New release every year, too much?

[GregFreeman]

I was discussing this with a co-worker the other day and would like opinions. Is the fact that NI releases a new IDE, now yearly, unnecessary? They claim that it is so they can make changes we want and get them to us sooner. While this may be true, we all know if it wasn't a revenue booster for them, they wouldn't be doing it. They are a business and obviously money comes into play. If you dont' release new products, you don't make more money because the market becomes saturated. But at what point does quality fall by the wayside when forcing yourselves to crank out something new every year? At what point will people just say gosh, version x is good enough, why should I bother w/ version x+1?

[LV_Pro]

I don't know. There are many places where I have worked that they have felt, "this one is good enough, we know its faults" and are reluctant to upgrade. One of my current customers is using LabVIEW 8.6.1, has received and still has sitting on the shelf 2009 and 2010. I also know of others that have actual SOP (standard operating procedure) directives to not deploy the newest release until is a X.1 or has its first service pack release. It is tough enough to try and develope and debug code, particularly that which is connected to a variety of hardware, without throwing in new variables. Not sure how they would reach "saturation" if they didn't release a new version each year, an awful lot of the 2010 users posting here lately seem to be pretty newbie, have to think that they would have gotten whatever version was available, whether it had been a yearly release or 8.x.

[pallen]

This is a discussion that pops around this time of year. 

Certainly not everyone needs a new version of LabVIEW every year.  But I think with all the new hardware that NI keeps coming up with and just in the name of continuous improvement, it's not unreasonable to expect a new version of software every year.  

I could be wrong.  But I expect that NI doesn't really make a lot of money from LabVIEW.  Rather that LabVIEW helps to drive their hardware sales by making the hardware easier to use and faster to integrate. 

[smercurio_fc]

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pallen wrote: 

I could be wrong.  But I expect that NI doesn't really make a lot of money from LabVIEW.  Rather that LabVIEW helps to drive their hardware sales by making the hardware easier to use and faster to integrate. 

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Ding, ding ding!!! We have a winner!!!

Let's just say I heard this from a "reputable source".

[pallen]

Ding, ding ding!!! We have a winner!!!

Awesome! 

....so...err...what do I win?

[Ben]

I remeber reading the first ad for NI stuuf and it was the hardware that got my interest (I was still coding in C at the time). It was only latter that I saw LV on a screen that I looked closer.

Ben 

[LV_Pro]

well LabVIEW doesn't cost NI as much as far as catalog pages. It is primarily there to drive hardware sales, I'm sure, but I'm not certain how that would still require a new version each year. It isn't as though each new DAQ board, etc., is reflected in some new addition to LabVIEW, far from it. So I don't know. Maybe the new versions are designed to drive S&SP license renewals!

P

[TCPlomp]

I like the fact of the yearly release, because it's predictable and reliable pase. You can say, if I don't hear/read major problems before November, I can install the new release, otherwise I will wait for the Service Pack and install in March.

It also means there is a dedicated team of developers working on LabVIEW. I don't buy LabVIEW as the front end of the NI hardware, the mere fact that they sell LabVIEW express as a dedicated SW-interface to NI hardware is a direct indication, and NI has acknowledged that they suffer from the 8.0 release in terms of image.

Ton