Creative Stops Hacker from Improving Their Product
Creative's sound card drivers for Vista have been horrible. Creative blamed Microsoft's implementation of sound in the new operating system, which may have been part of the problem, but certainly didn't excuse them for taking months after the Vista launch to release sub-standard drivers that were missing features such as Dolby Digital decoding, especially for older Creative sound cards.
A coder named "Daniel_k" reverse engineered Creative's drivers (violating Creative's terms of service) and reenabled many of the features on older sound cards Creative had claimed would not work in Vista. This was tolerated by Creative for a while, but when Daniel_k started taking donations from the community for his time, Creative pulled all references to his drivers from their official forums.
While Creative might have been legally in the right, the Creative forums are up in arms, with many claiming that the company didn't offer proper Vista support for older drivers because they wanted to sell new hardware to customers. No matter what the rationale, it's a baffling decision for a company who makes aftermarket sound hardware that is becoming increasingly unnecessary in modern computers. I have an X-Fi in my gaming machine (which runs Vista) and it's been nothing but trouble. I'm not entirely sure why I even bought it in the first place, but I'll certainly not be buying Creative sound cards again.
Message to Daniel_K [Forums.Creative.com]
See Also • Daniel_K driver package torrent [The Pirate Bay]
• Creative Labs Stops Guy From Making Its Technology Work Better [Techdirt]
• PC hardware vendor Creative Labs unleashes PR nightmare in their own message boards. Oops. [Reddit]
• Creative Goes After Driver Modder [Slashdot]
Update: A post on the Creative thread that claimed to be from Newegg.com, the popular computer hardware retailer, purported that Newegg would stop selling Creative products. As of this morning, Newegg's customer service department said they had not been aware of any boycott on the part of Newegg and pointed out that almost 300 products from Creative were still available for sale on the site. A call to Newegg's corporate office resulted in a big, fat busy signal. According to the customer service agent, Newegg has been getting multiple calls this morning regarding the letter.
In short, as one could reasonably presume about a major corporate policy change posted exclusively on another company's site, the "Newegg stops selling Creative products" story is almost certainly a hoax.
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I haven't read the messageboard, but your own post says that Creative were happy to overlook the patch at first. They only stepped in when he started taking money in exchange for a reverse-engineered version of their commercial (and presumably copyrighted / patented) sofware.
#1 - So Creative is happy to let their customers go without functional drivers for their products just because some poor shlub did their work for them and makes a few bucks?
Why doesn't Creative work out some sort of deal with the guy who wrote the drivers, instead of just shutting him down and leaving all those folks with useless sound cards?
#2 - Why would they? How is Creative, a hardware company, going to sell more hardware by working with him?
May I draw a comparison? Would you take your 1965 GM into a modern GM dealership for repair? Or would you take it to "Jimbo's old-time car shop"?
I do not see it being in GM's financial interest to keep the tools on hand to service every car they ever made, nor do I see any reason that GM should be expected to offer free advertising that will help Jimbo make money. Further, should Jimbo start selling his service as being of "Mister Goodwrench" quality, I rather expect there would be some repercussions.
just my 2c
MDHATTER - First of all there's a difference between a sound card (still functional, hardware-wise) that's probably only a couple years old and a 1965 car.
I would think it would be in Creative's interest to keep their former customers happy, and yeah maybe to buy some code from a guy who did their job for them. Otherwise most of the people who go looking for a new sound card will feel slighted and go with some other brand of sound card. If created is maintaining a message board relating to these products that don't work under Vista, then I assume the products are still "supported". If they are unwilling to provide software to make their hardware work, then (again) why not strike a deal with someone who can?
I don't think it's ok for companies to abandon products (that aren't yet obsolete) in order to force people to by a new product. Isn't everyone sick of that practice by now?
just another $0.02
Sorry... in the second paragraph of the above comment, substitute "Creative" for "created". Duh on me. :)
It seems, at least from the posts, that what this person discovered was that several pieces of functionality were deliberately turned off by the drivers. Thus making the cards less useful on new systems so that people would upgrade to newer products.
To use the car analogy that would be like a manufacturer deliberately decreasing your MPG to the point where you felt the need to purchase a new one when the car would've worked just fine without their tampering.
If this is indeed the case, this is a HUGE issue. Planned obsolescence is one thing, going in and shortening the usable lifespan of a product that has been purchased is a whole different issue.
Perhaps Creative should take a lesson from Sony and stop tampering with their customers' computers and peripherals.
Jake, in 'computer years' (similar to 'dog years') a 5 year old sound card IS fairly said to be 40+ 'years' old. C'mon, work with me.
then (again) why not strike a deal with someone who can?
Profit. They own the thing, it's their right to develop it as they see fit (and to lose customers while they are at it).
You disagree with the lack of official support? Go buy another brand.
You want to change the decision making process? Buy shares.
Capitalism sucks, but there it is.
As for the coder himself: Hack away, but the minute he started profiting off of someone elses copyright/whatever, he had to expect well organized resistance under the law.
You don't like the law? Vote.
Ceronomus, I think that's not the same sort of analogy. The swap to Vista is more like changing the fuel to ethanol from gas - it wasn't Creatives decision to revamp the whole OS. So, unless you install a certain widget, the car will run very poorly if at all, and although the widget can be easily made and will restore performance, doing so opens GM up to all sorts of hassles when the n00bs install it themselves.
MD, First of all I don't have any personal stake in this, I'm just arguing for fun, and I'm not going anywhere near Vista for the foreseeable future. And I do know how fast computer stuff ages, I've been repairing and supporting them for too many years.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it seems to make common sense (not business sense and not profit sense) to accommodate existing users of your products. I don't see why it wouldn't be a win-win if Creative paid the guy a few thousand bucks for the exclusive license to his improvement, tested and supplied it as their own. Isn't it possible that the customer satisfaction and goodwill generated might lead to future sales? Capitalism doesn't HAVE to suck, I believe it can have a human face.
Most car dealerships will refer you to other local shops if you need your old car worked on.
From one of the MANY news articles on this story...
But why would a company set out to prevent people from helping one another fix problems in hardware it's already sold them?
The answer is the sad one you've probably learned to expect: O'Shaughnessy admits that Creative Labs intentionally crippled its Vista drivers as a business strategy.
"If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make."
Hey MD, missed your post the last time.
Thing is, the widget is already in place and HAS been in place. Creative just decided to not let people USE the widget so that they could charge more for that feature later.
Yes, Creative wasn't behind the decision to revamp the OS. However, what has come to light is that the products that Creative has been selling as "Vista Ready" actually are, it is just that Creative is disabling features via the drivers which is making the product have problems with Vista.
So they tell their customers that the product will work with Vista and it will, if you use SOMEONE ELSE'S driver because they have crippled functionality on a product that you have purchased and not told consumers about it.
That's more like selling you a car and then using the on-board computer to kill the ignition. You still own the car, and I'll sell you the ignition system driver later for more money.
I had a Creative soundcard that came in my Dell a few years back. In the course of my rolling upgrades, I've since upgraded the motherboard, power supply and graphics card, which meant I had to put the whole thing in another case. What I didn't realize at first was that the front panel pinout on the Creative card wasn't labeled, and the connector from the Dell case was non-standard. I could find no clear pinout description on their site, and the only solution I managed to find was one that required me to solder leads directly to the board, something I wasn't willing to do. Of course, Creative was more than willing to sell me a front panel that would take up one of my drive bays for a bit over $100.
To me, keeping pinouts "secret" and proprietary for something as common as front panel headphone and microphone ports is along the same lines as delibrately leaving out features you would expect to remain functional through a relatively normal upgrade. The idea in either case seems to be to force the user to buy another Creative product. I love their portable music players, but I am not currently running, nor will I run, any Creative cards in my machine until they change their practices. I've found other manufacturers that provide more consistent customer service and support.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Creative's VP Corporate Communications' office right now (if he still has one). To pull the thread or not to pull? I've never seen a customer uprising on this scale before.