I do not mind ZWO keeping this closed and tightly controlled as long as they continue improving the product. Or alternatively, make the software open source and corner the market that way, like Meta/FaceBook is trying to do with the AI field and llama 3.1 - ZWO has chosen to do neither and that is what will lead to loss of users and market share.
I have been using the SeeStar/S50 for 6 months now and I cannot say I saw a single significant improvement that ZWO has made during this time - nothing has changed in the way I use the S50 now compared with 6 months ago. And I can give you a long list of new features that would make my use of the S50 easier and more enjoyable that ZWO addressed with the now famous "Thank you for your support. Please give us some time", or in other words "Don't call us, we'll call you" - with this policy and at this rate of improvement, ZWO will not have a product to sell in 12 months or so.
If nothing else, things have gone downhill, for example, I remember being able to achieve between 60% and 80% success in stacked frames in the winter, now I am lucky if I can get 30% - is this due to an issue with a recent firmware update or is my S50 tracking mechanism getting flaky? I don't know.
I also never encountered this once in 6 months, but it happened twice last night to me, in an 8 minute interval:
You may say "but those are satellite trails Starnet, it's not ZWO's fault", but if you'll stop and think about it you will realize those are not satellites, they are too many, and too parallel and too colorful for that, they are bugs, and not of the biological kind, they are software bugs.
