We do know it is not our strong suit 
There’s only so many hours in a day, and frankly I wish I had more to speed up our release schedule.
It might be a mistake on our part, but communication is rarely a priority when everything else feels urgent.
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I’m not bothered as I love my hapax but one thought that crossed my mind is that a lot of prospective buyers would come to this site for information and see this thread which may put them off purchasing, regardless of the truth of what people are saying.
Apologies if I’m speaking out of place but I feel like if there was more communication, it may translate into more confidence in the general community.
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No worries, I do tend to agree. Unfortunately, we lack the time and resources. We could however try and make efforts to make time for it. It is on our mind, for sure.
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perhaps there is a middle ground? I don’t think we need constant forum posts/monitoring, but maybe like a quarterly newsletter or something.
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Or even just a one time update here in this thead: What is Squarp working on right now with regards to the Hapax, and when might that be released, roughly?
from above
I really have no interest in extending the life of this relatively toxic forum post, but just to state the obvious: those bullets don’t usefully answer either: 1) what is being worked on with regards to the hapax, or 2) when, roughly, those features/bugfixes are going to be released.
A brief note – one that probably will take ten minutes tops to write – will go a long way to help the community have a sense of forward progress and confidence that the Hapax isn’t abandonware.
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Hello Squarp community,
Earlier in this thread, I made a post trying to identify some of the reasons people are feeling aggravated with the communication from Squarp. As this aggravation does not seem to have been resolved (ie this thread persists), I wanted to try and further identify some things I’ve noticed about this community; voicing concerns to Squarp and Squarp’s participation with and response to the community. My hope is that this community can find a better way of commmunicating with Squarp and vice versa.
Currently when ideas or issues are brought up for discussion on this forum, some discussion may be had, a moderator will suggest that the request or bug be sent to Squarp via email, usually discussion ends, thread goes cold and is locked. Unless the OP comes back to the thread to notify the community, we have no way of knowing if the issue was sent to Squarp, or if Squarp are receptive to the idea. Additionally, what I really see as a problem, is that this community has no record of this discussion/issue ever happening unless you are scrolling back through hundreds of posts, stumbling upon it through the forum suggestions at the bottom of another post, or possibly by using the search feature. This results in requests/issues being brought up multiple times. This results in requests/issues being lost and forgotten.
I feel that the lack of tracking user requests/bugs combined with the process of needing to email the Squarp team to be heard, combined with the response from moderators creates a chilling effect on this community. Rather than having robust discussions about ideas and the possibilities of Squarp products, I feel too often discussion is avoided here as the standard response is to just email Squarp.
I hope there is a better way forward for this community and Squarp. My first thought is a more robust forum structure. Perhaps a seperate section for each instrument, and under each instrument a separate section for feature requests, a separate section for bug reports and testing, a separate section for sharing production/workflow ideas, a separate section for sharing our music/work, etc, etc. Another idea is to compile and track feature requests and bugs, and to tally user interest in each request/bug. This will allow this community to see what ideas other users are coming up with, allow community space for the discussion and development of those ideas, and give us all the ability to see which issues are of greatest importance to the community (and what isn’t).
Thank you,
Michael
edit: a typo
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Or just release regular updates per the sales pitch on the Hapax web page. One of the main competing products, which as I understand is a one man operation, releases frequent updates with bug fixes and new features. See their website for a thoroughly documented list. And before anyone mentions how hard software development is, I work in the field and it’s actually not that difficult, especially for an embedded platform with fixed hardware. Pretty please Squarp!
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Thibault, appreciate you’re a small team (been there!), so perhaps a brief summary of what’s being/has been worked on, taken from the list of things you’re coding would be an efficient way to handle this.
Keep it to a quick “worked on and working on as of dd/mm/yyyy”, plus a list of fixes/features every 3-4 months I think would increase audience confidence.
Not a complaint in any way - as I’ve said before, as an ex professional coder (who still codes), I’d much rather have a well tested, solid release that works, and that I can rely on, than lots of buggy new features which just hit sales and annoy existing customers.
But perhaps short, concise updates each 3-4 months, with no follow up replies expected could be a good way to further build prospective customer confidence, if you perceive it to be an issue. Likewise, it could be a good way to further spread the word about Squarp, especially if you did a video version, though I appreciate that’s more work.
Just a couple of suggestions, no complaints !
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If you can’t maintain it, open source it. The beautiful example of Deluge is there. This is an expensive product which I bought with the expectations of frequent update like the competitor products(oxi, deluge, cirklon, etc). I think it should at least have feature parity with Pyramid, but what do I know.
I bought it because I saw there was a very active development cycle but it simply stopped and the competition is hard.
There are reasons why a product like Cirklon is so successful and remains successful.
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We have had a temporary slow-down on our release-cycle. The firmware of Hapax is still very much in active development.
We hope to release a new version within a few weeks
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Today Hermod+ is announced, and with it goes all benefit of the doubt I’ve had. I’d love to be able to recommend Hermod+ to people, but I know how long it took to get Hermod to a good state and how long it’s taking Hapax to get to a solid state, and I just don’t have a ton of confidence. I’m really trying to stay optimistic here, but you’re making it hard, Squarp.
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Do you own a Deluge ?
Congrats on the launch! We’re def looking forward to the next release as there are some bugs that are driving us all a little crazy.
Enjoy the release of Hermod plus. Looking forward to all the goodies that are coming.
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I’ve been viewing this thread for a while, and never envisioned myself chiming in until today after seeing the release of the Hermod +.
I own Hapax, Rample and Hermod, but today I’m feeling concerned and a bit let down by Squarp.
Why focus on a new product when your existing products need work and some product confidence building in your community of users. As a Hapax user we’ve been left in the dust for the last six months, as an original Hermod user, f@@k I have no clue what to expect moving forward with updates…well at least my Rample seems solid 
/s
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I see why people are getting upset I guess, but I also don’t think it’s a very fair perspective. Hermod v1 was released over 5 years ago, and they were releasing firmware updates to it even as of last year. The v1 has been stable and very usable for me for many years now, I’ve made tons of music with it. I think its great that they have now made a v2 which addresses hardware improvements that have been requested for years (larger screen was asked for over and over on this forum, and ability to load projects seamlessly, etc). Those were things the v1 of hermod would never be able to do because of hardware, that a lot of people were hoping/waiting for. And as for hapax, they just said above there will be a bug fix release in the next few weeks. My experience with squarp has always been that they put a very fair amount of effort into their products for many years after launch.
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Dude. Thibault just said they hope to release a new firmware for Hapax in a few weeks.
Just have a little more patience.
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Yes, and I also have an email from April telling me that the the sustain issues I reported in February will be fixed soon. I’m being patient.
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