This is a common line I read all the time in reference to software products I see on the web; most recently with Parallels. I’m not sure if consumers really understand that software developers aren’t catering to one person (in most cases). I fell into this trap with my NotifyMail program where I implemented every feature request that came in. This was counter productive for a number of reasons. Mostly, the people that wanted the features had already bought it and it wasn’t going to get them to buy more and the more obscure features I added, the harder it was to maintain and document. In the case of Parallels, people seem to say that if XYZ USB device doesn’t work, they’re not going to buy it. While USB support is important, the product does so much else that it is easy to justify the $40 (pre-order price). These people that are buying Parallels have easily spent $1500 on a system and are complaining about a $40 product that doesn’t do everything. While I like to see lots of my pet features in products, it won’t prevent me from buying the software. I purchase a few products a month and send in features requests on occasion. There will always be features that I want that aren’t in a product, but it doesn’t mean that everyone else wants the same feature.
People need to judge a product in if it does a job even if it doesn’t meet 100% of the requirements. Unless someone writes a product himself, it is unlikely that any product will do 100% of the things that he wants it to do. That’s reality.
I had the same thought the other day. I love Parallels. It almost everything I would like it to do. As you said, it is only $40 bucks but can do so much, so I bought three copies. One for my wife’s MacBookPro, one for mine, and one for our Intel iMac.
Sure, I wish it could read VMware images and convert if necessary. Sure I wish the shared folders worked better. But frankly this is one kick butt piece of software and they only way to encourage future development is to buy it, submit feature requests and be happy someone is taking the time to develop something that you find usefull. Imagine if all developers (or entrepreneurs) only focused on one customer’s needs.