Comment by bobsy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobsy | Hacker News Reader

Looks good. Shame there is no mention of Android at all.

The biggest thing I took away from this blog post was this.

"NOTE: Basecamp for iPhone requires an account on the new Basecamp (released March 2012). Basecamp Classic is not supported."

I wonder what % of users haven't switched over even after a year. I think this is a good lesson for anyone thinking about effectively launching a new product to replace one they already have.

The company I work for did a similar thing about 15 months ago. We still have about 10% of clients on the old system. We offered free upgrades to get everyone over but some didn't want it. New platform has now diverged sufficiently away from the old one that there is no direct upgrade path any more. This has effectively left 10% of clients stranded.

Looking back I think any replacement product needs to be 100% compatible and after x months clients are forced over. It causes some short term hassle and support costs but in the medium term really simplifies development work if old products are completely retired.

There's no mention of Android because this is an announcement for the iPhone version.

We'll be addressing Android at another time.

That makes sense. I figure since most of the pages are web views, it wouldn't be that difficult to release an Android version when/if needed.

Looking back I think any replacement product needs to be 100% compatible and after x months clients are forced over.

I actually think this is a ploy to get their users to convert. 37signals has a strong "we let our users outgrow us" stance, so what I read between the lines is that 37signals sees no hassle continuing to support the old system (it's massively profitable). Dually it gives a better justification for an up-sell to get people on to the new system.

I think this strategy is brilliant.

I'd love to take credit for a brilliant strategy, but this isn't one of them. The story is very simple. We released an iPhone app for the all new version of Basecamp. Nothing more, nothing less.

But do you see it an issue (i.e. costs) supporting two different systems? Why doesn't it support the old system? Surely that had to come up in conversation.

People in the tech world easily assume that upgrade = better. But that is only true if you feel underserved by the existing software you are running. Many customers out there in other fields don't have that feeling of being perpetually underserved that is common in places like Hacker News.

From my experience adoption of new versions is always pretty slow with 'normal' users. They don't care for new versions as long as the current version they're using gets the job done.

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