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Comments
In System Preferences of iCloud is possible to see what apps are using iCloud space, Wotja 22 is not listed among them in the Mac. Indeed, there is no a directory called Wotja 22 in my iCloud files.
Now, looking into the iPad system preferences, even when I deactivated the iCloud storage and chose local storage, Wotja 22 is marked as using iCloud storage.
I have uninstalled Wotja 22 Pro on the iPad, and installed again, choosing iCloud. The same window appears, saying that there is no storage. I only have 300 MBs left on my iCloud, this is why I chose the local storage.
The crazy thing is that the same thing can't be done on the Mac, without deactivating the entire iCloud. Thing that I don't plan to do, because I use iCloud exclusively to sync my iA Writer documents.
And every program that I use in my Mac with the possibility of using iCloud storage, it has an option in its configuration menu for deactivating this.
At least, now I know the origin of the window.
Whilst I fully understand the complexity of the task. I think you would have been better to take a leaf out of the Loopy Pro development process and not promise the earth on day one. Show the road map and release new features 'little and often' after your beta group have tested said new features. That way, your customers can crack on with what features are available until the new ones come to fruition.
Right now you're approaching the 3rd month of a 12-month subscription and it's been hard to work with Wotja with the advertised features. The complexity of the task shouldn't be a concern for your customers. Only promise what you can deliver, lower the level of hyperbole, and be prepared to offer some form of compensation rather than empty platitudes if the situation continues.
@impete I'm with @jonmoore with this. Wotja is very complex with lots of features that are depending on each other. Bug fixing one can bug an other. At this moment I'm having the feeling that I'm a member of a beta test group, but in this case a paying beta member. This way Wotja will lose support/faith of the community.
I understand that you are a very small company. You have my sympathy, but be realistic about what you promise.
Yeah, there is always a problem I guess in that we continue to reach for the stars, but that can lead to sometimes falling a bit short. But we keep on working to improve things!
I can't under-state how much of an effort Wotja 22 has been for us. Still, I feel it has been worth the effort.
Onwards and upwards,
Best wishes, Pete
Honestly, I think that making of Wotja an AUv3/VST3 host was unnecessary and a total waste of resources. Specially, seeing the implementation. Most of my VST3 plugins aren't accepted by this thing. And I'm fine with this. If I want external sounds, I can route the MIDI to my DAW. And if you're an advanced user who is able to read the manual to understand its not so obvious interface, you sure know how to do the routing. This is the ironic part, it's a feature that their intended users will never use.
Also, I'm not very happy with having purchased this this year, instead of waiting other year until the Mac part was more polished, due to the ambition and scope of this year's development cycle.
But let's not get crazy. This is a situation of me, switching recently from iOS to Mac as my main device. Plugins in the desktop world aren't cheap, so I need to carefully plan my budget, until I'm able to have a bare minimum of essential tools. Spending this month 100 euros in Eventide Blackhole still hurts.
But regarding the iOS part, Wotja 22 Pro is an impressive app. I haven't had a single problem with its iPad version. And it very well deserves every buck that the developer is asking for it.
I only hope that he is able to find the strength to cope with the stress of this development cycle. In which he/they clearly underestimated the workload of having this amount of new features in an increasing number of platforms.
An interesting point!
We've been doing this for 30+ years now, and have had to adapt many times to changing platforms and the needs and interests of our customers.
Our challenge is that our customers want to use Wotja in different variants, depending on their own personal workflow: desktop apps, desktop plug-ins, mobile apps and mobile plug-ins.
Our desktop users are split between macOS and Windows (and we have customers of course for both iOS and Android).
When using plug-ins (especially on Windows!), everybody has a favourite DAW - there are at least 10 mainstream ones on Windows, and they all work differently!
If we were just developing (say) an iOS app, that'd be easy.
But, we have deliberately chosen over the years to try to support as many potential customers as possible, That way, they're not locked-in to any particular hardware or software platform, or way of working (hence: apps and plug-ins) and hopefully can be customers (and friends!) for many years. So, we have always taken a very long-term view.
You might find the diagram at the top of this page ("Evolution of our 'Generative Music Sytem'") interesting:
https://intermorphic.com/company/#history
Best wishes, Pete
Perhaps annual purchasers who feel they aren’t getting their subscription’s worth should just switch to a monthly charge. I think of it as buying either Pete or Tim a cup of coffee each month ( and not even a fancy latte either .. ). Then time limits aren’t a factor and you can just go with the flow of WJ as you choose. To me each update feels like a little ‘gift’ for the small monthly payment.
BTW I think the incorporation of AU plug-ins is a huge leap forward for WJ!!
Thank you
Pete
+1 for the benefit of adding AUv3 hosting. I have a short video of a tiger pacing in a cage with some fragmented graphics added. Needed some audio to go with it that kinda fit. Was able to just call up a template, add an AU instrument and a couple of AU fx. Then tweak the template parameters a bit to make it a little more “mine”. Hit record and I’m done. I didn’t have to spend time sending the midi to another host, get the connections right, etc.
I was able to make myself an acceptable short soundtrack in just a few minutes without any hassles at all: https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemia-video-62063393
Nice!
I think I'm just one of those that believe's that the world of perpetual beta software lifecycles is failing customers. And it's creeping into hardware too, where customers have to wait for 2 or 3 firmware revisions before things function as advertised. You wouldn't be happy if the engineering in your washing machine meant that it didn't function as advertised for the first three months of ownership so why should we put up with it in software.
One of the reasons Ableton gets my loyalty (and hard-earned), is that the product roadmap isn't governed by the calendar. There's no annual release schedule and new version releases only happen when the beta team are happy that all the major new stuff works as advertised. I great example of the Ableton way has been the way they managed the public release of native Apple Silicon support. It's was in private beta for roughly 12 months and public beta for approximately 6 months. They resisted the commercial pressures of releasing v11 with work in progress M1 support, and made sure things were fully formed before releasing v11.1. Working this way also meant that the developers of M4L addons had a chance to get their ship in order by the time of the v11.1 public release.
I test certain beta software applications but I volunteer to do so. I don't however appreciate getting beta releases as a paying customer. I don't think that makes me an unreasonable customer. I expect to get what I paid for, it's as simple as that. Much of it comes down to perception. I far rather purchase something with less expansive promises, that works as it should, than purchase a piece of software engineering that overpromises and under-delivers. When it comes to point releases these should have a good balance of new features as well as bug fixes. That's a very good indicator of a vendor with solid project management and quality assurance processes in place. Innovation is worthless if it doesn't work as intended.
We do appreciate your feedback, and being compared to Ableton, and do take it on board. But, it is also worth noting that Ableton have between 400-600 employees worldwide (I cannot really tell) and all no doubt earning decent wage from their employment, with a turnover of $60 million and software that costs £600.
We do understand that, but you also have to factor in how complex the app is, how unique it is, how much it is, how well resourced the developer is, how much they actually care about it etc. etc. and whether you want to see the app grow or die - and a lot of apps do die and content gets orphaned.
I can assure you that Pete and I work very, very, very hard at what we do and we do our absolute best to make it as good as possible. We have made a lot of friends along the way and without the love and encouragement we get from our customers (paying or not) it simply would not be where it is today.
So, I again thank you for your feedback and thank you for the time taken to provide it .
We look forward to continuing to work hard to update Wotja, and to improving it and extending it.
Best wishes
Tim
@impete @imtim
Yet again you completely missed the point I was making. I wasn't comparing you to Ableton but made a parallel to the way they launched Apple Silicon compatibility.
The vast majority of app developers within the audio production space are individuals or very small companies. Being small doesn't somehow give license to product development processes where the customer is treated like a paid beta tester.
The core point I was making was to promise less and deliver on what you promise. This doesn't mean that a company ends up being any less innovative, but it helps create an environment where new features are introduced in a more robust manner throughout the year.
@jonmoore Now you overreact, you already made your point. What's your goal? You want a refund? Looks like that. Please @impete and/or @imtim , give him a refund so we can go on.
Wotja is a great piece of software and a wonderful tool for generating music. The price is absolutly worth it. Thanks for the support.
I had put it to bed. The reason for my post today was @imtim’s post, which made out I was being unreasonable comparing their two-man operation to Ableton.
I’m not looking for a refund. I’m hoping that @impete and @imtim learn their lesson and not release seriously buggy software in future.
The headline feature of Wotja 22 was AUv3/VST3 hosting and it plainly hadn’t been robustly tested by a wide enough group of testers pre-launch.
To be totally frank, I’m annoyed that I’ve had to hammer my point home. If @impete and @imtim had simply said, ‘yes, we dropped the ball’, there would have been no need to carry on the conversation. But the constant need to frame the issue around the size of their company has grated, to say the least. As you know, the majority of iOS audio apps are created by individuals or very small companies and in most cases, customers get robust products.
Hi Pierre, thank you so much for your understanding and support - we really appreciate that.
You have made the same point several times now and, really, you do not need to make it again. As I said, we appreciate your feedback, understand it and take it on board.
I am not sure, however, that you have taken on board what I wrote above and that gives some context to our situation, but I see no need to repeat it or rephrase it - we have other work to do.
Wotja is a "generative music system" and as such has a high order of complexity under the hood in respect of engine inter-relationships etc. There are a raft of things we want to do, but in the cold light of day (and trial) some are simply too hard to implement or feasible for us to do in the time available.
As a general principle we never pre-announce any feature simply because as a 2-man team we never know we can do it UNTIL we have done it - that is why do not publish a road map. Before we do finally release a new feature it will always have undergone a lot of prior testing by us, and we also take input from our beta testers (and our evergreen big thanks to them!).
The work to support AUv3/VST3 Plug-in Hosting (and VST Plug-ins for Windows) was an enormous undertaking for us, and we have worked tirelessly to address some issues that surfaced after launch - as well as adding improvements to our implementation. As of 22.1.3 (now available in both Apple and Microsoft stores) we believe most everything (of major importance) has now been addressed . That means we can finally start to turn our attention back again onto other things (when we get our breath back, as we have really burnt the candle down on this one).
By the way, the paid-for variant is not a Subscription service. Once you purchase it (one off payment for a Major Version, updates to it and support on it during the relevant year) you can use it for as long as you want - and that could be for a good many years.
As it would appear you are unhappy with Wotja (but I may be wrong) then you have two options. 1) If you have a Subscription to it, please simply cancel your Subscription - it is easy as that! 2) If you have the paid-for version then you may still be able to get a refund, but you would need to get that from the store where you bought it (e.g. Apple) and we have no control over that process.
Best wishes
Tim
@jonmoore I had not seen your further reply when I wrote mine. So, let's just move on from this then... and I hope you enjoy Wotja as it moves forwards. Atb, Tim
Yet again Tim you've failed to read my previous comments before unloading your wrath on me. I said earlier that the yearly fee is effectively a subscription if you want to stay with the latest version of Wotja - which by the way I've purchased for many, many years (just because I haven't had a dialogue with you before don't presume to know my customer history, which BTW, goes all the way back to Noatikl). One thing's for sure, this is the last year I will purchase Wotja. Which is a pity, because other than the annual bug-fest that happens post initial launch, I really like the product. My primary reason for that last statement, just in case there's any confusion is this - any company that continually frames quality assurance around their own situation, rather than customer satisfaction says a lot about their prevailing attitudes.
Don't worry I won't feedback any further, more than enough has been said already.
@imtim Great reply! I appreciate the hard work you do for maintaining Wotja. Hope more people will going to buy it, it's such a great, underrated piece of software. Fixing bugs within a few days, that's not what every software builder can say.....
Many thanks again Pierre!
No matter what anyone might think, the niche app developer's life is a hard one, make no mistake...
As we always try to give our best, Pete and I really do appreciate your understanding, love and support ... and the kind words from you and others mean more to us than you will ever know.
Best
Tim
I find it a shame that, as a music player, Wotja is completely unusable at the moment. The problem with the wrongly assigned voices in the templates that happened in the recent update just makes it sound horrible. I used to enjoy just generating a random mix and listening for hours. That isn’t possible with the clanging pianos where nice synth basses used to be.
It seems to me that anyone coming to Wotja for the first time, and downloading the current version, might just be put off forever, thinking it sounds like an orchestra tuning up.
I hope the next update comes soon, although who knows what new bugs that will bring. Wouldn’t it make sense to make the previous version available again until the current one is working? My version updated automatically without me even making the choice.
As far as we are aware, that issue was introduced in 22.1.2 (7th Feb, sorry
) and fixed in 22.1.3 (9th Feb) which is now available. If you are still finding the issue in 22.1.3 could you please let us know! Many thanks....
Brilliant! My app didn’t automatically update this time (I actually had to delete and reinstall to get it to update. Not sure why.) But it seems to be working perfectly again. Thanks for the fix! 🙏
Phew, and thanks for confirming!!
If we become aware of issues like this, we try to fix them as close to immediately as possible!
Pete
🙏🙏🙏
As a software developer, I sympathise with both sides of this discussion.
My experience with Wotja dates back to the Koan days, but there was a few years' gap in the middle... Personally I still have Wotja Pro 21 installed, and I appreciate that it's essentially frozen in time so there's no new surprises (or features) going to appear. I paid for and use Wotja Pro 22, but as @jonmoore points out it's had a bit of a rocky start.
I enjoy and use 22, but will keep 21 around for a while longer (maybe till 23 is released) so I know I can play things I've created in the past. If 22 stops having breaking changes, then I might delete 21 - but to be honest it doesn't take a lot of space so I'll probably keep it for a few months after I stop using it.
New users: if 22 was your first paying experience with Wotja, then it's worth pointing out that in my experience the problems so far are unusual. Generally speaking the program has been pretty solid as it transitions over years. Almost certainly this time is because of the number of new features that've landed, and maybe updates could've been released in smaller chunks over longer periods.
That said, any developer knows that whatever decision you make with respect to what goes into this release and what doesn't will have pros and cons, and sometimes you get it perfectly right and other times... you don't. Either way, life goes on and you get to make exactly the same decision just a few days later with the next release.
What is the best way to control when a generator starts? Say you are using a few Ambient generators, each playing a single note, one is 6 seconds long, one is 9 seconds long etc (mimicking tape loops). How can you offset the start points? Is the best way to set up a mix with silent cells of different lengths at the beginning? (Can that even be done?) Or do you just have to start them all together and wait til they go out of sync?
Hi! There is no way, at present anyhow, to set an "Intro Delay" for a generator. Whether that will one day happen or not I cannot say at this moment.
However, there are two approaches for now that come to mind (there may well probably others, too):
1) Your suggested strategy of using Cell sequencing is one. To do that, for the first (empty) Cell, just set the Cell Repeats value to the number of bars that you want for the "intro delay". See: https://intermorphic.com/wotja/22/guide/#mix-music-properties-cell-general-repeats
2) The other, which is a bit more complicated, is to use a Pattern and a Sequence Chain. The first pattern you set to have the "intro delay" you want (e.g. -480 below), and then the follow on items are used to generate the notes as you want. You main find that R patterns (durations, but no pitches) are what you want to use. You can manually edit these strings to use whatever values you want.
e.g.
<100 R -480>
<100 R 240 -240 960 -240>
<100 R 480 -240 480 -240>
See: https://intermorphic.com/wotja/22/engine/music/#wme-generator-sequence-chain-syntax
Yes, you can do either, see above.
Note: Ambient generators use the Phrasing parameters (https://intermorphic.com/wotja/22/engine/music/#wme-generator-phrasing) which, depending on how those are configured, can mean a note is NOT generated at the start as it is on a rest. Try setting the Note Rest % to 0 and Phrase Gaps/Range to zero.
hth!
tim
Thanks for such a detailed reply! The idea of using a Pattern and Sequence chain sounds great, and is one I hadn’t thought of. I will definitely try that one too!
Thanks again.