Thoughts On "why Isn't Software Done"/'i Payed... I Ex

[daffy]

There is a concept in economics of "normal profit" -- the least profit for someone to want to do something.

I think the folks complaining about WiFi not working yet etc are missing the "bunch of hackers" perspective, and that they're not even close to a normal profit here. This was just a bunch of importers getting together and doing a really ballsy thing -- making great hardware having never done it before.

They took big risks, and treated the folks wanting to pitch in financially pretty well -- seems more like a $500 device than a $300 device to me.

If they wind up making back their investment, plus a normal profit, just on doing the hardware, and the community winds up doing the software collaboratively as open source, then we've nothing to complain about, because the sales only pay for the hardware development and manufacture. And for Jeebus' sake, we're not even close to that point, yet. Just be grateful for everything we're getting here.

If one day the Pandora has sold 100,000 units so is seriously profitable, a purchaser of an established platform at that point might reasonably expect OP to invest in providing a slick gadget out of the box.

But for now, I'm grateful that OP put their houses and balls on the line so I could get this subsidised first-run unit, and I'm grateful to the devs who are doing software for it on their time for free.

The only reasonable complaint one could have about how OP does business is their poor communication. And that has gotten much better in the last couple of months.

Count me a very grateful fan. If you're not, with things just as they are, then I think you can still get your money back. Otherwise, just stop whining, for chrissake.

 

[EvilDragon]

Thanks. You can be sure that - when we have the money for it - we will for sure hire some programmers if there is stuff that nobody has been able to fix before.

 

[craigix]

We did actually hire someone who was ex-TI to get those wifi drivers working, thousands of dollars later and we had... nothing. And he fucked off.

So even if you try that route, it does not always work.

 

[Dead1nside]

I agree. I really don't see what all this whining recently is about. Mass production of the cases is starting for goodness sake!

As for the software, I'm way more impressed than I was seeing Enlightenment running on it, many months back. It's running xfce, we've got pretty damn good power management already and the only real problem at the moment is the wifi. If anything it's going to make my Pandora addiction worse checking for updates every day...twice a day... ten times a day. It's bad enough with my Linux desktop, I'm obsessed with updating to the next best thing.

As I've said in a few other threads I'm confident that the OS and the software in general is going to mature at a faster rate once these are out in the wild and OP are working on the second batch. Again I'm so grateful to everyone who's working on the software and hardware side on this. Without this collaborative approach, we wouldn't have the Pandora.

Edit: @Craigix: That's rubbish about the ex-TI guy. I heard way back that we were using a Nokia sourced driver, whose are we using now and what was wrong with the old one, out of interest?

 

[Username]

We did actually hire someone who was ex-TI to get those wifi drivers working, thousands of dollars later and we had... nothing. And he fucked off.

So even if you try that route, it does not always work.

Wow, what a dick. Did anything he do contribute?

 

[craigix]

No. Small claims court has been considered.

 

[kingoddball]

Shit Yeah! Get that bitch!

But did he do "all he could" or break a contract?

Edit: Maybe the work was 'beyond his skills'. If an explicit contract was not made you might end up wasting more money in court/claims case.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, DJWillis was doing a far better job - in his sparetime.
He managed to get WiFi working

 

[Prometheus]

Sorry that I don't have anything to say about the chap Craig mentioned, other than "Arg!", but I just wanted to chime in and say that I was very happy when I read the recent blog posting. What's working sounds excellent, and to be honest, slow WiFi sounds fine to me. In fact, I'm more than happy with that.

Why am I more than happy with it? Well, I recently bought a (*very* cheap) clearance HP Mini-Note 2133 - the Linux version that HP made it incredibly difficult to obtain. The thing had SUSE pre-installed, and it didn't even work with its own wireless hardware - it just wouldn't do anything at all. I also had a similarly aggravating experience with the original EeePC (bought at launch) where some of the software had clearly been thrown in without any thought to usability and the resolution of the screen, and the UnionFS setup was so incredibly poor that you could cause the machine to become unbootable just by applying official software updates. When I come across instances of companies that big clearly not tailoring their software properly, it makes me all the more grateful that the Pandora and you folks behind it are around, and all the more grateful for the enormous effort you're obviously putting into everything.

Also, I hope you guys know that there are those of us out there who don't simply think "Oh, it's a company, so the one and only thing they care about is money." and whatever else comes up in that vein. That sort of "anti-company"/"not human beings" (for want of a better description - it's really the only one I can think of) mentality seems to lead to far too many myths about products and production, from my (admittedly, somewhat limited) understanding. (Unfortunately, and ironically, they often seem to be myths which cause detriment to customers - such as the rise of fake flash media, for example.)

So, yeah, thankyou very much.

 

[Timstertoo]

Reading about the Pandora and browsing the forums I really only expect a good functioning bit of hardware.

I think the true potential of the machine softwarewise won't show itself until the first batch hits the buyers and the community development starts.

Strangely enough that's part of the attraction to me. I think if you're expecting a slick completely functioning stand alone system you should look at one of the bigger players on the market and go for that. Like Sony or Nintendo. Or get an iPad (bit of a stretch I know, but you catch my drift)

Also as a business owner, if I think if the financial risk the guys have taken on themselves with a susbstantial reward being far from guaranteed I can only take my hat of to them for going for it. I've not been on here long enough to know if you all have wifes and kids but I can speak from my own experience how much stress and anxiety it brings into your household if you venture into something you firmly believe in but have nothing to show for it but a load of debt and craploads of uncertainty for the foreseeable future.

 

[dpoarch]

We did actually hire someone who was ex-TI to get those wifi drivers working, thousands of dollars later and we had... nothing. And he fucked off.

So even if you try that route, it does not always work.

well you did say ti. ti does some great stuff but they do some weird stuff too. I mean the documentation is some times unreadable and have you ever used an msp430? One of their staple products because of power consumption is one of the buggiest hard to use micros I have ever touched. I know there are some great minds at TI but there are some duds too. Too bad you happened to hire was one of the latter.

 

[Grench]

We did actually hire someone who was ex-TI to get those wifi drivers working, thousands of dollars later and we had... nothing. And he fucked off.

So even if you try that route, it does not always work.

Not always - but surely there are -some- good & honest ones out there?

Well, DJWillis was doing a far better job - in his sparetime.
He managed to get WiFi working

About DJWillis's spare time... Would he be prone to rent some of his non-spare time (take off a couple of half days from work - vacation) and maybe finish them up if some of those developer fund $$$ were to flow his way to compensate him? Not bribery per say - just to compensate him for loosing his vacation time. It sounds like he is possibly more skilled at this than the TI guy was.

The only other person I've seen write SDHC/IO drivers is Dmitry of http://www.palmpowerups.com/readarticle.php?article_id=11
I don't know if he is still in the game or not. He has been known to work for bounty on the palm platform. I don't know how similar or different the implementation would be, but he might be someone worth contacting on it. He managed to do what the engineers at Palm said was just plain impossible - and squashed the myth that there was any real hardware reason why an SD port couldn't read an SDHC card.

Stick in the fight guys - I'm impressed on where this project has gotten to. Almost there.

 

[bustaballs]

No. Small claims court has been considered.

After things are running smooth, I'd go after that bitch for sure. That's some bullshit.

 

[ThaDSman]

No. Small claims court has been considered.

After things are running smooth, I'd go after that bitch for sure. That's some bullshit.

Believe that...

 

[rabidpoobear]

No. Small claims court has been considered.

After things are running smooth, I'd go after that bitch for sure. That's some bullshit.

Believe that...

Werd.

 

[TaG]

Typical that wifi is probably at the top of many people's list - including mine. But I'm sure it will get improved once this thing is out.

If this thing got released with everything perfect it would be a bit dull.

 

[⬡]

Hey, it works. Slow wifi beats no wifi. I have to agree with the OP. Just the fact that open development is encouraged rather than hindered makes this the most awesome handheld I've ever heard of.

 

[fischju2000]

A little not exactly on topic, but I've just seen a post for this on Engadget, and with Linux drivers, the promise of a very large range, and price of $35 it doesn't look bad at all. I am wondering if the specs of

Power Consumption:
Transmit: around 380mA
Receiver: around 250mA

Means it will use more than 500mA for any length of time while browing the web. (Making it incompatible with Pandora)



Back on topic, I didn't expect everything to be working perfectly on launch anyway. A month after the 4000 are out we should have a much more polished system which is more than nearly any device can claim, with all the huge patches and bugfixes that come out months and years into their lives. But I don't think OP should be sending units to Engadget until that happens.

 

[torpor]

I work on these sorts of driver issues for a living. If I'd managed to get a Pandora dev machine 6 months ago I'm pretty sure we'd have working WLan drivers. I know, I know, its not so easy .. but believe me, neither is getting IEGBE network drivers on Tolapai working, and thats been my day job.

That said, when I get my Pandora's, I'm going to help as much as I can. Its just a matter of having enough people out there with actual hardware to work on the problem - as soon as there is at least 50 of us with real Pandora's, many of these problems will fade away .. as we have seen, time and again so far, in cases like with squeezix and notaz and so on ..

 

[taylor-madeak]

I can't believe ED is getting raked over the coals the way he is for his blog update. It's just...asinine is the only word that comes to mind. Kudos to this thread for trying to shine the light of reason into the forum, no matter how futile the task may really be.

EvilDragon...dude, you're telling us what works well, what kinda works, and what still needs some work. That kind of communication is appreciated by preorders like me, and I thank you for it. I'm really sorry to see you getting the jackal treatment over this:

[quote EvilDragon]but if you want a polished OS, go get an Apple[/quote]
This is the kind of honesty and attitude I can get behind. Want something shiny and polished that works "flawlessly" out of the box? Go buy an "i[insert product here]" and enjoy your dee-ar-em.

I, for one, am grateful for the amount of work OP and its community has put into this product, and the forthright communication from the hardware developers via the blog page. Pandora is going to be the shit, and no little software snag is going to take it off of my "DO #$^*ING WANT!!!" list because I know it's all going to get ironed out eventually. It appeals to me for the same reason Linux itself appeals to me: I like having to tinker with stuff, whether it's just to tweak it or to just plain make it work. That's half the fun!

As for the complainers...well, the way I see it is every canceled preorder moves me up the preorder ladder, so go right ahead and cancel your order if you don't like the way things are being run with the Pandora. B)