SmartQ

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Why? It shouldn’t be a voting issue. It’s just good business practice and customer service. If you don’t respect customer choices then customers exercise that freedom of choice and move elsewhere. Even Apple heard the customer voice eventually and backed off.
No, it’s just you and another here complaining. Why should all those ppl who are happy with the status quo be made to have to opt in?
 
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No, it’s just you and another here complaining. Why should all those ppl who are happy with the status quo be made to have to opt in?
You may wish to get off that high horse and read my post again. There is no “complaint”. There is certainly a strong observation and I stand by that, but a complaint? Be serious.

With regard to the thing I am suggesting, I think it’s good to be aware that there is certainly some research to show that customers opted into something tend to either like it and stick with it or not use it but also not turn it off. Equally though, there is research which shows that the numbers who actively object to things like being opted in are higher than those who tend to leave the default on but not use the functionality. I wouldn’t have thought the latter to be the case but there we are. One of the big drivers for such objections is that people rightly see it as only being one step away from “have three months free and after that you’re paying” type behaviour. That of course would be the purpose of research. To give insight and perhaps show that our assumptions about behaviour may not be correct.

With all due respect your post and reaction to a sensible, evidence based suggestion is verging on ludicrous.

1 - you don’t know how many people are “happy with the status quo”. A thread with barely 20 contributors tell us us nothing about what people are happy with.

2 - you’re not “being made” to do anything. It’s being suggested that the default for all such things should be off. If you want the functionality it’s all of 4 small actions away just as it is for those of us who turned it off immediately. If Innuos opted you into a three month Tidal trial where payment was taken in month four unless you turned the functionality off I wonder how you’d feel.

The point is that word soon gets around on companies who opt people into functionality they’ve not requested. It’s not a positive.
 
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However many features Innuos develop and introduce into Sense will hopefully be well thought out prior to release.
Just don't get into the car industry's habit of many features that are distracting and most drivers do not want and have to turn off every time they start the car.
Maybe Innuos should consider that any "new" feature has a default of "OFF" yet explain much clearer in each Release Notes what the "New features" are, how they function and importantly how to turn them "On" if the user wishes.
This position might also save many users finding their unit is "misbehaving" and starting "Help" threads when there is no need, would save time of @Dan and @Stephen having to reply to "ghost" faults which appears to be increasing in number.
 
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However many features Innuos develop and introduce into Sense will hopefully be well thought out prior to release.

I want to add something to this and end this thread on a more positive note.

Personally I find new features very well thought out and done in a right way within an application without making it feel convoluted. Sure development doesn't go as fast but it's a small development team. Also it's not as feature rich as like a Roon or maybe even an opensource project which has a lot of volunteers. But what Innuos does offer with each updates is quality. Really content so far. Can't wait to see what makes 3.4 or when it's released.

However many new features are added you cannot make it right for everybody. The most they could do with big new features is show some question to enable it and maybe some small tour like after a factory reset specific for that new feature. But besides thatI don't get this discussion, at all.
 
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Just don't get into the car industry's habit of many features that are distracting and most drivers do not want and have to turn off every time they start the car.
Maybe Innuos should consider that any "new" feature has a default of "OFF" yet explain much clearer in each Release Notes what the "New features" are, how they function and importantly how to turn them "On" if the user wishes.It’
It’s exactly this isn’t it.

Every time Mrs. H. starts her car she has to remember to turn off the feature which beeps at her every time she crosses a white line as well as two other features. She’s currently researching a new car from the same manufacturer and one of her first questions was about that specific software and whether this functionality has been recognised as needing to be reversed. If not, then she will be buying a new car from the company whose software doesn’t do that.
This position might also save many users finding their unit is "misbehaving" and starting "Help" threads when there is no need, would save time of @Dan and @Stephen having to reply to "ghost" faults which appears to be increasing in number.
This is an excellent point and one I’m sure will be noted by Innuos. The fact there were people on here asking why their device was suddenly playing music they’d not selected tells you both that people may do the updates but they don’t necessarily pore over the release notes and that the approach of “off by default” is the sensible business decision. When new features are off by default but loads of people start threads on “Why doesn’t Sense have x?” when it actually does, then of course I’d be willing to reconsider my position.

@iSP I’m not clear why you think your post ends this thread? Your points are all valid but the discussion we’re having right now is not about whether the likes of Smart Q are good features - they’re good for some and not so for others - it’s about whether they should be enabled by default. There is, I think, a sensible grown up discussion to be had around the pros and cons of that but the likes of @frank7036 seem to think this is the sort of forum where being unpleasant is okay and confrontation is okay. Thus the passive aggressive laughing or liking of posts rather than engagement in the substantive point. His point seems to be the simplistic “I like it therefore it should be on by default and the fact you (me) don’t like it means it should be off by default.”: Misses my point by a country mile. Whether I like a news feature is nothing to the point. It’s about good practice. Good practice is off by default.

Sidebar but an interesting point. I’m a beta tester for the iOS app for a well known UK national newspaper with international editions. I have repeatedly fed back on whether new features were good or bad. It varies hugely. I have consistently fed back that they should be off by default. The development team agree but one developer in there absolutely does not. I win each battle for off by default but then that specific developer moves onto a new feature and a beta update appears which enables that one by default instead. It’s been like playing whack-a-mole. Eventually I wrote to the lead developer and pointed out that they appeared to have no overarching ethos on such things. They do now. The developer who refused to comply and kept on turning on his new features by default has been moved on.
 
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Certainly not disputing quality of any Sense features, more suggesting that whatever feature is introduced that it is "Off" by default rather than "On".
Explaining more of a feature in an update's Release notes and how to turn that feature "on and use" could make it more acceptable, together saving time for explanations later.
 
Certainly not disputing quality of any Sense features, more suggesting that whatever feature is introduced that it is "Off" by default rather than "On".
Explaining more of a feature in an update's Release notes and how to turn that feature "on and use" could make it more acceptable, together saving time for explanations later.
Yup, totally agree.
 
@iSP I’m not clear why you think your post ends this thread? Your points are all valid but the discussion we’re having right now is not about whether the likes of Smart Q are good features - they’re good for some and not so for others - it’s about whether they should be enabled by default.
I don’t understand why you think my post ends this thread? You must be reading it wrong or in the most literal way (probably the latter). Tried to push it in a more healthy direction. But as I think this thread isn’t healthy anymore it probably should be closed or cleaned up a bit by now. Most has been said and there’s just a lot of disagreement. About being enabled by default a really good suggestion was made and I see that option a lot with other software.

To end my plea; it can be easily turned off so why are so many people worked up about it to this extent? It’s not like it’s not reversible or anything and so the examples being made with cars really don’t make sense at all to me.
 
Relax folks, I come in peace!
Put simply, we have an opt-out approach on this. Why? Because otherwise we (very) often have to explain features to users even though the function had already been there for years - but nobody knew. At least by having it on by default at point of update, you now know of the feature at least exists, and it is not too complex to remove or disable which we would argue is the lesser evil. And once it's set, it's set - no repeat configuration should be needed.

I do appreciate some users do not like SmartQ, but do understand this was probably out most-demanded feature request so we did feel this feature came with particular significance. Not every feature suits every individual.
Certainly there is a question of whether these things could be better communicated, and almost certainly they probably could - I'm not suggesting we are perfect there. But evidently between the release notes, social media posts and blogs, it does not cut through much. We try to be quite hands-off, so we do not data-capture users to send them emails - and would the email be opened anyway? If we forced a notification in the app, can we ensure it will not be dismissed right away?
Nonetheless, this all raises a good point about feature rollouts should be considered and anticipate how the reactions will be, which we do of course take seriously and we always try to make a judgement based on the best compromise, but i think there's room for improvement.

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