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Anyone else upset with this release?


Jig

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I want to open this by stating that I have no interest in pursuing legal action, and I would hope that you all feel the same. Symless has offered refunds and I'm sure they are just as upset with our dissatisfaction as we are ourselves. They have shown over time that they have nothing but good intentions. I'm including this preface because the tone of what's written below may suggest otherwise, and other users have used the word "fraud". I do not feel like Symless owes me anything other than an acknowledgement of the situation, and a public apology for the customers who feel like they have been slighted by this release. I look forward to the release of 2.1, and I plan on switching to it once available. I've been using Synergy for a long time, and the company has shown great faith with their continued support and development; although I am unhappy with this release, I ultimately am a happy customer. On to the substance:

Synergy 2.0 is not feature-complete, nor is it stable. They did not market 2.0 as being feature complete, and I see now that I purchased my upgrade to Synergy 2 AFTER they had listed the upcoming features for 2.1 (source), so I only have myself to blame for purchasing the upgrade and expecting some of the features which are listed at that link. However, 2.0 was marketed as being stable, and we all see that it is anything but stable on Unix-like systems, to the point where it is almost unusable. If you need to spend 5 minutes fiddling every time you switch clients/servers, you are losing some of the productivity gained by using Synergy.

It seems as if 2.0 was released as stable in an attempt to bring in revenue to keep Symless running. I have no source to warrant such a claim, so please do not believe that this is the case until we have received a response from the team. If this is the case, I would have strongly preferred transparency on this matter. Perhaps they should have continued the early access project and continued selling access to that, rather than selling the current 2.0 as stable. Others have noted that they feel as if fraud had been committed, because they were under the impression that this was a stable release. Of course, not all bugs can be found without releasing it to a larger userbase, so some bugs on a stable release are acceptable and expected. However, it seems that Symless released 2.0 knowing that a subset of beta testers believed this to not be ready for release. This can be seen by looking at the first few pages of the early access forum and it is even confirmed by the team in their message to the beta testers upon 2.0's release:

Quote

There is, of course, a minority of users who believe that Synergy 2.0 is not finished. If you are part of this minority, then you need to wait for Synergy 2.1. For 2.1, we're planning to add a settings screen, offline activation, advanced settings, less reliance on the cloud, and various other features to cover edge-cases. So, in other words, 2.0 is for the vast majority who want an easy configuration experience, and 2.1 will be for the minority of users who want to get under the hood and tweak settings.

It seems clear from this quote that they intend on widening their audience by prioritizing user-friendly features (which I think is a great idea for the company itself and for improvement of the product). If that is the case, then releasing 2.0 with that feature-set is understandable, as it targets the majority of their intended audience. I just wish I knew this information prior to upgrading my license. I felt very slighted when I found the above quote after realizing my dissatisfaction with the product I had purchased. This quote should have been included in all of the promotional emails for the release.

I don't want a refund; I fully intend on using 2.1 upon release, and I would like my upgrade purchase to contribute toward bringing that release to realization. All I want is for Symless to acknowledge this situation on their site and in the forums. They owe such transparency to the current and potential customers.

Nick and Co: I hope I am not being too disrespectful with this post; my intention with this is to bring light to the situation and get everyone on the same page. The self-support forum is filled with threads which could have been answered by the above information, and I think an official post on the situation would resolve much of the dissatisfaction.

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Great post. I wish more people were capable of expressing their frustration in such a constructive manner. The points here are well taken and, at least in this moderator's opinion, accurate. That said, the point could be made that "stable" is merely an alternative to "development" (as in, we have a much higher expectation of failure in the latter case). Given the feature set proposed for 2.0 -- auto-configuration and the lack of dials to twiddle being the big points -- it's reasonably "stable". Perfect? No. Ready for wide-scale deployment? Probably not. Finished product? Um.... no. But stable enough for small deployment if you're willing to tolerate the inevitable inconveniences and bumps inherent in a ground-up rewrite of a very successful product? I do think so. 

There's a lot of room for improvement in 2.0, and like you, I'm looking to Symless to incorporate those improvements and a lot more in 2.1. But I'm using 2.0 every day, and I'm noting improvements with each incremental release of that branch.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Synergy Team
On 02/01/2018 at 12:19 AM, Jig said:

you are aware of the situation and are working to get them a superior product

We are. Why do you think we're not working to get them a superior product?

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20 hours ago, Nick Bolton said:

We are. Why do you think we're not working to get them a superior product?

You must not have given my original post a proper read; I made it clear that you are working to improve it. I even included a quote where you said so. I'm not trying to attack you dude...

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  • Synergy Team
On 02/01/2018 at 12:19 AM, Jig said:

I want you to make a public statement acknowledging

Don't you think this is a bit sharp?

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On 1/1/2018 at 6:19 PM, Jig said:

Did you read what I wrote?!? I want you to make a public statement acknowledging the situation to reassure your customers that you are aware of the situation and are working to get them a superior product. jml's post was in line with this, but your post is flat-out disrespectful. So was moving this to the private off-topic forum which can't be visited by users who aren't signed in. Totally inappropriate. This is absolutely on-topic and it belongs in the self-support forum, for concerned users to read. You're shooting yourself in the foot here. I guess that doesn't matter since nobody will see it.

This forum and the self support forum are still filled with posts that could be resolved with a simple email to your customers. The latter has daily posts regarding their dissatisfaction. Don't you care about us and our opinions of the company? I know you have our best-interest in mind, but many of your customers do not.

I agree with aspects of both @Nick Bolton's and your approach.

However, I do have one thing to add on.

@Nick Bolton, perhaps it would be good to publicize the off-topic forum for the purposes of his post and others being seen?

@Jig The point of the self-support forum is for requests pertaining to self-support (as in "this isn't working, why?"), not complaints about the software, hence why it was moved here. Obviously, we cannot stop all of them, but that's not an excuse to not try catching what we can and moving it to a location appropriate to the category of the content in the post. That's about as stupid as saying that just because police officers can't catch all the criminals in the world, that they should stop trying. The posts that we can move to the appropriate location will help to organize the forums overall, but as with any open message board, it is bound to get out of hand, with this issue worsening the larger the company/organization becomes. Maybe a name better than "Off-topic" could be used, but this post is definitely not the kind of post that belongs in any of the self-support forums as you aren't complaining about a specific bug/issue, but rather just complaining about the software being heavily unstable, which isn't too specific. If you can provide error messages and a specific breakdown on the actual problem you are having if any, go ahead and start a new thread in the self-support forum in that kind of format and we will assist you there. This post, however, is best fit here.

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6 hours ago, Nick Bolton said:

General?

Perhaps. Off-topic just seems derogatory for some topics that end up in here.

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lolmetimbers

The whole release and lack of transparency is an absolute trainwreck. And what a laugh the off-topic forum is now as you haved move all the pissed off customers threads.

@Nick BoltonI hope this is a wake up call and your team get their **** together and be honest to customers while proving a stable product with full documentation.

P.S - Don't bother banning me as this will be my last post on these forums.

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What happened to lolmetimbers' post? was that deleted?

Quote

The whole release and lack of transparency is an absolute trainwreck. And what a laugh the off-topic forum is now as you haved move all the pissed off customers threads.

@Nick BoltonI hope this is a wake up call and your team get their shit together and be honest to customers while proving a stable product with full documentation.

P.S - Don't bother banning me as this will be my last post on these forums.

Please tell me you're not censoring related posts in the off-topic forum....

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1 minute ago, Jig said:

What happened to lolmetimbers' post? was that deleted?

Please tell me you're not censoring related posts in the off-topic forum....

That was not deleted, it was hidden due to the use of profanity in the post by another moderator. We do not delete or even hide those posts usually, as we (speaking for Symless team and moderators) love to hear customer opinions in order for us moderators to help improve the product, helping all of us in the end. I will unhide this post now, but profanity is strictly prohibited on forums that are based off of professionalism.

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7 minutes ago, Kelvin Tran said:

That was not deleted, it was hidden due to the use of profanity in the post by another moderator. We do not delete or even hide those posts usually, as we (speaking for Symless team and moderators) love to hear customer opinions in order for us moderators to help improve the product, helping all of us in the end. I will unhide this post now, but profanity is strictly prohibited on forums that are based off of professionalism.

If you guys care about professionalism so much, perhaps you should send out a statement about the situation.... It's pretty clear from the discourse and reactions in this thread as well as others in the off-topic forum that this is necessary. I don't understand why there is such opposition here; this should HELP the company's reputation.

Edit: Also, your choice to hide the post due to profanity is the very definition of censorship.

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23 minutes ago, Jig said:

If you guys care about professionalism so much, perhaps you should send out a statement about the situation.... It's pretty clear from the discourse and reactions in this thread as well as others in the off-topic forum that this is necessary. I don't understand why there is such opposition here; this should HELP the company's reputation.

Edit: Also, your choice to hide the post due to profanity is the very definition of censorship.

As I've stated, it was not my choice, nor can you point the blame to anyone here. We will only censor out the profanity next time, but we still encourage forum users to not use profanity in their post as it detracts from the professionalism otherwise healthily (in my opinion) enforced here.

@Nick Bolton is one of the only people I know on this forum who can authorize that a statement is given detailing this "situation" of no documentation.

However, I will add some unofficial documentation to the pinned portion of the Self-Support forum if that helps anyone with their set-up process. However, I do agree with you that official documentation must be given for Synergy 2.

It's not opposition, @Jig. From what I can tell, we all agree with you. The problem is, they only have so many resources and right now, documentation is not at the top of their list when stability issues still have to be addressed. I will try to help, in order to satisfy you all with a placeholder for the meantime, but please understand that it is not opposition, but rather an inability to get it done with everything else that has a spot on their list of priorities higher than releasing documentation for the product.

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lolmetimbers

Look. I understand that I may come off as antagonistic - that is because I am.

The whole situation triggers me because it reminds me of the debacle that was No Man's Sky a.k.a No Man's Lie (LINK TO WATCH). The CEO Sean Murray basically misled and tricked people in order to buy his product. @Nick Bolton Watch the whole video and then you will understand why keeping people in the dark and lying to people will get them pissed off.

For whatever reason Symless has decided to release an unfinished product (it's in alpha atm not beta), mislead their customers, hide bad PR and provide lack of response, lack of professionalism, lack of transparency and documentation is beyond me - what I am sure of is that like many others, I feel wronged, incredibly frustrated and pissed off because I felt like I was scammed  in both money and mind. Synergy2 was promoted to work and have many features and it simply did not deliver. Of course there is going to be a backlash.

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22 hours ago, Kelvin Tran said:

However, I will add some unofficial documentation to the pinned portion of the Self-Support forum if that helps anyone with their set-up process. However, I do agree with you that official documentation must be given for Synergy 2.

It's not opposition, @Jig. From what I can tell, we all agree with you. The problem is, they only have so many resources and right now, documentation is not at the top of their list when stability issues still have to be addressed. I will try to help, in order to satisfy you all with a placeholder for the meantime, but please understand that it is not opposition, but rather an inability to get it done with everything else that has a spot on their list of priorities higher than releasing documentation for the product.

I greatly appreciate and respect this; thank you.

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On 12/31/2017 at 8:38 AM, Nick Bolton said:

Hindsight is the only perfect science. What do you want now that we can actually do to help?

Well...   I just tried to get 2.04 working (again...) and had to roll back to 1.8, sigh.  Will 2.1 work, who knows?  I'll try to stay current - but would ask that you keep 1.8 around until it does.

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Just bumping to comment on some things.

@Kelvin Tran Still waiting on that documentation; could be useful to people using Synergy 2.

Also, while this is now General, and not Off-Topic, this subforum is still private and can only be viewed when logged in.

EDIT: Typo, meant "now General"

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11 minutes ago, Jig said:

Just bumping to comment on some things.

@Kelvin Tran Still waiting on that documentation; could be useful to people using Synergy 2.

Also, while this is now General, and not Off-Topic, this subforum is still private and can only be viewed when logged in.

EDIT: Typo, meant "now General"

@Nick Bolton, I think we should change permissions on General, don't you?

@Jig In the process of writing it. As a high school student, I have very little free time with all the assignments piled upon me as an Advanced Placement student. Perhaps another moderator with more time could write and I could edit and add if necessary? Any moderators up for the task? I, unfortunately, am simply too busy to get it out in a timely manner. If I am to write it myself, are you okay with ~3 days - a week from now, Jig?

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19 minutes ago, Kelvin Tran said:

@Jig In the process of writing it. As a high school student, I have very little free time with all the assignments piled upon me as an Advanced Placement student. Perhaps another moderator with more time could write and I could edit and add if necessary? Any moderators up for the task? I, unfortunately, am simply too busy to get it out in a timely manner. If I am to write it myself, are you okay with ~3 days - a week from now, Jig?

@Kelvin Tran Excellent, thank you for confirming. No need to rush, and I understand you are busy. It's unofficial and you're doing it in your free-time, presumably for free. I just wanted to check on the status to ensure it was still happening. Thank you for the update.

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On 1/16/2018 at 6:31 PM, Jig said:

@Kelvin Tran Excellent, thank you for confirming. No need to rush, and I understand you are busy. It's unofficial and you're doing it in your free-time, presumably for free. I just wanted to check on the status to ensure it was still happening. Thank you for the update.

@Jig, what is your issue? I'd like to help you get it solved in quicker time than it will take me to write this guide.

If you've already written about it in the Self-Support forum, please link me to your post and I will address it from there. Otherwise, just create a new Self-Support forum post detailing logs, errors, and other anomalies in program behavior so that the other moderators and I may begin the occasionally-lengthy process of troubleshooting.

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  • Synergy Team
On 17/01/2018 at 12:10 AM, Kelvin Tran said:

@Nick Bolton, I think we should change permissions on General, don't you?

 

We have no plans to. Why would we do that?

On 16/01/2018 at 11:57 PM, Jig said:

@Kelvin Tran Still waiting on that documentation; could be useful to people using Synergy 2.

 

We have no immediate plans to write documentation. We may introduce documentation when we add a settings screen in 2.1. If Synergy 2 doesn't just work, then you found a bug. In this case, please raise a support ticket: https://symless.com/contact/customer-support

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"If Synergy 2 doesn't just work, then you found a bug." ummmmm.....

The software has one thing that it is supposed to do. Share your mouse and KB to other computers. It doesn't do that. That is not a bug, that is just that the software doesn't work.

I hope that you see where we are coming from. If we don't have documentation on how synergy works, we can't isolate the problem to a certain aspect and provide good bug reports. If we had documentation, we could say that certain parts of synergy are not working and maybe get those parts fixed. But, at this point, with no documentation, all that we can do is point our finger at the software as a whole and say "it's broken!" It's also hard to figure out what went wrong because there are no actions that the user can take. Everything seems to happen magically in the background. One day everything works and the next day, it doesn't.

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4 minutes ago, samr said:

"If Synergy 2 doesn't just work, then you found a bug." ummmmm.....

The software has one thing that it is supposed to do. Share your mouse and KB to other computers. It doesn't do that. That is not a bug, that is just that the software doesn't work.

I hope that you see where we are coming from. If we don't have documentation on how synergy works, we can't isolate the problem to a certain aspect and provide good bug reports. If we had documentation, we could say that certain parts of synergy are not working and maybe get those parts fixed. But, at this point, with no documentation, all that we can do is point our finger at the software as a whole and say "it's broken!" It's also hard to figure out what went wrong because there are no actions that the user can take. Everything seems to happen magically in the background. One day everything works and the next day, it doesn't.

In this whole documentation argument, I have no side.

However, if you were to read the pinned posts in Synergy 2's self-support forum which clearly indicate that they need to be read first, you'll see that there is a real time log that can be accessed by holding the '~' (tilde) key.

You can see much more than the software isn't working, there will be issues pointed out with certain parts of the software. Please right click on the blue background and hit Send Log and let us have a look at your logs. At that point, we can help you.

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