Formlabs should rename "PreForm" to "Download Update"

General Discussion
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Possibly said before but I understand Formlabs desire to constantly perfect their product. Every time I go to make a new print I am prompted with a download update. This seems odd to me, are they literally writing code on the fly? Isn’t there any testing on the software before it is released? For me this it is just really annoying and is side-tracking, I get that it only takes minutes but minutes add up and turn into writing a post on the forum:) I think there may be an opportunity here to do a better job on their updates. Anybody else notice the frequency of Preform updates as well as firmware updates? Cheers

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I update about once every 60 days or so… and I barely notice the difference

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Yet if they didn’t do it this way, there’d be people complaining that they weren’t getting updates fast enough. There’s no pleasing everyone. But to err on the side of more frequent updates makes more sense than the other option. When Preform tells you that there’s a new update, it lists what’s changed in the update. And it gives you an option to Update, Skip this time, or Skip until the next update. So you’ve got the information you need to make a decision on whether or not to update, and you can just not update if the changes don’t relate to anything you’re doing. This is how I do it, I choose the don’t-ask-again option if the change list doesn’t interest me.

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As a long time engineering manager, I have one suggestion…

They use a 3 part versioning system: Major.Minor.Patch/Build. Prompt for updates on only Major and Minor versions, released quarterly or half-yearly, and then the patches can be manually downloaded. So if a customer experiences a bug, it gets fixed/patched and available for download as soon as it’s ready. The customer can install the update to fix their problem, and to those unaffected they continue with their current versions.

A twist on this would be you can also add a user controlled preference for updating:

  • Notify me for all updates
  • Notify me for both major and minor updates
  • Notify me only for major updates
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And yet there are reported bugs that have been around for dozens of versions.

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