@Ruediger-Hoffner said in MRA needs to get back to basics?:

MRA wants to make fast money with half finished products, but will not support the customers with new updates and features for payed products

Sorry, but I fundamentastically (I know that word does not really exist ) disagree. I know you mean well but this does not completely qualify as being "constructive criticism". You are undboubtedly correct that not everything is perfect, and users should take the opportunity to remind MRA of what is not perfect, but always attempting to be as constructive and respectful as possible. It is the best guarantee that complaints will be taken seriously and something will be done

Also developers are mortal humans who may not react well to shortcuts like "they only want to make fast money". In addition, we can only write these words because MRA made this forum that allows us to discuss. Money hungry companies usually don't waste money on such folleys.

@Gary: this is not (yet) a multi billion company.

Talking generally, SME grow in cycles with lots of growing pain. It starts as a very small operation and when circumstances and product/service are right it grows, and technical/ business working methods get stretched until it all grinds to a halt and nothing happens anymore;

Many SME fail under these circumstances because the owner who had the skillset to start the company does not want to see that his skillset has limits and stubornly continues on the same distructive path, other SME are sold to a multinational, often to get killed, and some SME reflect and take the correct measures.

MRA Video may well have been what made this MRA lifecycle burst, it was delayed for almost a year and seems to have taken so much effort that the team no longer could maintain the already released products, bugs pilling up, users starting to complain ... Me, i have a support ticket open for longer than one year now ...

The beautiful thing is that they take corrective action, and, if I read Timo his post, are re-organising to reduce the open bug list, to improve the products, .... This seems to be the start of a new life cycle. The funny thing is that preparing that new life cycle had to be done by the only team available, the same one that was almost collapsing under the weight of the previous life cycle.

And consequences are visible: messages on the forum that are not so very well thought true containing information that attentive users don't understand, links to products that are missing, links to MRA predecessors that don't exist anymore, a confusing products page...

As I wrote before, it is all sooooooo familiar, and it gives me great joy to witness this (and thank you MRA for giving me the opportunity) as it brings back very good memories.

I am on this forum for slightly longer than one year, you are here since February. In that year, I have seen the forum being introduced, and the altitude meter in routing, and MRA Video, and now a rather thorough re-organisation.

My guess is that it will take them up to X-mas to digest this re-organisation and it will take 1 to two years for them to outgrow their new organisation again. Then it will break and hopefully lead to a new life cycle.

I will keep watching, keep criticising (hopefully always using the right words, I am not famous for being a diplomate ), and keep enjoying myself.

@Timo-Martosatiman-MRA said in MRA Video is now available!:

@Drabslab that thing with the unresponsive links is now fixed! Good spotting. As far the TyreToTravel-link, that's intentional. I've posted a notification about it to the dev-team and management.

"after end of trial period, your account will be automatically set back to basic account".
I'm Gold Member and don't want to fall back to Basic Member.

I think you could use a team of very annoying beta users to spot last minute bugs and go through announcements before these are released.

@Gary-France

For me, this forum gives me huge pleasure as it reminds me of past times in a very recognisable way.

The original "we launch MRA video" post from Timo, loaded with technical information, and now your answer (making a few very good points by the way) and a few other comments on the forum are catapulting me back in time and similar circumstances.

Just fantastic!!! definitively because I am not involved, not responsible ...

You are right, "MRA must get back to basics" but as one says over here "In between dream and reality, there are mother in laws and other practical inconveniences". In fact, Timo explained (or at least tried to) in his MRA Videa mail that MRA is currently getting the resources, and undergoing the re-organisation to do just that: clear the backlog of bugs, issues and half baked new features and make a plan for the future.

I can guarantee you that this plan will fail (no plan ever survived the first confrontation with reality) but this failure will still deliver exciting features, and will teach MRA, as a growing company, some valuable lessons preparing for the next re-organisation.

As regards users, luckily they have no idea how much effort it costs to implement even the smallest bug fix or feature and can't understand why it all takes so long ... and that is very good. Their role is to ask, demand, request (all in a friendly way, of course) and challenge the developers into becoming better. I think you do an excellent job here.

But first, let's celebrate that an important stone in the MRA backpack (video) is finally released, and can move to maintenance making room for basic stuff to be repaired.

@Timo-Martosatiman-MRA said in The Future of MyRoute-app:

Instead, we'll be renaming classic "MyRoute-app" to MRA Routeplanner!

I don't think that this covers it completely either. The name doesn't cater for the forum, the support, and a few other things;

I woudl stubbronly vote for MRA Web because it much more looks like part of an ecosystem togethr with MRA video and MRA Nav.

i know, it's just a name

By the way, out of astonishment of the sudden announcement today, I've forgotten something important: congratulations to MRA for the success story