you were making. You may not be aware that happy customers spread the word about great products. Disappointed customers complain and promote alternatives. That’s why most companies actually care about customer satisfaction. Word of mouth has the power to sell (or slow the sale of) products.

When I first emailed you I was on the fence about CrossOver and looking for a reason to get behind it. That’s why I tried your software in the first place. And yes, I tried it for free thanks to your promotion. (Actually, a friend referred me to you because he was a impressed with the concept of CrossOver – an example of word of mouth marketing in action!) Had it not been free I wouldn’t have tried it at all. So since it was free, I tried your software. And honestly, it is okay. I use it occasionally when I need to test a website on IE and I don’t have access to a PC. If you guys work out the kinks I would probably pay for the next major release. If you can get IE8 to run I definitely will. However, I will NEVER pay for support. Most people, like me, expect software to work – without needing technical assistance. Call me crazy.

The really funny thing about your business model is that it is almost the opposite of the traditional “free trial” concept. Instead of offering an enticing sample for free that persuades potential customers to part with their money, you guys are just giving your goods away and charging people for support – banking on what I assume is your inside knowledge that most people won’t be able to get CrossOver working. Why would a company base their pricing on support as their main product? Could it be that the software is so buggy that there is more money in helping people get it working? That is the only logical conclusion I can come to.

You can run your business however you would like, but here is some free advice. I owe you after all, for the 15 months of support that I didn’t use…

1. Don’t pull the plug on legitimate customers and hold them hostage with something as minor as basic performance upgrade.

2. Dont’ charge for customer service. That’s really what your support package is (and your thorough review of my billing records will show that I used exactly zero of it!) If you are losing money because you are spending too much time helping your customers, then take the product offline and put it in beta.

3. Sell software. Your products are your most valuable product, so sell it! If people need support, sell that separately.

4. Make it easy to upgrade. The majority of your users are Mac users after all, and they are used to user-friendly software experiences.

5. And most importantly… Oops, your subscription just expired. If you would like more free advice you will have to pay me for it.

Sincerely,
Adrian3

P.S. You probably didn’t spend enough time on my website to realize that I am not selling anything there. I contribute freely to several open source projects. I alone handle all support issues for Font Burner, a free service that asks nothing in return of my users. I actually feel guilty when I am unable to serve people as well as I should – even though I owe them nothing. I would never insult my users with the type of email you sent me.

Adrian,

Sorry to lose you as a customer. Best wishes to you in all your endeavors. Thanks for the advice. My best regards.

James B. Ramey

There is one major flaw, however, that you may or may not be aware of. When you delete a song from iTunes it asks you if “you want to move the selected song to the Trash, or keep it in the iTunes Music folder?”

By default iTunes will keep the file and just delete it from iTunes memory. Unfortunately, this creates an orphaned file somewhere in your Music Folder. ITunes no longer knows that it exists and unless you have the patience to manually go through your folders these files are doing nothing but taking up space. Even if you are pretty careful about clicking “Move to Trash” every time you delete a music file there will inevitably be times when you accidently keep the files.

It is pretty easy to see how much space the orphaned iTunes files on your computer take up. At the bottom of your iTunes screen you should see a line saying something like “14118 items, 37.6 days, 66.88 GB.” Compare that last number to the size of the folder where iTunes saves your music. Unless you changed your settings that would be in user/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/. If the size of that folder is larger than what iTunes is telling you then you have some orphaned files.

In my case, my music folder was 3 gigabytes larger than my iTunes library so it was definitely worth it to recover the disk space. Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t have a built in way of fixing this problem. You could try moving your library then reimporting all the music. That will work, but you might lose your playlists and if you have a large library this will take a long time.

Luckily there is another solution. Doug’s Applescripts for iTunes is a great place to find scripts that extend the features of iTunes. The script that will help us consolidate our music library is called “List Music Folder Files Not Added v2.0.” Follow the instructions on Doug’s site to install the script. It will show up in the iTunes menu bar under the little script icon. Click on it to run the script and then follow the directions. If your library is pretty large it may take several minutes for the script to complete. When it is complete you will have a text file containing paths to all the orphaned file in your music folder.

Now that you have a list of orphaned files you can delete them. You can do that manually, but that could take a while. A better way to eliminate them is to add them all back into your library and the delete them. To do that, change the extension on the text document from “.txt” to “.m3u”. Next, double click on the file and it should open in iTunes and begin adding all the orphaned files to iTunes. Then all you have to do is go to “View” and click “View Options.” Make sure that “Date Added” is checked and click “ok.” This gives you an extra column with “Date Added” as the header. Click on this heading and your library will be listed with the most recent additions at the top. You should see all the orphaned files that you just re-added to your library. Now delete them and make extra sure that you click “Move to Trash.” Empty your trash and you are done.

I hope that helps you clear up some space on your computer. I am on a Mac, so if you are on a PC and find that this doesn’t work please add your advice to the comments. Good luck!

Part 1
My computer at work crashed and it took days of phone calls to Adobe support before they could remove Adobe Creative Suite 3 from my computer. I needed to remove it completely (more completely than there uninstallers will allow) and then reinstall it cleanly. CS3 was the only application that required reinstallation after my crash.

Part 2
After I reinstall at work my installation of CS3 stops working at home. It asked me to reactivate. I go through the reactivation process and it fails again. I call support. They provide me with a authorization code that I use in addition to my serial number and activation number. Finally I get CS3 working on my work computer and my home computer. Which brings us to today…

Part3
I needed to move CS3 from my home computer to my laptop. This should have been as simple as deactivating the software on my home computer and then installing and activating it on my laptop. Not quite. First, the deactivation process failed. They had me uninstall it completely from my home computer. It still won’t activate on my laptop, so next I had to go through the same hoops as before. I needed my serial number, my activation number, and a third number that they only give you over the phone that they call an activation number. Here is a screenshot of the absurdity:

I understand that piracy and theft are problems for Adobe and any software developer, but it shouldn’t be that hard for a legitimate paying customer to use what I am paying for. I am a saavy customer and calling support is always my last resort. I have had to call support to install the software. I have had to call support to uninstall the software. I have had to call support to reactivate the software. I have had to call support to deactivate the software. I have had to call support to activate the software. That is an unacceptable and it has turned me from an Adobe fan to an Adobe hater just waiting for any alternative to come around and make my live easier.

The worst part of the computer crash was that it really screwed up my Adobe products. Just when I thought I had recovered everything I opened up InDesign only to be greeted with a “Licensing for this product has catastrophically failed.” I love that “catastrophically” part. The other Adobe products just said “Failed” but InDesign has to be the drama queen. I figured that I could simply reinstall the Creative Suite and get back to work. I got the same error. After three calls to Adobe’s tech support I was able to clean all the licensing junk off my G5 so that I could get CS3 reinstalled. The support people were nice and spoke good English and they knew what they were doing. The problem is it never should have happened in the first place. Why was the licensing so deeply embedded in my machine that it couldn’t be easily removed or overwritten? The techs told me this happens all the time.

It seems that each year Adobe products get more and more overrated. Generally they are the best thing on the market, but I never get the warm fuzzy “the designer of this software really cares about making a beautiful application” feeling. Upgrades always seem so minor and unless you count acquiring Macromedia, there really hasn’t been a major innovation from the company in recent memory.

For anyone that doesn’t think that there is room for innovation in the Adobe product lineup I point you to a web editor called Coda. I have been using this beautiful application instead of Dreamweaver for about a month and I absolutely love it. If you try hard enough, you can do everything you need to in Dreamweaver, but in Coda things are where they need to be and everything makes sense. Read about it here and download a demo to try it for yourself. And at only $79 Coda makes the case for how inflated and overrated Dreamweaver at $400.

I guess it must be difficult for an innovative company like Adobe to maintain their edge. Rather than reinvent and improve their software there is a temptation to protect their lead. Instead of competing with their rivals, they absorb them. Rather than making their products more appealing they focus on making sure that everyone is paying full price. Why change a product when you can add a couple bells and whistles and promote it as a major upgrade. I am hoping for more applications like Coda that make it easier to not rely so heavily on Adobe.

For about a year the light would mock me. Just as I started to gain confidence that the engine wasn’t going to die and leave me stranded on the side of the road, the light found a new way to torment me. You can’t imagine my delight when one day I turn on the car and the light didn’t turn on! Could it be? Is the problem fixed? The light stayed off for about a day and then it came back on. I didn’t think there was anything more annoying than a check engine light that never turns off. I was wrong. Now every day when I start my car, there is a 50% chance the light will be on. It has become a kind of bizarre little game.

I suppose the worst part about that wicked little light is that it has a tendency to set the mood for my entire day. I drive about 25 minutes to work each morning, and staring at that little light for the entire drive has a tendency to put me in a bad mood. Isn’t it stupid how little things like that can affect our attitudes? It’s not like the engine is fixed one day, and broken the next. And yet I can’t help but be a little more cheerful on the days when I “win” the battle against that little light.

Surely I am not the only person that plays this kind of game with my car. From Herbie, to Knight Rider, our culture regularly assigns personalities to cars. I have very distinct memories of people in our neighborhood that I thought looked exactly like there cars. Tomorrow I am taking my family to see Cars at the theater and it should be fun to see the personalities that the different cars have. I wonder if there will be a pesky little Tercel that likes to play games with its check engine light…