Summary: Interactive Brokers implements anything BUT what customers suggest in the Feature Poll For the past 4 months, IB hasn't implement any of the requests users made on its own Feature Poll. Instead, they implemented in Trader WorkStation frivolous features that nobody asked for (on the Feature Poll), or obscure enhancements that, if requested at all, have way fewer votes than simpler and more useful ones. Longer story: Today IB just released a new build (917.3) of the web-based TWS. Here are their release notes for the past 4 releases so far in 2011: Build 917 (Apr 26): Quote Details Data Window Enhanced News Access via Newswire Check CUSIP New Right-Click Action Menu - nice, sure, but definitely not a critical feature; nobody requested this New Columns in Risk Navigator Trading Currency Column in Quote Monitor API: Last Known Trade during Regular Trading Hours Build 916 (Mar 21): Company Fundamentals Enhancements Comprehensive Check Margin Values Floating Thumbnail Charts New Passive Relative Orders Enhanced Dividends Editor Menus Moved into Title Bar - this saves some screen space, but again, nowhere near as useful as margin per position or price offset in ticks Trading Hours Included in Contract Description Build 915 (Feb 15): Chart Enhancements Including Reposition Model Navigator: Edit Stock Lending Yield Time & Sales Repeating Quotes Accumulate/Distribute Algo Supported via API Arb Meter added to Analytical Tools Menu Build 914 (Jan 19): TWS Interface Upgrades Floating Watchlist Market Data Home Exchange Group Quick Column Editing Frozen Quotes for Subscribed Contracts Risk Navigator Option Greeks Display API Bypass Yield-to-Worst Precaution Enhanced Charts Lock Time and Sales to Scroll Native or Calculated Volume Delta Column Available Globally Now here's what customers have requested from TWS - these are the top voted suggestions in the first 10 pages of the Feature Poll, with the most voted first: Option to disable the auto logoff - most requested feature of all time (total: over 150 votes), declined repeatedly over the past 5 years for reasons never explained: here, here, here and here. Margin per position (122 total votes) - also here since 2007 and declined here and here since 2006. People just need this feature, and it's obvious from how it's being requested over the years in spite of IB declining to implement it. Option risk graphs, also denied here, but still open here and not merged Time & Sales for one bar via the API - denied twice Price offset in ticks, in addition to amount or percentage. Super useful for futures. Requested since 2007-May. Trivial to implement, probably less work-intensive than than "New Right-Click Action Menu" or "Menus Moved into Title Bar", more useful, and definitely more requested. Weekly and monthly bars in charts, and again here and here (and again not merged), and generally older historical data in charts Check for careless orders on the wrong side of the parent order Reduce memory usage for TWS Gateway Improved market scanner Volume+ option (volume with a line through it indicating average volume) Ability to automatically create orders for options on MID price, not bid when buying and ask when selling - sounds pretty simple, no? Ignored since 2010-Jan. Alerts that don't self-delete - again, sounds really simple. Requested since 2009-Jun. STP order for futures spread trading Remove historical data limitation after regular trading hours. No need to enforce historical data limits after RTH because there is not a lot of traffic and the servers are pretty idle. Continuous futures symbol, joining futures one after another as they expire Open interest for futures Logarithmic time scale in charts Add Stop/Stop Limit/TRAIL order types to the Conditional Order. Time&Sales true Real Time from Exchange Here is the list of features from Feature Poll that IB implemented during the past 4 TWS releases (i.e. this year): Keep bid, ask, and mid for options after the close Note how this feature didn't make it in the release notes. Also, it's interesting how a very good idea, to notify Feature Poll voters by e-mail when there are new Feature Poll suggestions to be voted on, was declined. To sum up: If someone higher up the chain from IB reads this, please have a look at the Feature Poll and if possible, suggest a re-prioritization of work. Users are told by CS reps to submit feature requests (and even bug reports) to the Feature Poll. But if we keep seeing that the features we ask for aren't the features that get implemented, that negates the purpose of the Feature Poll. I'd also suggest that this has happened already: out of the tens of thousands (I guess) IB customers, only a hundred or so voted on the most requested features. Please rebuild our trust in the Feature Poll.
Yeah, fuck these new features. I stopped even reading about all the "what's new" stuff long ago. Instead, I want, and know many agree, an as-simple-as-possible interface without ANY fancy features. Also, the forced upgrades are a pain. Just let us use an old version that is PROVEN TO WORK. There seems to be a developer bureaucracy inside IB that needs to continually prove itself to upper management by creating new and fancy features which nobody really cares about.
Why anybody would expect things to change is a little beyond me. Organizations are the way they are because of the people at the top and Petterfy's been there for decades. Even if he were to be replaced nothing would change too much because the customers are used to crappy software. Organizational entropy you know... They released some changes to their API recently and broke things for some third party developers. The developers were already having difficulties with the IB API so having a new version of it breaking things is no surprise to anybody I suppose. It's like the telephone system in France back in the day: It just sucks, nobody knows exactly why, and nobody seems to fix it. In the modern software development environments there are not many reasons that making great software should be terribly difficult. One charting service can roll out fixes nearly the same day as the bugs are reported! I experience that so I know it can be done. Strangely, TWS has problems that have been around for many years!!
Vendors do customer polls partly to make users feel important and also to get rough ideas. They often do not pay that much attention to the detailed results and votes.