Hi everyone. Apologies for the delayed post about our Q4 plans.
Today I want to give you all an update on the progress on our existing workload, and share a bit about what we have coming up.
Q3 Review
Last quarter was dedicated to addressing our user base’s top feedback points, which were:
- Download Manager stability issues
- Uninstall
- Light Mode
It was a bit of a bumpy ride, with some pivots to address potential security risks and our update issues (which 3.6.2 rolled back). But on the plus side, our team got to deliver some features we know you cared about, and are also committed to working on even more good stuff to come.
Early in the quarter, we released Light Mode support for Native Access. From the screenshots that have been flowing around, both within the company and in the public, it’s lovely to see that each user has their own preferred environment, and we’re hoping it has eased some legibility concerns.
Uninstall was also shipped for content products, which includes instruments and expansions, and should cover about 80% of our catalog (if not more). This is something that Mac users can benefit greatly from, considering they did not have means of uninstalling their products without going through an arduous manual process. Our instruments are the products that end up taking the most space on your devices, so hopefully disk space management is now a lot easier!
Lastly, we unfortunately missed our target for the release of our download manager enhancements. We’re close, but we have a few more bugs to sift through before we feel confident that we’re shipping something that’s way better than before out to you. The reason for the delay is that we found several opportunities to enhance the download experience, allowing you to be more absent during the process, such as restarting downloads automatically when connectivity drops. I also promised a Dev Talks entry on this subject. We’re planning for a release of this feature and the Dev Talks entry in November, with version 3.8.0.
Q4 Plans
Q4 is going to be a bit quieter this time around as we prepare for some awesome things to come in 2024. In the spirit of transparency, this quarter will be a bit more of a trial and improvement season with a heavy focus on the client. There will be two main releases, with one smaller one.
First release will set us up for cyber sale. This includes a few bug fixes and some simple UI changes/additions. This will be 3.7.0 and will ship by the latest October 24th.
The following release will be the download manager enhancements we’ve worked all quarter on. As mentioned earlier, these need a bit more fine tuning. In addition, this release will provide a major update improvement as well, so that you don’t essentially need to download the whole product anew again when updating your products. While this release will provide support for this already, we still need to update all of our product installers, so the tech will take a while to bear its fruit in full. Last addition into this release will be adding a few links to help you continue your browsing journey in search of the right product for you, whether you own it or not. This will be a test to see if you’re finding what you’re looking for to level up your musical toolkit, and to learn more about your browsing needs that we look forward to addressing.
This release will be big, and while hopefully no major issues or regressions bear its head, we’ll be dedicating some time to monitor this release as well to make sure it hits the spot. In the meantime, we will also be getting up to speed on supporting Sonoma.
Lastly, as we’re working to migrate both our products and our customers from Product Portal to Native Access, recently iZotope’s Element Suites made the journey over! The teams involved did an incredible job navigating the complex differences between our product architecture, both on the fulfilment and deployment side, and there’s still a lot of work to do, so look forward to more bundles and additions as we level up our ecosystem.
This quarter, we’ve chosen to pause the work on the remaining products that need uninstall support. We want to commit further as a team to monitor the download manager, and as such are all hands on deck. With it being a short quarter, this means we’ll revisit the feature in Q1 next year, along with other work that I’ll be excited to share with you.
As per usual, I will spend a full week addressing your feedback, comments, and questions. Hope everyone is having a great start to the holiday season and is staying healthy!
Hayo, PM of Native Access and Product Portal.