[Touch Pro, Fuze Themes and Apps] Chainfire:
Well, to be honest, that TV and phone were my first (and so far only) times on physical products... I was surprised but I did not really mind though - yes I did actually check online if there was a manual there. Not because I need the manual, but out of curiosity.

Well, just to clarify: I'm not saying there shouldn't be a manual. But there isn't, and I can understand why (I have always found it a bit weird there is no trial version, though).

I would sincerely doubt the guys over at CoreCodec (or any succesful company) are eating out of their noses all day long. I could imagine they are doing things they think are more important than pushing out a manual. Say they have an X amount of users that want feature Y, and a 5*X amount of users that want feature Z, and you only have time and/or budget and/or manpower to do one. Which one would you do? It's impossible to please everyone and margins are not that big these days - you can't magically make everything everybody wants happen.

I think you also need to take into account that being a consultant and being a software house are very different beasts. If you get an order, you are payed a fee for all the time you spend on that specific customer, and while you do need to do everything that the customer wants you also get payed for every second. A software house has to offset development costs versus customers * purchase fee. All customers pay for the product together. While you could of course still go the route of trying to please everyone, this would drive costs up immensely. If you want to have everything handed to you on a gold platter, be prepared to pay in gold.

Compare it to the budget vs. the "pro" electronics store. You can go buy a new TV at the budget store where the service is bad, they don't deliver to your house, the store doesn't look very nice, etc. Now, at the "pro" store, you can buy the same TV but it costs $150 more. The service is awesome though, and not only do they deliver to your house, they also install it, hook up your VCR, etc. They even have a 24/7 hotline for when you run into problems! And that is exactly why you pay $150 more :) (well I wouldn't, but it seems you would)

As for the consumer always being right, well, only if he's right. As for having rights - you have the right to vote with your wallet, get a competing product, etc. While as you say most companies exist by the grace of the consumers, most products exist by the grace of the companies making them. It's a symbiotic relationship, not a one-sided one. I regularly see people treating this is only the consumer side or only the business side, and IMHO both viewpoints are just as wrong (unless you are in the services sector).

Besides, BetaBoy already stated in one of his comments that they are working on it, so the whole point is moot anyways - they are giving you what you want, you'll just have to wait for it some more. If it's that big a deal to you, ask for (and get) a refund. In the end, it's the vendor who decides what happens, and it's the consumer who decides if they "get away with it" - and that is decided by use (or non-use) of your wallet, nothing else.

As another comparison, consider HTC. This is a HTC-centric forum. See how many people there are here and how popular their devices are? This while HTC easily has the worst service and support of any company I have ever dealt with. Added to that, their products are half-broken most of the time. They don't even deliver drivers with half their devices, they are always trying to weasel out for repairing your device under warranty, their build quality is not spectacular, and their products are plagued with production faults they claim do not exist. In light of that, I find it plain rediculous that you are complaining about a manual (something 99% of users never even look at) for a great product, instead of complaining about any of the plethora of faults with the hardware said product works on.

That goes even more for those who were complaining a while ago about CorePlayer's hardware accelleration. Technically, CoreCodec is doing is an extreme favor trying to get this to work (you think this is easy? think again!) - because it is without a doubt HTC's fault for not supplying properly accellerated graphics drivers and 3rd party usable APIs for using specific functions like MP4 decoding. (again, typical HTC).

Well, either way I think it's clear our viewpoints differ on this. But I think CoreCodec deserves more than the stream of bashing that this topic is. Their MP4 decoder is generally considered to be the very best in the industry, and I applaud their achievements.