Why All The Mysteries And No Clear Updates?


C

Curlyjs

Still Fresh
Joined
Aug 31, 2008
Messages
14
I’m finding myself wondering why all the secrets around the progression of the project. When we pre-ordered, craig and co assured us that on the pre-ordering date all the details would be cleared and the waiting would be minimal (ie production related). Now we find ourselves in a strange situation where we don’t have a big picture on things.

-Schedule, Chip seems to say that we are “on schedule”… well why keep it secret, surely people would appreciate if they were told.
-Bank issue, at least give us the progression of the issue, it isn’t normal for a refund to take 2 weeks, so what’s going on? Also it was stated that the they were going country by country, is UK finished?
-Place in line, at some point they will have to decide who gets their Pandora first, why not tell us upfront our place in line.
-I don’t think that the PCBs shown on the “Soft top, hard shoulder” blog were the final design. Why? If they were the final PCBs they would have assemble the complete batch of 4000 units in one shot to minimize the cost. Showing only a few means that there still is some hardware functionalities that could not have been tested in the previous rev. So, when is the final rev. planned?
-Wi-Fi antenna, it was stated previously that the antenna is still under design… is this still the case? If not why not tell us, and give us some info on the Wi-Fi range?
-Audio out, one of the outputs seems to work but which is it? Are both audio working?
-S-Video out, MWeston seems to say that the quality is good, I guess this is working…
-Keyboard game control, not much info there…
-Analog nubs… also not much info… are they working?
-AV cable… not seen any progression there either.
-To test each component you do need some basic drivers, are does finished?

Even if I doubt the devs will come out and clear the situation, I do feel better saying it outloud. Chip is it possible to make a list of all the things that remains to be done before shipping, and strike it when they are finished. At least with such a list we would see a real progression.

JS
 
Curlyjs said:
I’m finding myself wondering why all the secrets around the progression of the project. When we pre-ordered, craig and co assured us that on the pre-ordering date all the details would be cleared and the waiting would be minimal (ie production related). Now we find ourselves in a strange situation where we don’t have a big picture on things.

-Schedule, Chip seems to say that we are “on schedule”… well why keep it secret, surely people would appreciate if they were told.
-Bank issue, at least give us the progression of the issue, it isn’t normal for a refund to take 2 weeks, so what’s going on? Also it was stated that the they were going country by country, is UK finished?
-Place in line, at some point they will have to decide who gets their Pandora first, why not tell us upfront our place in line.
-I don’t think that the PCBs shown on the “Soft top, hard shoulder” blog were the final design. Why? If they were the final PCBs they would have assemble the complete batch of 4000 units in one shot to minimize the cost. Showing only a few means that there still is some hardware functionalities that could not have been tested in the previous rev. So, when is the final rev. planned?
-Wi-Fi antenna, it was stated previously that the antenna is still under design… is this still the case? If not why not tell us, and give us some info on the Wi-Fi range?
-Audio out, one of the outputs seems to work but which is it? Are both audio working?
-S-Video out, MWeston seems to say that the quality is good, I guess this is working…
-Keyboard game control, not much info there…
-Analog nubs… also not much info… are they working?
-AV cable… not seen any progression there either.
-To test each component you do need some basic drivers, are does finished?

Even if I doubt the devs will come out and clear the situation, I do feel better saying it outloud. Chip is it possible to make a list of all the things that remains to be done before shipping, and strike it when they are finished. At least with such a list we would see a real progression.

JS
Click to expand...
-Schedule. It's not the end of november yet. That's when units are supposed to be finished and shipped.
-Craig has stated the slowness is with the bank, not them.
-It would cause bickering and accusations. You'll get it according to when you ordered.
-Of course they are final design. We already know they can't put them all together at once because they only have 600 or so LCDs.
-You'll be updated when they have something to tell you.
- ?
- Yes, it's working.
- What else are you wanting? It's the devs' choices to control games with whatever they want.
- There was a video. If there was a problem, they'd tell you.
- It exists. You could/can order if you like.
- Of course. They wouldn't be at this stage without some type of support for every component in there.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
All the things that you have listed are valid and I could probably add a couple much low-level topics also, but I am sure that most of that information is not readily available or not necessarily a yes/no answer.

Software development for this platform is a monumental task, and I am confident that the dev's are working on stabilizing their code, and making a OS that works.

Managing this system is equally difficult and if I was running the show, I know I would have to really consider what I say and when before people with information (right or wrong) get out of hand and chaos ensues, regardless how brilliant we 'users' think we are.

They have a deadline and they know it. I have a fundamental problem with the notion that just because they haven't spoken about a few topics that there is some sort of secret conspiracy. They are busy people and only have 24 hours a day just like the rest of us. I am sure that this project has blown to much larger proportions then might have been initially realized and most of the main dev's are working at putting out fires as quickly as possible then listening to every comment from the hundreds of people that have jumped in the last couple of months asking the same questions over-and-over.
 
Curlyjs said:
I’m finding myself wondering why all the secrets around the progression of the project. When we pre-ordered, craig and co assured us that on the pre-ordering date all the details would be cleared and the waiting would be minimal (ie production related). Now we find ourselves in a strange situation where we don’t have a big picture on things.

-Schedule, Chip seems to say that we are “on schedule”… well why keep it secret, surely people would appreciate if they were told.
-Bank issue, at least give us the progression of the issue, it isn’t normal for a refund to take 2 weeks, so what’s going on? Also it was stated that the they were going country by country, is UK finished?
-Place in line, at some point they will have to decide who gets their Pandora first, why not tell us upfront our place in line.
-I don’t think that the PCBs shown on the “Soft top, hard shoulder” blog were the final design. Why? If they were the final PCBs they would have assemble the complete batch of 4000 units in one shot to minimize the cost. Showing only a few means that there still is some hardware functionalities that could not have been tested in the previous rev. So, when is the final rev. planned?
-Wi-Fi antenna, it was stated previously that the antenna is still under design… is this still the case? If not why not tell us, and give us some info on the Wi-Fi range?
-Audio out, one of the outputs seems to work but which is it? Are both audio working?
-S-Video out, MWeston seems to say that the quality is good, I guess this is working…
-Keyboard game control, not much info there…
-Analog nubs… also not much info… are they working?
-AV cable… not seen any progression there either.
-To test each component you do need some basic drivers, are does finished?

Even if I doubt the devs will come out and clear the situation, I do feel better saying it outloud. Chip is it possible to make a list of all the things that remains to be done before shipping, and strike it when they are finished. At least with such a list we would see a real progression.

JS
Click to expand...
1. Chip said in a different thread that we'll see final Pandoras once everyone's happy with the keypads.
2. These are definitely the final PCBs. The fact that they only had a few in the picture doesn't mean that they don't have them all. Who knows - maybe those were going out to devs with MK1 boards or something.
3. I think you shouldn't be worrying about all of the low-level, driver stuff. They're currently working on all of these things (as Chip has stated) and I'm sure they'll all be completed by the time it ships. Most of these points (audio, keyboard, analog nubs, AV cable) are, at this point, only really dependent on drivers. We don't need to worry ourselves about this stuff, because even if, for some reason, they can't finish one of these things in time, there is still the shipping delay that will give them time to complete them, and release a new kernel that will fix any of those things that weren't working.

We need to relax as a forum. We'll probably see a finalized Pandora very soon, and with it there will be videos of it being used and we'll likely get major status updates on the project. Most of the not-working parts (on a driver level) are probably currently under development and once the low-level stuff is finished, you'll have your answers.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It seems the UK is finished now - people in Europe have started getting emails now.
 
QUOTE
3. I think you shouldn't be worrying about all of the low-level, driver stuff. They're currently working on all of these things (as Chip has stated) and I'm sure they'll all be completed by the time it ships. Most of these points (audio, keyboard, analog nubs, AV cable) are, at this point, only really dependent on drivers. We don't need to worry ourselves about this stuff, because even if, for some reason, they can't finish one of these things in time, there is still the shipping delay that will give them time to complete them, and release a new kernel that will fix any of those things that weren't working.


Yeah, well that's the whole point of asking though isn't it, if the hardware delays suddenly evaporate is the software ready to go? Will it be released in a part-working state? etc. I think it's a quite valid question (and indeed so are the rest, it would be nice to hear something official).

I know lots of people are asking, mainly because they're interested and would like to know what's causing the delays (overall, refunds, etc.) and I also know that others are saying that we should just all hang on and wait, that there aren't enough hours in the day for the core members to answer such questions, etc.

I do feel for the latter (both the core members and those on the forum advocating patience), mainly because I can see that pretty much every thread contains almost exactly the same questions and non-authoritative guesses, but can't help but think that scrawling a quick 5min blog post every day/every other day (thanks to Chip for relaying information so far) would solve almost all of the problems regarding endless repeated questions from the pre-orderers.
 
I think the reason for the frustration is expectations were set that we'd be getting a "mountain of blog updates" once the pre-ordering was complete. Even the pre-order mail said "we will be making regular updates for you all as mass production proceeds."

I don't think anyone could say that there's been the mountain of information as promised. I will get flamed for saying that, but expectations were set that shouldn't have been set.
 
you know, i'm starting to suspect some industrial espionage going on here.

someone starts a thread
all the questions get answered
a mod closes the thread to stop pointless respeculation
someone starts another thread with the same questions
everyone answers with the same answers
thread gets closed again
rinse and repeat

i'm really starting to think theres some devious person out there attempting to destabilise a potentially market shifting product (it could be anyone from old console/game maufacturers to not ARM chip people to more current competition) just to raise panic and damage the progress of things.

we were told from the very start that there was no reason to panic and if you had a problem with the situation you could claim a refund. frankly if someone isnt happy for the same damned reason i wish they would just do it in private so we dont have to listen to it.
 
I don't know what you expect, but whenever the company I work for is ready for production, they never order 10,000 (or whatever) all in one go. They order a small quantity such as 10 - 15, check the quality on all, ensure they all work etc, and then ask for the rest in batches and randomly pick boards for testing as they receive them. If they received a huge box with 10,000 boards in which they were not happy with, it would be a nightmare (and very costly for both companies) to solve. Craig is most likely going down the exact same route - making a small quantity of final Pandoras, and when he is happy with all of them, he'll ask for further small shipments so that any issues that appear can be fixed before the rest is shipped.
 
RenegadeChic said:
you know, i'm starting to suspect some industrial espionage going on here.

someone starts a thread
all the questions get answered
a mod closes the thread to stop pointless respeculation
someone starts another thread with the same questions
everyone answers with the same answers
thread gets closed again
rinse and repeat

i'm really starting to think theres some devious person out there attempting to destabilise a potentially market shifting product (it could be anyone from old console/game maufacturers to not ARM chip people to more current competition) just to raise panic and damage the progress of things.

we were told from the very start that there was no reason to panic and if you had a problem with the situation you could claim a refund. frankly if someone isnt happy for the same damned reason i wish they would just do it in private so we dont have to listen to it.
Click to expand...
I like what you have said, but be careful, the conspiracies surrounding us might make these comments disappear...

...
...
...

Is my post still here?

...
...
...

If your reading this then the man hasn't taken me away yet. Damn THE Man, Save the Empire!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The root cause of a lot of this is lack of communication; people want to see a blog update every few days with pics of new things going on.

Almost needs to be a microblog, since it shoudl not be on te main website

The issue is probably that craig and the boys want to sleep like normal people; they did the grind for a cople weeks and probabyl burnt out, and just can't keep up with both communicator, doing the sourcing and production and development, etc and so on. Theres only a small team, and they're dong the work, rather than the communicating.. and poor Chip is trying to help.

IF there was a microblog in a forum post somewhere, with minutia like:
We called soucer Foo for part X today, and they said Z, but reality will be A ..

IT woudl drive peopel nuts, too, they'd ask questions, and it would be hard on everyone.

Its a tough thing to do , where to draw the line. I've been there, and I've over-informed people and it works wel, but it eats up a LOT of time.

I'm sure a lot is going on, but little is being slipped out; it drives people nuts, because everyone is used to seeing chatty craig etc in the forum.

What to do what to do...

Wait people :)

I check the blog a dozen times a day too, but we just have to wait :)

jeff
 
Well my post wasn’t meant for getting all of my questions answered… but to propose to make a list of the things that are left to be done so we do have a clear view of what’s coming next.

The points that I mentioned didn’t get a clear answer from the devs. Many of the “Pandora fans” have made assumptions, but I didn’t see any clear answers on the forums. For example the PCBs, there was no official statement if they were finals. Squidge, you are right, when ordering PCBs from an assembly house you do produce a small batch to check the assembly quality. However this would be done with MK0, paste mask and oven cycle should have been tuned at this point.

Btw, I’m no spy, just someone like the rest who’s waiting in line to buy something. While waiting in line I’m wondering, “Hey, home many people are in front of me?” and “Hey, how long I’m going to wait here?”

JS
 
mali said:
Has someone recently checked his calendar? Mine says november 20 ;)
Click to expand...
Well, the posts from ED in German are news to me... thanks for the translation. It seems that you had more info from the German forums...

JS
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Curlyjs said:
Squidge, you are right, when ordering PCBs from an assembly house you do produce a small batch to check the assembly quality. However this would be done with MK0, paste mask and oven cycle should have been tuned at this point.

Theres some problems with that: How do you know the company that did the MK0 prototypes (which basically amounted to a handful) are doing the final production? and (2) MK1 boards have lots of changes compared to MK0, so several things would have to be started again from scratch.
Curlyjs said:
Btw, I’m no spy, just someone like the rest who’s waiting in line to buy something. While waiting in line I’m wondering, “Hey, home many people are in front of me?” and “Hey, how long I’m going to wait here?”
If that information was posted, there would be several more threads trying to find out the first person who ordered, arguing about who should get theres first, etc. Even if it was given in private via email, it would equate to roughly the same thing, as people would post asking for others to post there position. It's not worth it. You can guess your position however by the time you ordered, and that is already in discussion.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
reality check

a company called Nintendo are STILL behind on production of a device called the Wii (in its second year now)

the worlds largest and richest software company messed up their release of a console called X-box, with a huge percentage overheating, catching fire or failing with the red ring of death (from new)

an electronics manufacturer called Sony completely misjudged the market and are selling a device called Playstation 3 at a fraction of its projected rate of sales, in fact they fired the head of development over it

a company called Palm computing spent years attempting to switch over to a Linux based OS and failed

another company known as GPH have consistently failed to provide a device with the specifications desired by its fans, and have just delayed the launch of the Wizz by another two months

an open source, cutting edge device, built by an enthusiastic community and a few "guru`s" is a few weeks behind schedule

spot the odd one out...................
 
i think all people are asking for is 5 minutes out of every other day to update a micro blog or a consistent thread on this forum with progress. For such a small effort the rewards would be large ...

1) people would stop worrying about the status of each component
2) people would feel better informed about the status of the project and less likely to demand a refund.

from the various posts on the banking subject it is pretty clear that we (the community) have not been given the full picture especially given the delay in the refunds.

Some (not all) people are getting nervous , I cannot see what harm a small update would do (heck chip can even write it for them).

If it saves one refunded pandora surely that is worth it !

7zark7
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

ahahah
any official news?
2
Replies
26
Views
4K
Null
Null
mcobit
New Blog Post
2 3 4
Replies
62
Views
11K
fretfrenzy182
F
T
Blog update: status updates
Replies
9
Views
2K
emcp
E
mali
May The Power Be With You
3 4 5
Replies
81
Views
14K
pelrun
P
Chip
All Refunds Not Sent Yet
20 21 22
Replies
423
Views
58K
Chip
Chip
Back
Top