Features and promises

[Christian F.K. Schaller]

I honestly think people need to realize the embedded market is a
different animal than the PC market and stop expecting things to be the
same in terms of upgrades and support life. This debate reminds me a lot
of the debate not long ago when Nokia announced the 880 with a new
version of their Maemo setup.

The lifetime of a device is short and new hardware might be very
different from the old. This means as things progress older versions of
the hardware will not get further official software updates. So when you
do get a device you should get it because you want it, and not because
you want the device that *might* come out in 6 months or 9 months or 12
months or many many months.

If the future device is the one you want and buying the current one is
not interesting enough for you to do based on its own merits you
shouldn't buy it. 

If Sean and co. will end up offering rebates to developers who have
bought earlier versions of the hardware thats fine, its in some way
similar to how Nokia has their developer program offering the 770/880
devices cheaper to developers. But I think people should think of this
as a 'bonus' and not as the reason to buy whichever device is the
current one at the time of purchase.

And I will be very surprised if you ever see a set in stone roadmap
coming out. You might get hints about what is planned, but delivery
dates and features in this industry is changing all the time as the
projects progress. So the next version in '6 months' might actually be 9
months or even a year away for all anyone know. Also it makes little
sense for a hardware manufacturer to do this as it could easily create
what is lovingly called the Osborne effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_Effect


Christian



On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 12:14 +0200, Mikko J Rauhala wrote:
> On ti, 2007-02-27 at 10:52 +0100, denis wrote:
> > Why can't they just tell us what the features will be? Is it so 
> > difficult to be open? In my opinion it would bring much more credibility 
> > for FIC.
> 
> Allow me to hazard a guess:
> 
> Most of this stuff is preliminary plans, and the guys don't like to make
> promises they know they might now be able to keep. That's also why I
> think Sean was being evasive about "that other thing that everyone asks
> about". If something goes wrong with the plans, as things go sometimes
> and have gone in parts of this project already, and they can't deliver,
> what would that do to their credibility? ('course, everyone is already
> jumping at that "other thing" regardless, but apparently that's how it
> goes...)
> 
> To repeat, this is all just guesswork; I don't have any inside
> information. And I for one will be getting one of them p1 devices; get
> in on the ground floor, people. If you feel you need to upgrade right
> away, arrange a new home for the older one; I suspect you'll be able to
> get a reasonable resale price for the old model as well (my p1 Neo will
> go to my SO though when I upgrade ;). Spread the Moko, you know you want
> to, since the more there are of these in _your_ social circles, the more
> useful they will be to you, too :)