From the title of this post you probably get the gist of this post. I feel compelled to write it anyway.
I have noticed in my dealings with various websites around the Internet, that often, as a matter of fact, more often than not, the web developers and managers decide that something isn't working, or doesn't work as well as it should. Unilaterally. Often, it has been the tried-and-true, FUNCTIONAL programs we all seem to like and rely on. Facebook. MySpace. ReverbNation. Music Xray. Even our browsers...Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape Navigator (remember that one?!?)
Why? Progress.
Sometimes, the newly improved programs or sites are, indeed, new and improved. Oftentimes they are not. I have recently (10 minutes ago as I write this) had the displeasure of being told by the website, and I'll name names, Music Xray, that my browser was out-of-date and would not work with their website. They provided a link to a choice of four different browsers, all of them free, all of them with their own little quirks (my opinion, my blog). Internet Explorer was provided as one of the links. I like Internet Explorer. I clicked the link. I was taken to a Microsoft site, and within ten seconds, a message came across my screen that told me that I was running IE8 and Windows XP Pro. The message continued with the assurance that my browser was the most up-to-date browser available for XP. With that information, I returned to the Music Xray website and again attempted to log in, this time with the knowledge that my browser was indeed, up-to-date. Same result.
Now, I am not a neophyte with these computer things...I studied programming in college. One of the things, one of the cardinal rules of programming that I was taught was this: People will have different operating systems. Make it work, no matter what system they run.
With that in mind, I attempted to contact Music Xray's tech people, through their "contact us" link. It allowed me to enter my entire complaint. Now I'm getting somewhere, right? Wrong. As soon as I hit the "Send" button, it took me to another site where a few "problems" with their website were listed, along with a "Does this help you or do you still need to send your complaint" link. Well, someone else had had exactly the same issue as I. So, I clicked on that, and it took me to another page. I kinda think it was done to make things easier for them, but it definitely did NOT make things easier for me. After I read the response, (and the heated exchange ensued, back and forth) I decided that no, it did not help, and I attempted to return to the previous page. It had been closed, somehow, and even hitting the "back" button on my browser would not take me there.
They're not gonna treat me like that, are they? So, I went through the process again, this time, it only took about 5 minutes to get back to the complaint page. I typed in my complaint again. This time, when they tried to send me to the "Does this help..." page, I said no, it hadn't helped and tried to send my complaint. I don't know where it went. I don't care anymore. If they are going to treat me with my UP-TO-DATE system as a step-child because I won't "Upgrade" to Google Chrome (apparently, there is some control game going on here...uh-oh...this is a Google blog...we'll see if that matters....) then they don't want my business. And I am a PAYING customer on Music Xray. Maybe my ten dollars isn't significant to them. I wish I could say that about ten dollars. But it will be a long time before I decide ten dollars is chump change. I can't be certain how much I've spent on their site, but each time I submitted a song to one of their "opportunities", I paid. At least until I could no longer access the site. I guess this is the new reality...the customer isn't always right. Welcome to the 21st Century.
Hello. Mike McCready here, Co-founder & CEO at Music Xray.
ReplyDeleteI completely hear you on the browser issues and I agree we are not providing an optimal solution. I apologize for that and we will continue to make upgrades and improvements.
The reason this happened is an all-too-often tough decision small start-ups like ours are forced to make. There are now basically 4 main browsers in the market: Safari, IE, Firefox, and Chrome, plus the mobile versions of each of them plus Andriod and IOS if we include mobile apps. Each have multiple versions that are currently in use. Start ups like Music Xray have to run very lean for as long as we're spending the money investors have given the company.
Believe it or not, the hard part is not developing for all versions of each browser. The hard part is the maintenance required. Each time we make a change or an upgrade to our site, we have to account for all those browsers. As the site itself gets more complex (with more features) development cycles take longer and in the end, the lift to maintain so many browsers becomes too much. So, we're forced to go to our Google Analytics and decide to no longer service the browsers (and combination of browser/OS) that are least commonly used or which are being phased out by their own developers (like IE browser upgrades for XP). MS has gone through Vista, Windows 7 and now Windows 8 and is just no longer upgrading their browsers for XP. So IE for XP doesn't have a lot if the new common features more modern browser versions have - and the lift to maintain it was just too cost-vs-benefit prohibitive.
So, we made a decision because (I believe) Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all offer versions of their browsers for XP that work with Music Xray.
We now have more developers and more resources and we will continue to develop a great service. I do not know if we will ever go back and support your version of XP&IE but I hope you'll understand the decisions that the realities of the market sometimes impose on small companies.
Thank you for giving Music Xray a shot.
I recently upgraded my computer. I am now running Windows 8, and Internet Explorer 11. But I still have a bad taste in my mouth for Music Xray. That may be my loss, or it may be theirs. But they are the ones who decided to abandon my business. So, I tend to think it is theirs.
ReplyDeleteSurprise! The one thing I was CERTAIN would not change, did. What is this unchangeable thing? Why, my BLOG, what else? My Blog address used to be "Common-sense-in-the-21st-century", which you still see at the top of the page. However, Google locked me out of my blog, apparently because I didn't use a "G-mail" account when I opened the blog. (When I started the blog, the site was not owned by Google, at least, not to my knowledge.)
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, first, they changed the name of my blog, then the address. When this happens in real life, it's called kidnapping. I can COMMENT on MY BLOG, but I cannot add any new posts to it. They changed the address to an email I have never owned, and don't know how to access, essentially locking me out of my own blog. Top it off with a recovery system that, to me, might just as well have been written in Chinese. I understand neither. Could SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE PLEASE HELP ME?????