The Lightroom Shuffle

Hey ho. Key Lightroom cheerleader Michael Reichmann today posts: "...It is said that these will all come when when Beta 4 is released, at which point both the Windows and Mac versions will have parity. In any event, the few small missing items are not critical for anyone wanting to become familiar with the new software, which is likely to become one of the most popular raw image processing programs on the market." (my italics) Interesting bit of spin buried in there: as first heard on Lightroom Podcast 8, v1.0 at least is being subvervisely spun away from being a DAM-based product to "just" a RAW developer. Call me a conspiracy theory nut, but I just don't believe it is an accident. More like a clever bit of expectation management engineered by Adobe marketing. It also seems to be taking rather a long time to get to market - Beta 3 expires in Jan 07, and it seems a little unlikely that the expiry date would be set beyond a commercial release date - especially as their is a Beta 4 on the way. From what I know about software product management - which is quite a lot, actually - I'd say that they are suffering from considering far too many inputs and listening to far too many opinions. The product manager should not devolve the responsibility for a clear product vision to a forum of beta testers. I'm sure I would get tarred as totally negative if I posted this anywhere with high visibilty, but still, if this product was from anybody but Adobe, I cannot believe that it would attract quite such unquestioning praise and devotion from the "old boy" network. I wonder how they've diviied up the books ? Scott Kelby seems to have jumped the gun in a rather unsporting manner with his doubtless zany "Lightroom for Digital Photgraphers". (er, yeah ... so who else would it be for ? Fly fisherman ? Traffic Wardens ? Small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri ??) Anyway, bad news for whoever drew "DAM with Lightroom" out of the bag.