Please don’t take this as a personal attack, but for those that are virulently supporting the move to the browser based Free, why continually assault the users of the free Make with insults? Trimble offered it for free, users took them up on their offer. This condescending attitude is not helpful if your intent is to persuade people to your way of thinking. It’s apparent from the replies on this thread that the vast majority of Pro users are just crossing their fingers that the Pro version doesn’t end up web-based also. So I think comments like “loosing (sic) the ranting freebies/hobbyists for professionals appraising the assets of SUP and willing to pay for them appears to be the right move,” may be a little off the mark.
Just because many, many people have used SU Make for years free of charge, doesn’t equate to them not being grateful for the privilege. Look at the number of Make users who have created accounts here just to be able to tell Trimble they would be glad to pay for the privilege of using a stable desktop version, even though they are only hobbyists. I am one of those myself. Many like myself were willing to pay for books, online courses, and interactive pdf’s, in order to better utilize the features of SU Make, even though we will never see a dime of profit from its use. I would gladly pay a reasonable fee for SU Make, it is helpful for my woodworking hobby in many ways, and it is just plain fun to use!
That being said I’m retired and I can’t afford SU Pro. And web based is not an option for me. I have the highest speed internet service available in my rural area, and it still wouldn’t support online CAD, it doesn’t even support most videos well. Even if it did I don’t have internet available in my shop, where I use SU Make. Web based software of any kind is simply out of the question for those like me.
Don’t be too quick to make sweeping generalizations about SU Make users as “ranting freebies/hobbyists.” Many of us love SU and have talked many others into using it as well. We would just like the ability to use it well into the future, and appreciate the opportunity to respectfully let the makers of the product know our concerns.
I hope that didn’t come off as too negative. I hope this will be in some way profitable to this discussion.
I think the big disconnect is that John and others on the team are, “bullish on browser/cloud software,” and the majority of your users are apparently not. It is certainly true in my case. I understand John, that you work in this industry and probably don’t personally interact with many people like me who don’t have great internet connections everywhere they go. But for many who don’t live in or near big cities fast, or even reasonable, internet connections are a pipe dream. You have already replaced the majority of your desktop applications with web applications, GSuite, etc. This isn’t even a remote consideration for me. You say, “The ability to open any computer in the world, log into a web service and instantly have access to all of my data is, well… just very powerful.” But I don’t use many computers to run SU for a business. I use SU on a laptop that runs SU very well in my shop without any internet connection. I can only assume from the replies on this thread that many others don’t have the need to run SU on multiple computers.
I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of a web based SU, just not at the expense of no longer supporting some form of SU Make, which again, I would be willing to pay for. But no matter how well you are able to develop the browser based SU Free version, it just won’t be an option for many.
I know I can keep using SU Make…for now. But it won’t be further supported. And the concern for many of your Pro users is that SU Pro is bound for the web also. I hope you reconsider this plan moving forward and continue to develop and improve SU Make.