New Pandora's Unofficial Roadmap

[chuckr]

Always reading the endless qualifications just feels unnecessarily painful, is all.

Agreed 100%, they're as painful to type as they are to read. What's more painful though, is the result of not doing this. Once a little factoid or a date gets into circulation, it starts getting posted as fact. Someone mentions it, ten people react to it as if it's official, then a fire has to be put out. I'm trying to minimise this by ramming the "unofficial" point home constantly. There will still be people who don't get it, and will complain about the dates being wrong. Having said that, I think some of my wording is pretty clunky and I plan to tidy it up.

Revision history: I did put some thought into it after Monk suggested something similar. The blog doesn't allow for such a feature, and setting up + hosting it somewhere else wasn't really viable. For the sake of my free time I decided to leave it at highlighting the most recent changes. I'm also noting start/finish dates against each item on the list.

More detailed facts: Vorporeal said it all really. I've already gone waaay out on a limb by estimating completion dates. I want to keep all the other information in the roadmap as solid and well sourced as possible. I have to take responsibility for what I post, so I don't want to pad it out with theoretical numbers. There were some posts from ED several months back regarding the production rate, but given the fluid nature of the project I don't know if it's a good idea to cite old sources. If we get new info though, I will add it by all means.

Thanks for your comments, feedback is always good.

Well, maybe dealing with the "unofficial" thing, I'm always completely amazed that ANYONE could ever be simple enough not to realize when they're being handed estimates. Probably if I were forced into your position, I would have a very nasty first few weeks, because I just can't believe anyone is crazy enough to try to force folks to live up to guesses. That said, you're probably right, but I really did want you to know just how good a job I think your Roadmap is doing.

With all that admitted about guesses, could you (safely) give me some kinda SWAG about the kind of rate that might be seen in shipping? Me (at least) you're not going to get any ragging from, I'm just curious. I *think* it's the only point I am not clear enough on, so I'm likely not to have to write again until I have one in hand ...

 

[gruso]

Ok, after a hellish searching session I found this:

The factory will not do all 4000 at once, even if they had absolutely every part in front of them. This is a brand new design using technology that still isn't adopted by all assemblers. That is the POP design. Also, the 0.4mm pitched parts tends to cause troubles and requires very specific and repeated procedures to be followed to guarantee success. Basically, we have to do this in small runs. I tested a few boards of the new design, then batches get larger like 20 boards then 100, then 400 and then maybe the balance but the procedure has to be nailed down before they will pump out thousands.

This post is very old (too old to link on the blog), but it gives you the idea. Since then they've had a lot of time (and several board revisions) to fine tune the process, and as you know they've already made the first 105 boards.

Other tidbits I've come across (I don't have time to find & link them right now):

- The factory is capable of making 5,000 units per day. This total includes Pandora along with any other products they're doing. They can't actually make 5,000 Pandoras in one day.
- Once mass production starts, testing and shipping the entire first batch is expected to take 6-8 weeks.

 

[j.pickens]

- Once mass production starts, testing and shipping the entire first batch is expected to take 6-8 weeks.

Two Months! [sup]tm[/sup]

 

[atomicthumbs]

Hey, it's quantum physics! What's the likelihood of the PCBs tunneling through time and being finished last October? Let's have someone visit the factory so they'll collapse the waveform. 

 

[Monk]

Revision history: I did put some thought into it after Monk suggested something similar. The blog doesn't allow for such a feature, and setting up + hosting it somewhere else wasn't really viable. For the sake of my free time I decided to leave it at highlighting the most recent changes. I'm also noting start/finish dates against each item on the list.

Noticed that at the weekend IIRC, many thanks. Although I love the graph and think a graph would be an even better way to visually get the proposed timeline across, I note that the graph shows OpenPandora taking my Pandora back repeatedly - so even though it's an official graph I am going to put my fingers in my ears and pretend it doesn't exist... lalalalaaaaa!

Ta

 

[gp2.eXe]

[...] so even though it's an official graph I am going to put my fingers in my ars and pretend it doesn't exist... lalalalaaaaa!

Ta

Ehhh... I know there's a missing "e" in there, but I hope it goes in the beginning of the word... :blink:

 

[gruso]

Ehhh... I know there's a missing "e" in there, but I hope it goes in the beginning of the word... :blink:

:lol:

 

[Monk]

[...] so even though it's an official graph I am going to put my fingers in my ears and pretend it doesn't exist... lalalalaaaaa!

Ta

Ehhh... I know there's a missing "e" in there, but I hope it goes in the beginning of the word...

But... isn't it more fun just to leave people wondering?

 

[bzar]

Ehhh... I know there's a missing "e" in there, but I hope it goes in the beginning of the word... :blink:

:lol:

:lol: 'd

 

[gruso]

Ok, so here's what I said three days ago.

Once a little factoid or a date gets into circulation, it starts getting posted as fact. Someone mentions it, ten people react to it as if it's official, then a fire has to be put out.

Today, a textbook example. In the blog comments, Alpha2 said:

...honestly I dont think anyone will actually get their Pandora till December.

Then someone else said:

Yay! So it'll be the most awesome Christmas present ever!

Then someone else said:

...from what I see it could ship in December.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU

Alpha2's full post was actually pretty reasonable. But see how easily a bit of hearsay or guesswork becomes "real" information to people? It's like being in a room full of panicked monkeys on meth.

Just had to vent here instead of on the blog.

 

[Prometheus]

I don't think that that could possibly be more timely... :blink: