Pandora Killed The Wiz

[torpor]

Pandora: Great to develop for! Open, easy, accessible.
Wiz: A pain in the ass to develop for! 3D hardware, yeah, but .. how do we programmers use it? Meh.

 

[Esn]

They on the other hand felt there must be a 'proper' way to fix the problem.

Oh, man... I've had the same experience with one person I know whose day job is being a software engineer. We were working together on a public event (I won't say what exactly), and the night before, I found out that the video wasn't playing as it should. He spent HOURS trying to get it fixed "properly", but finally we settled on my "quick and dirty" solution that I had suggested in the beginning, though I'm not an expert at all. The thing is, it barely made a difference, but he seemed to object on principle to not doing it in the proper way, and was prepared to sacrifice a proper night's rest which we really needed before the next day...

 

[kuru]

The Wiz has never been an option for me due to the small size and weird controls. I would have rather stuck to my NDS or gotten a Dingoo A320 instead.

Commenting on the issue of dev work:
I do a little bit of programming myself, but everything I learned so far is doing fairly easy stuff using COBOL, PHP, Javascript, ABAP and VB6.0. There was even a little C at school, but I didn't do too well in it.
Someone mentioned a porting guide above. Something like that, a wiki section maybe, would be awesome. I do not shy back from learning, it's just that there's massive hurdles alone through the fact that I don't know where to start with anything. If experienced Devs like Pickle could take the time to draw a few outlines for noobs and wannabes like me we will all profit.

 

[crow_riot]

Pandora: Great to develop for! Open, easy, accessible.
Wiz: A pain in the ass to develop for! 3D hardware, yeah, but .. how do we programmers use it? Meh.

i only have a wiz - and did not yet order a pandora so i can only talk about the experience on the wiz side.

it IS indeed a major PITA to program - because of the missing (but coming?) wifi module. unplugging/plugging/copying/sync'ing and whatever takes so long all the time just for a little test that it gets almost frustrating. and if you make your wiz crash and need to reboot - it takes sooooo long to boot again ....

GPH killed the wiz by themselves by not bringing the proper tools out at the right time - i mean: no SDK at the time of releasing for an opensource handheld that should be supported with free software by a community??? when i unpacked my wiz i first was happy to see a CD inside - i meant to get an SDK installer, documentation and whatnot - so that i can start fiddling around immediately. but wait - there was literally nothing useful on.

that is what makes to pandora so much better - there are already people developing for that gadget even before it is released, because the tools are there!

anyway i like the wiz, i like what i accomplished with my 3d game and i hope for pickle that the users stop complainig about his ports, because i can really understand his frustration - people are really ungrateful sometimes (often?)

 

[hch]

Back in March 08 when the Pandora was being released next month, I had a look at the Wiz and thought "F that". When the delays started coming and I started checking back each month or so the Wiz was the least enthusiastic release...The Pandora could do a million times more things and it was only gonna take a month whilst they sorted the wifi/cases/nubs yada yada.

So anyone else think the Wiz didn't get the attention it deserved. Maybe if the coders that would've gone to the Wiz but instead wanted to code for the pandora then the Wiz would have a better scene...PSX emulation would probably be at %100 by now. I know if I hadn't opted for the the Pandora, I would've owned a Wiz for over a year now!

you obviously don't know what you are talking about. it always was *two* months.

 

[raindog]

The Wiz is dead, yes, is dead in this community, wich is devoted to the pandora. Now that the waiting is about to end (again) the Wiz seems even deader. But don´t forget that there are other communities, yes, incredible but true.

Sorry for... you know.

 

[crow_riot]

The Wiz is dead, yes, is dead in this community, wich is devoted to the pandora. Now that the waiting is about to end (again) the Wiz seems even deader. But don´t forget that there are other communities, yes, incredible but true.

Sorry for... you know.

well that seems to be true - gp32spain is a quite active wiz community, too bad i dont speak spanish

 

[Dunny]

The Wiz is dead, yes, is dead in this community, wich is devoted to the pandora. Now that the waiting is about to end (again) the Wiz seems even deader. But don´t forget that there are other communities, yes, incredible but true.

Sorry for... you know.

The Wiz isn't dead in this community at all - there seems to be an active scene of people complaining about it. Of course, they should be complaining to GPH, but we know they don't listen.

D.

 

[urjaman]

A porting guide? ... With compiler onboard:

$ tar xf app.tar.gz
$ cd app
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install # or su + make install + exit
$ app

Okay, so that wont cut it?
I'm slightly interested in the idea (wont really do a thing before i get my pandora though, and i have a million things to do in life so dunno);
But what should one really cover?

 

[crow_riot]

The Wiz isn't dead in this community at all - there seems to be an active scene of people complaining about it. Of course, they should be complaining to GPH, but we know they don't listen.

D.

+1

 

[kuru]

[edit, cut]
But what should one really cover?

Places to start off, information to be acquired, general principles of procedures involved? This is a question only a "pro" can answer.

 

[Fishbong]

Soooo... the Wiz sold badly because the Pandora was always "2 months" away?

I think it would have sold much worse if the Pandora was already out.

 

[WizardStan]

Was the Dingoo even available when the Wiz was released.

3 months before, in fact: Dingoo was out February 2009, Wiz didn't show up until May.

 

[Monk]

Soooo... the Wiz sold badly because the Pandora was always "2 months" away?

I think it would have sold much worse if the Pandora was already out.

Agreed. Basically what is being said is that the Wiz suffered from a form of the Osborne effect, the promise of a brighter, better future - in just Two MonthsTM. If the Pandora hadn't been advertised until Two Months before it actually gets delivered then it seems reasonable that more Wiz's (wizes? Wizzes?) would have been sold in the interim. The Pandora competed without having to actually compete/work/be delivered. I have no doubt it had am adverse effect on Wiz sales. How much - that's far more open to conjecture/debate.

 

[Prometheus]

I'm still interested as to how many sales were impacted by bad experiences with the previous hardware, myself...

 

[crow_riot]

I'm still interested as to how many sales were impacted by bad experiences with the previous hardware, myself...

i'd be interested how many wiz'es have been sold in total.

when i look at the downloads in the openhandhelds archive, it cant be really much. top downloaded software is mame4all with somewhat of 20.000 downloads - so if this number does not reset after the entry was updated (which is what i assume), people may have downloaded it twice, three times or even more ... so to make a guess, i dont think they've sold more than 5000 pieces

 

[grahamr]

Maybe if the coders that would've gone to the Wiz but instead wanted to code for the pandora then the Wiz would have a better scene...

I don't think this is how it works. Coders have real lives with a lot of competition for time and effort, unless you produce hardware that interests them, they can happily spend their time working, shopping, watching TV, playing games, taking the dog for a walk... They don't have timesheets where they have to fill in X hours per week developing for 'an opensource orientated hardware device'. You need them to wow them with hardware that offers exciting opportunies. The pool of developers is not a fixed finite resource that has to be rationed between the machines. Not bringing out a cool device because you want to keep developers working on existing hardware is fundamentally idiotic.

 

[Monk]

Not bringing out a cool device because you want to keep developers working on existing hardware is fundamentally idiotic.

I think this is part of the gripe/issue. OpenPandora didn't bring out a better device than the Wiz - they announced that they would, but so far it still hasn't shipped. Pandora hasn't been released - so any argument stating that "not releasing" it wouldn't have helped doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

 

[grahamr]

*removed* - double post - internet connection playing up

 

[Wootson]

I'm thinking it's maybe the other way around...

Because the Pandora got so much attention worldwide it also created a little more publicity for the open source handhelds in general. Which includes both the Dingoo and the Wiz. And the Wiz actually got some very nice software at the moment. I really can't say it's "dead" or something like that. There's not as much software available as for the F-100 and the F-200, but it isn't really as terrible as people make it sound.

The Pandora gives you more to play with, but you also need to pay some more. And people are not always so entirely into this open source thing so that they lay down $330 for it. Apart from that, lots of people do not want to wait until the Pandora comes out. So, they buy a Wiz or a Dingoo to play around with. I think the Wiz is actually a pretty solid device, both in hardware and software.

The formula is as follows: people see Pandora ---> do not want to spend so much or do not want to wait as long ---> buy Dingoo/Wiz.

If things are so-called true in one way, the other way must be disproved first (and viceversa). I don't see any proof that this "Wiz-is-dead-theory" is true, at all.