A further update on preorders (18th of November 2012)

[Wrath Of Khan]

I think they just have some fundamental issue that they don't agree on and its boiled over finally. ie 1ghz price, slowing sales of 800 mhz pandys, the pre-order shits gotta take its toll too.Heck even im sick of pre-order qeues now. Its just getting too damn messy. Pre-orders are a goddamned noose around their necks. lots of little things. We can only wait and see.

 

[hedwards]

Craig, I thought it was outrageous when you asked for someone's order number to cancel their order, just because you didn't like the pointed things they were saying. Now I wish that was me - at least I'd have my money.


I don't want to take action against you, but I will if necessary - I would rather you take action to restore our faith. I don't feel you've treated this community with the same faith we have placed in you, and from the years of watching on the sidelines I think you are too prone to making rash decisions and acting alone.


You have absolutely no plan to tackle this backlog. You are showing absolutely no willing to do whatever it takes to resolve this, you appear on the brink of giving up. You seem to be shirking your responsibilities knowing that you can just wind up your company and start again, and won't be personally liable for your unfulfilled orders. I think that's very shameful, the attitude you have.


Why haven't you sought investors in the same way Michael has? It's not beyond you to do that. You need some more working capital so you can buy stock, and through those profits clear down the backlog. It's completely your own choice to do the Kickstarter as a separate company.


Look, Craig, I and many others have been invested in this for many years now... it's a bit shocking really. For your own self-respect, can you not understand what you have put people through? It's not your fault that some things went wrong, like CC -- nobody expected that -- but it is your fault when you bury your head in the sand and don't communicate and discuss with both your customers, and your business partners.


If sales are difficult it's because you've priced yourself out of the market. I'm pretty sure that was your decision: what was going to be a slight increase in the price became an astronomical one. I fully believe that many people who upgraded only did so to at least get something out of this mess, me included. Like I said, you've plunged a bunch of us into an even deeper problem, and state of limbo.

Jesus H Christ. It's astonishing to me that some of you people don't understand that the order was canceled because the person was advocating wire fraud if he did't like the unit. I'm not sure why people still defend that scum's actions. Now, if you're talking about the other instance, well, that's a bit different, but still, I don't think advocating for somebody that was threatening to commit fraud is a laudible activity.


As for Craig, he can't ship units that he doesn't have, and he can't pay for units if all that money is going to pay for refunds. The queue does get cleared either way, but I'm not really sure what else he can do.


At this point, anybody that isn't ED or Craig really shouldn't be taking sides as none of use have any information other than what we've seen posted. And I've been burnt in the past by assuming the publicly available information is accurate and fair.

 

[hedwards]

What makes you think he isn't thinking? I don't have any inside information, but the fact is that ultimately, CC caused most of this mess. It's been confirmed mulitple times that they failed to meet the bare minimum requirements on things like the oxidation issue.


I don't really know what's going on internally, but I was personally surprised that Craig's customers weren't receiving units in proportion to the open orders after that cash infusion via the investment plan. I may well have misunderstood it, and ED did explain it a bit when I asked a few months ago. But, the whole situation is confusing and I get the sense that there's some sort of major communications failure going on internally.

Point is word...


Don't explain to me previous situation coz. I know it.


Problem is he use our money for refund and now he did it again.


If he clear all 1GHz unit as he said I didn't say like that.

Then, why did you post what you posted? Anybody that's been following the progress for the last years should know that it was mostly the CC incompetence that caused the mess.

may be that time I was in the hospital and not much time that's why post from mobilephone but bit difficult enter many line( coz. my eyes is presbyopia


That's why may be make you misunderstanding what really want to say.


Or may be my poor English that is a reason..


Anyway original problem is based on CC thing in last Year but I'm talking about from June not in the past.


Just think about it in business scene can you do that like he did?


Well I can't do that , actually I own my company but I never ever did like that before and future even my company become Bankrupt.


When it happened he just explain the reason for(like a Self-defense) and no Apology.


So what I want to say I want him think more deeply before post especially what we(who trust him and pay 1GHz order/upgrade) feel when he post like that.


P.S.


Hopefully this is enough to explain.

Honestly, right now my English isn't what it usually is. I'm being force fed a diet of Chinese and my brain hurts. I definitely misunderstood you.


I think the thing to keep in mind is that a normal businessman would have declared bankruptcy and moved on. Now, I know that ED was really the one that came up with the plan and drove the fix, but it was still a risky move for Craig to accept the fix, he certainly would be doing better financially now had he just declared bankruptcy and moved on. I can only wonder how much time they've both spent on doing their best to get everybody the units they were promised.


I know it's effectively impossible, but I hope that those of us that have effectively paid for a unit we will never receive and upgraded to a unit that we will/have received will get some sort of rebate from CC.


And yes, I know that's way beyond optimistic.

 

[ekianjo]

An ED-Craig balanced P2 could be wonderful - but seems a very fragile dream right now...

What would be wonderful about that? I do not want to see ANY of that mess again.


I'd rather say an "ED & !Craig" Pandora2 would be way better. And Cheaper. And more people would enjoy it instead of waiting for years for their pre-order and upgrade to see the light of the day.

 

[calc84maniac]

An ED-Craig balanced P2 could be wonderful - but seems a very fragile dream right now...

What would be wonderful about that? I do not want to see ANY of that mess again.


I'd rather say an "ED & !Craig" Pandora2 would be way better. And Cheaper. And more people would enjoy it instead of waiting for years for their pre-order and upgrade to see the light of the day.

Sorry, but ED & !Craig -> !Pandora2. ED said so himself, designing the hardware is Craig's thing.

 

[ekianjo]

An ED-Craig balanced P2 could be wonderful - but seems a very fragile dream right now...

What would be wonderful about that? I do not want to see ANY of that mess again.


I'd rather say an "ED & !Craig" Pandora2 would be way better. And Cheaper. And more people would enjoy it instead of waiting for years for their pre-order and upgrade to see the light of the day.

Sorry, but ED & !Craig -> !Pandora2. ED said so himself, designing the hardware is Craig's thing.

As I said before, Craig is not the only person in the world capable of designing such hardware. Come on, look at what is being done nowadays by no-name companies.

 

[hedwards]

An ED-Craig balanced P2 could be wonderful - but seems a very fragile dream right now...

What would be wonderful about that? I do not want to see ANY of that mess again.


I'd rather say an "ED & !Craig" Pandora2 would be way better. And Cheaper. And more people would enjoy it instead of waiting for years for their pre-order and upgrade to see the light of the day.

Except that, IIRC, Craig was more the hardware side of the team and ED was more the software side of things early on. Craig has managed to successfully launch two products since the OPT started out. So, I'm not sure why "ED & !Craig" is such a desirable idea. BTW, I'm not suggesting that ED hasn't done anything valuable since then, just pointing out that Craig has had successful projects in recent memory. Ditching him over what is primarily a CC problem, seems short sighted.


Assuming of course, that when the queue is cleared and they're ready to move on, ED and Craig are still speaking to each other.


For better or for worse, the OP wouldn't exist without both of them, and I find it rather frustrating all the armchair quarterbacking that's going on based upon incomplete information. For most of us, all we have is the public statements and even without either party lying, it is still rather confusing for those outside the immediate dealings to follow.

As I said before, Craig is not the only person in the world capable of designing such hardware. Come on, look at what is being done nowadays by no-name companies.

No, but most people would have had too much sense to design the OP, Craig is an idealist and has rather lofty goals and from what I can tell, ED is more realistic and grounded. For a project like this, you really need both. Sort of like Apple, Steve and Woz, without either of them you really wouldn't have seen Apple today.

 

[ekianjo]

No, but most people would have had too much sense to design the OP, Craig is an idealist and has rather lofty goals and from what I can tell, ED is more realistic and grounded. For a project like this, you really need both. Sort of like Apple, Steve and Woz, without either of them you really wouldn't have seen Apple today.

Appropriate comparison : Jobs screwed Woz several times and made money in his back while Woz was paid pocket money to work for him. I never thought highly of people who take advantage of others, and Jobs is no exception. He was a tyran in his own company and "transparency" was never one of his key attributes. And he never said sorry about anything either. Yeah, really accurate comparison. And you'll note that Woz stopped working with Jobs pretty fast.

 

[Exophase]

Sorry, but ED & !Craig -> !Pandora2. ED said so himself, designing the hardware is Craig's thing.

And more recently ED has said he doesn't want to do Pandora 2 with Craig. I think ED is giving credit where credit is due here but he's not saying that he needs Craig to make another handheld, in fact in this thread he said he might try something without him.


I don't know why people are saying Craig designed the hardware.. more like he acted as a project manager over two engineers who designed the hardware, MWeston (electrical) and DaveC (mechanical). That's not to say ED did the software either; notaz, DJWillis, and skeezix and I'm sure many others were major workers on that but I'd venture to say that ED did personally contribute more to the software than Craig did to the hardware. Not that it really matters.


I don't think either MWeston or DaveC two are contractually obligated nor under a regular job position with Craig, and while we do know MWeston has been working on Pandora 2 behind the scenes I don't see how he could have been paid. They both did work on Pandora for peanuts and because of that got to keep rights to their designs and if I understand things correctly have some stake in the business prospects. So who's to say if either of them would decide to help with Craig, ED, or neither for another handheld. I'd love to see them back, both did a good job IMO, I want to give DaveC props in particular because he's rarely mentioned these days but his meticulous standards for controls gave us the excellent dpad Pandora has today. But they're not the only people in the world who can do what they do and with enough investment/kickstarter/whatever money more people can be hired.. and I think ED can manage them okay.

 

[ekianjo]

For better or for worse, the OP wouldn't exist without both of them, and I find it rather frustrating all the armchair quarterbacking that's going on based upon incomplete information. For most of us, all we have is the public statements and even without either party lying, it is still rather confusing for those outside the immediate dealings to follow.

It does not take a genius to upgrade the Pandora from there. We do not expect the P2 to be fundamentally different. Hell, even a simply upgraded Pandora with a better screen and up-to-date hardware could be called a P2 and be massively attractive. There's nothing much to change to make the hardware upgraded on the current basis, and most of the effort would be on the software side to adapt the OS for it.


Unless you expect the P2 to be a very different device from the P1, but honestly at this stage something very similar to the P1 would be great and very appealing. What vision do you need??

 

[ekianjo]

But they're not the only people in the world who can do what they do and with enough investment/kickstarter/whatever money more people can be hired.. and I think ED can manage them okay.

Yup, agree. Personally I would lke to have ED as the project manager and ideally he would need to have someone to devote their time for the supply side (in Germany or somewhere else) so that ED can spend his time doing more valuable things. We'll see how things go.

 

[Exophase]

What Pandora 2 does NOT need is a team of people who are fundamentally opposed to each other. Craig and ED aren't caught in a misunderstanding here. They have totally different approaches to making and managing hardware and maybe more significantly they have totally different design goals for Pandora 2 (and let's face it, what ED wants aligns more with what this community wants). It's no good for them to force themselves to work together on one device just to preserve the status quo.


The community has also generated lots of people to form new teams from. Link and Askarus to name just a couple who have already been heavily involved. I'm sure you could list several others, and way more than you could have 5 years ago.

 

[ekianjo]

The community has also generated lots of people to form new teams from. Link and Askarus to name just a couple who have already been heavily involved. I'm sure you could list several others, and way more than you could have 5 years ago.

That's fairly obvious that this project has acted as an embryo to bring more people together on this machine, and from there on we will definitely have more people to support any new project. So, the overall outlook is positive, not for the Pandora 1 maybe, but for future collaboration projects.

 

[skeezix]

Craig in general is relatively disorganized; he doesn't know his weaknesses, doesn't see them.. its quite odd; I can speak some of the earlier history, and he will entirely refute it.. yet I have the IRC logs and details that could prove it .. it sjust strange stuff. *shrug*


For instance, it might be interesting to ask why devs were getting 'dev pandora boards' at the time the original shipping data was at; I think I got my dev board the week before the original shipping data, something like that. Same for cpasjuste. djwillis natureally did have much earlier access as he was really the core of the firmware side for a long time, and I think notaz might have had an earlier board as well. (not to mention zodttd who didn't really do anything.. waste of a very expensive dev board.. that pisses Craig off to not end still today, cost him a lot of money there.) Who knows.. maybe the pcbs were brand new and this was the first prototype.. but thids begs the quesiton why the original shipping date was mentioned and sold on, when there wasn't a working unit? Or if this was a later protoype (mark 2 red pcb wasn't it I forget, woudl have to dig it out and see) then why weren't devs brought in earlier? Either way.. what the heck?


Anyway .. anyone whose ever build anything knows you involve the software guys soon after the hardware is in prototype; when I got my dev board, djw had pulled together a basic firmware and kernel (I forget if notaz had done it or not); there was _no input_ from Craig on direction.. he was focused on working with Mike (Weston) to get the hardware going.. Mike did all the design work, but Craig was managing the funds and ordering parts and all that business, working on shaking hands to get the deals laid down.


Without direction (Craig insists he was giving us all sorts of ideas.. but he said he didn't like IRC, and I think popped by once maybe during any of this timeframe; we were moving very fast, updating the wiki, talking in IRDC, mailing around; we didn't get responses from him when we needed, so we just kept going; perhaps we shoulve' kept trying to bug him, but he just didn't seem to care, so we did what we had to do... we assumed he wass totally happy with out work; he was getting snapshots every few days and trying stuff out, and mike weston was taking pictures of emus and such on the firmware), and with a very pending deadline (we thought we were shipping ASAP), we had to design where we were going with the firmware ASAP; I threw up a private wiki (still have the contents and IRC channel and notaz, djw, vimacs, evildragon, cpasjuste and myself worked out where we were going and how and when; we took a bunch of stabs at different approaches to application bundling and distribution and so forth, notaz hacking kernel interfaces and getting thigns going with charging, wifi, lcd displays, etc etc.. it was _madness_ for a couple of months while we worked day and night to get a usable firmware. We kept finding out (along with everyone else) about the delays.. we thought we had a couple weeks to build a firtmware.. then we thought we had a couple more weeks.. then another month.. and then another. IF we'd known we'd have 6mo or a year to work on firmware, we could've done things differently.. but instead, we had weeks, then more weeks, then more weeks.. so we aimed for that first ultra tight deadline, and then evolved as we got a bit more time here or there.


A few may recall the shitkicking we got later .. 'why didn't you use Android! none of this is how I envisioned it! what you've done is awful, and anything wrong with the pandora is your fault, the firmwares fault, etc'... yet of course, if you look at the Android relases dates.. Android did not even exist until after we'd planned to ship originally. Well, to wit, cpasjuste's launcher wasn't finishing, had a bunch of issues, so Craig did ask me one day 'hey, we need a simple menu, can you make one?" .. we had 5 days until launch, so I wrote the original minimenu base code in 4 nights after work; this explains much But then of course, the launch day slipped and slipped.. but to wit, minimenu was designed by davec and myself, and Craig did ask me afte he tried it, if the Start button coudl start an app ratehr than be a start-menu thingy.. so thats why Start runs an app (which makes sense; Craig is good at cutting through the BS sometimes -- anyway, thats about the entirety of his input into the firmware from what I know.. was the start button Now, ED did talk to craig I'm sure and ED provided all our guidance, so I assumed he got some guidance from Craig.. but I don't think so.


ED guided the software; he's a linux guy of course, and we wanted a good linux distro yet usable, so we did what we could. But ED was our guiding light.. he was the fellow all along who said 'this is too awkward, lets try to make it simpler..', and he was our primary tester; we'd code all night, and he'd spend the rest of the night testing and letting us know bug reports so we could fix them next morning, etc.


So.. from a _software_ perspective, totally disorganized... but the whoel team banged on the software, outside of craig and mike weston.


The hardware design, that was Mike Weston, and that was Good. Brilliant even.


Craig sourced parts and was the _idea man_ who kicked it all off.. but I dont' know what he really did after.. just assumed bankrolling and such, since he certainly didn't come near the software; he will say he did, and say all sorts.. his memory is different than all of ours and my IRC logs; he was the guy who said 'screw it, lets build ourselves one of the most powerful clamshells we can, for retro gaming'; kudos for that. He also sweat blood for a long time along with ED, with the volcano and CC and so forth. He's suffered, and I'm sure that warps a man.


But lets not say 'hey, he's only been disorganized lately'; lets say he's always been a disorganized mess.


jeff


edit: by which I mean .. Most of us will not work on P2 with Craig, but if ED wants to do something and wants us to help, I'm sure we'd all jump in. One must ask.. if Fatih, ED, notaz, myself, and random other devs like sebt3 etc will not work with craig.. you have to wonder.

 

[EvilDragon]

Things seem to get a bit more calm here, which is good.


We'll work out the Pandora 1 issues somehow. We've had a lot of drama and crisis in the past and we'll find solutions here as well, I'm sure about that.


I think the biggest issue Craig had here (that's what I read from his posts) was that he didn't get more free units for a while.


Well, that was simply because of those 70 units... he'll get more free ones in the future, that's something I know.


I simply didn't expect to NOT receive that one payment - and those missing 20K is a lot when you're setting up the payments for the next 1000 Pandoras...


So it all goes down to the refunds he had. Still, the amount of units he got is what was planned after the first 2000 units, so the remaining ones follow with the next 2000 units - and these start from next week on.

 

[hedwards]

Things seem to get a bit more calm here, which is good.


We'll work out the Pandora 1 issues somehow. We've had a lot of drama and crisis in the past and we'll find solutions here as well, I'm sure about that.


I think the biggest issue Craig had here (that's what I read from his posts) was that he didn't get more free units for a while.


Well, that was simply because of those 70 units... he'll get more free ones in the future, that's something I know.


I simply didn't expect to NOT receive that one payment - and those missing 20K is a lot when you're setting up the payments for the next 1000 Pandoras...


So it all goes down to the refunds he had. Still, the amount of units he got is what was planned after the first 2000 units, so the remaining ones follow with the next 2000 units - and these start from next week on.

I think for those of us on the outside looking in, it would be best for us to remember that there's almost certainly a lot we don't actually know about. I'm personally remaining neutral because egging on you or Craig isn't something which is going to result in more Pandoras being shipped. Nor will it increase the likelihood that there is a P2 at some point.


I think really what needs to happen is that the queue needs to be cleared and everybody needs to have some time off to let cooler heads prevail. Obviously, clearing the queue and working through the work is already a high priority, but I think until that happens it's going to be difficult for the crankiness of various people inside and outside the project to subside.


On the plus side, my Pandora apparently arrived today or yesterday. So, I should have it before too long. Which means that's another order that you no longer have to worry about.


Ultimately, flame wars here is at best no help. And probably makes things even worse as this is one of the places people go to find information about the units. And I'm not personally sure that I would have bought my unit had I seen the developers and general flaminess.

 

[EvilDragon]

But lets not say 'hey, he's only been disorganized lately'; lets say he's always been a disorganized mess.

To be honest - most of the people out there with brilliant ideas are like that.


However, a production with parts coming from different sources, with different, long leadtimes and a time-critical production plan does not go well with disorganization.


You forget to order one part - and it could lead to half a year delay. You do this a couple of times and have YEARS of delays.


That's why such brilliant people should be able to work together with others who handle the areas they are not good with (in this case: Community contact, setting up a well-thought plan including all the needed work like contracts, etc.)


This "working-together" is something he is still missing, in my opinion.


He's got his ideas - and nothing else is good or counts. He wants to do as much as possible himself, as he fears it won't work otherwise.


Once he learns that it is probably better if others have this idea and that other people can help making his ideas and products a reality, he can go far.


I hope this doesn't sound like I'm ranting against Craig here.


I don't think he's stupid or an evil person or anything. But everyone has his purpose and areas he's great in.


However, it's sometimes very hard to realize areas you're not good at - and even harder to step back and say "I'm not good with this - please, could you do this?" and totally trust the one who's doing it.


I think I did a good job with getting the production working again. There was NO drama until the 1GHz preorders started... so until Craig interfered here, everything worked as planned. If he had concentrated on promotion and new sales instead and left the production and switch to 1GHz units completely in my hands, we would probably be in a better situation now.


Well, won't help. We need to resolve that and we will do that.

 

[ekianjo]

edit: by which I mean .. Most of us will not work on P2 with Craig, but if ED wants to do something and wants us to help, I'm sure we'd all jump in. One must ask.. if Fatih, ED, notaz, myself, and random other devs like sebt3 etc will not work with craig.. you have to wonder.

From what I read, it does not seem Craig accomplished much more than kicking things off, anyway. The rest of the team can do fine without him for any new project.

 

[skeezix]

edit: by which I mean .. Most of us will not work on P2 with Craig, but if ED wants to do something and wants us to help, I'm sure we'd all jump in. One must ask.. if Fatih, ED, notaz, myself, and random other devs like sebt3 etc will not work with craig.. you have to wonder.

From what I read, it does not seem Craig accomplished much more than kicking things off, anyway. The rest of the team can do fine without him for any new project.

To be fair, and to add to what ED said -- the Pandora would _not_ have existed without Craig or his crazy ideas up front, and I'm sure he worked his ass off; ED and Craig carry huge mortgages and such to get this project off the ground, and they took all the risk. Day one (I'd just had my first daughter) I said 'no way I'm putting $$ in this, too risky, I'll work day and night instead' But these guys worked day and night and put up their houses.. thats *balls* most of us do not have.


Also, GBAX was cool once I bought my first GP32 from Craig, and my gp2x's

 

[Rockthesmurf]

A little bit off topic, but a few people have mentioned the lack of thanks received by a lot of the guys who put so much work in to make the Pandora possible (design, firmware, software, distributions, hardware, repositories, whatever) and I know that thanks is something you really want to receive from Craig, but for what it is worth, I, and hundreds or thousands of other people are very thankful for all the hard work. So thank you! For those lucky enough to actually have a Pandora, it still amazes me every time I flip the lid open and use it. It really is quite amazing what has been accomplished (even more so when all the problems faced are considered).