Visualising changes, multi-checkouts and merging is impossible.
Seems ripe for disruption? Or will this stay an unsolved problem forever?
We pivoted. The main issue we faced is the way the electrical engineers work and how difficulty it is to change this. It was incredible hard the explain these people how to properly use a VCS. We focused on a simple interface and tried to optimize on the way electrical engineers work. No chance!
Obviously the same applied to LayerVault [1].
[1] http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/03/11/layervault-the-version...
I think this is a big mistake programmers make when trying to create VCS for other industries. A lot other fields with binary files don't care about merge as much. Like electronic design automation: track every part's history and even every module on a board or die layout. But, practically it's difficult to have two people productivly work on the same small piece simultaneously.
[edit] I also think a bunch of the reasons programmers require merge are because code is organized into files. Organization into files is arbitrary and often doesn't correlate particularly well with logical structure.