and if they had such a person then their implementation wouldn't have these shortcomings in the first place.
Thats a conundrum indeed... Possibly only thing that could shake things up is market pressure (dropping sales) but if people are quite happily buying stuff then things will stay as is. It is important to avoid "whitewash" by "forum gurus". Best give objective advice like yep its cheap, 4 channels, this and that quite good, BUT things 1, 2, 3 are bit problematic, buy if sure you do not need them (working). If the poor noob cant trust forum gurus, who can he trust?
Truth, that.
We see extremes at both ends. One which sweeps the UI issues under the rug ("what did you expect for $400?") and one which overemphasizes the faults. The faults are there and are undeniable, but do
not make the scope unusable for most purposes traditionally targeted by scopes. It's almost like Rigol is the Microsoft of oscilloscopes.
Well... I can see problems with fixing major stuff. But sometimes little things can change a lot. But yet again this would require some specialist-in-command to understand why something needs to be fixed... And if there is none...
There are a few things they could fix directly, I'll certainly grant that. I suppose the main problem from their perspective is: how are they supposed to know if the proposed solution is an improvement if they don't even have the expertise on hand to validate the solution in the first place? It's not like we're talking about a bug where there exists an objective metric that can be used to validate its presence. Here, we're talking about user interfaces.
Someone there thought the current implementation was a good idea (bad though it is). How do you convince them of the error of their ways?
Again, I have to ask, because you didn't answer the question (though it was asked of tooki), how would you expect Rigol to recover their costs of hiring a competent UI person who also has expertise in T&M equipment use?
With Z-box its probably too late. However they surely have next gen product in works. If they continue in same manner with next gen its not gonna end well, especially with A-brands showing interest in hobby market.
Well, maybe it will and maybe it won't. The A brands are still commanding a premium for what you get in terms of functionality (the value they provide is in the level of support, the polish, the UI, and other "intangibles" that make the whole experience better).
As long as the competition insists on charging more for the same functionality, Rigol fits a niche that nobody else seems to be playing in. I see no evidence that this is changing in the next generation. And that's a shame. Any manufacturer could easily steal Rigol's thunder merely by offering a 4 channel 100MHz oscilloscope for $400 that included deep memory, decoding, etc., but was more responsive, more reliable (no freezing or crashing), and had a better UI.
Nobody has stepped up to that plate, and I see no evidence that anyone will.
And if anyone raises objections to the description of the Rigol as a 100MHz 4 channel scope with deep memory, decoding, etc., remember that what matters in the hobbyist market is the
actual capability of the device once in the hands of the customer, not the capability as shipped. Put another way, in the hobbyist market, which is the market we're talking about here, the
hacked capabilities are the ones that really matter on the ground.
So if they hire proper UI and Q&A stuff now, might do better in coming years. And good people are not that expensive, just hard to find. Expensive are people giving impression that they are good... They do much better than actually good specialists often quietly sitting years on same job...
"Hard to find" almost always translates to "expensive" in the market, unless the demand for "hard to find" is low. I'm not convinced that the demand for solid UI people is quite so low as to keep their price low, but you're a UI guy so you'd have a much better handle on that than I -- presumably. Here, we're talking about UI people who are intimately familiar with the things one would use a scope for. I expect that's a
very small set of people, and chances are there are very few indeed who aren't already employed by a T&M manufacturer somewhere.