To my knowledge this hasn’t been disclosed on the Purism news posts, but if I’m wrong please forgive me. I know batch size has been something of intense interest to folk
Weaver stated that around one hundred Birch phones would ship to backers, not counting units delivered to employees and developers. He went on to state that the company expects to ship 5,000 phones by the end of Q1 2020—most of which will be in the Evergreen batch—and that reviewers and journalists should also receive Birch phones for short-term testing in the coming weeks.
It at this point can’t go any other way. This is the happiest medium between getting quality phones to people and keeping the promise they made. I agree that it isn’t a popular decision, but reactions would have been much worse if the whole thing got pushed back to March.
Maybe it all could’ve been done better, but this is where we’re at, and with that in mind I think they’re trying their hardest and doing the best they can. Arguing semantics would be just that. If you don’t mind waiting, then wait, and consider it an intimate QA process.
From what I’ve seen “by the end of Q#” means “starting at the end of Q#”. To be clear I’ve not done detailed analytics of these statements, this is just from my memory of recent statements like this.
It is also possible the Purism fiscal year is offset from the calendar year by 1 quarter which would line these claims back up in a more logical way as well…
the CEO stated that production will ramp up into evergreen and reach it’s peak as soon as it is POSSIBLE.
IF they find out another hidden resistor missing SOMEWHERE in march 2020 you can be sure that mass shipping will be delayed again …
i want to have AT LEAST a working hardware - things that can be addressed through software updates are a WAY less concerning problem than a missing hardware BYTE … or more
The Birch batch is small enough for the CEO to sign them all with a Sharpie! Thus increasing collector value. Or the box they came in. Although Black on Black may be difficult, but some company also makes white ink markers.
(With an eye towards “Antiques Road Show” 100 years from now.)
Like I’ve stated elsewhere, I don’t know if I’d call them out for a lack of transparency on this type of thing. How transparency is defined and should be done is going to be a little subjective, and maybe their intent wasn’t well enough defined. I feel total transparency would be a dangerous thing, besides. I’ve always known non-engineers to get very jittery when they learn of (completely solvable) unexpected problems. (No offense to non-technical supporters here.)
They’re already doing far better in transparency relative to the closed source corporate alternatives, don’t you think?
So what type of transparency matters? IMHO, schedule slippage or shipping totals aren’t where transparency is crucial. That stuff doesn’t really impact us or the product. Design decisions and things that impact the goals set for the final product are the place to focus, and provide constructive feedback/requests.
Well for one it was their choice to run on “Ethical-and-Transparent-We-Are-Different” brand. So isn’t it fair if they get flak for pulling the same shady things every other company does?
But in particular I am just totally put off by them repeatedly rising expectations of having their device shipped by extending the deadline at the last minute, looong after they knew they would not make it.
I remember arguing myself when reaching second (third?) deadline “cool this time it really seems to be coming, they can’t delay it significantly just 2 weeks before the deadline, can they?” They extended by 6-9 MONTHS! Two weeks before shipping was supposed to happen. And they still are far from a finished product.
Also they always shift the blame to others, while it is clear to me and I think everyone, that they could not have gotten this phone out any sooner, even if there hadn’t been these 3rd party issues.
But the final nail for me was, that they advertised for pre-order with Q3 as shipment date at a time they knew fully that no one ordering would get the phone even close to Q3, and then pulling a PR stunt again claiming they would ship their prototypes to customers.
Even @Caliga said this when I mentioned that Q3 was unrealistic and they didn’t even have a prototype:
Yet Aspen clearly was the first full prototype they got in extremely low numbers and never was intended to be shipped to anyone. Someone stated that on all of Lundukes images the phone is hooked to power and empty. So I would not even be surprised if the problem they had with Birch, was actually already present on Aspen. Totally normal for a prototype.
I still give them props for returning my money! And I will hail them, if in the end they manage to get a working phone some time down the line. There certainly are legit reasons for backing them despite of the above.
But I’m still angry about them making me chill for them all this time because they made me believe they really were a different kind of company. And until this is at least somewhat acknowledged I feel the urge to warn others who might not realize that yet. Sorry.
Early backer too (and backer still) . Thing is though, you said :
(which suggested you were of the stature that publicly throwing shade on a company on their very own forums would not be burning a bridge for you)
Also, you made a post that doesn’t really contain any new sour grapes past what the last guys rants had.
Both of the above would infer you were of some sort of influence (maybe a brilliant dev of another project, noted advocate, captain of industry, etc. etc.) or had something about you specifically that could otherwise cause people to take notice. That’s why I asked.
@Dwaff, @DemBeesDoneStolenAll I’m sorry if I hurt some feelings here. Certainly not my intention to hurt any backers feelings! I think everyone that invests his money into such a cause is awesome! I mean it.
I was responding to @muon’s well articulated arguments/opinion with my own.
Disappointed? Hell yes! A lot. Angry? Not so much as I got my money back. Which really surprised me positively as this was advertised as a crowd funder. Revenge? A bit over the top, don’t you think? I’m merely setting the record straight, they hooked me in, made me praise their product and now I say why I’m disappointed.
Scaring potential clients away? If me merely stating what happened and why it put me off is scaring customers away, wouldn’t that be their fault in the first place?
Also, you made a post that doesn’t really contain any new sour grapes past what the last guys rants had.
Oh, can you throw me some links? Would like to see other who agree with me and why. Also maybe there are some rebuttals of my points that are worth considering.
This is not true. The second (black edition) of Aspen was intended to be shipped to the first backers. But they decided not to do that because of (a) critical bug(s) which couldn’t be last-minute-solved.
Mission not accomplished . I see you are disappointed, and your threshold of patience was crossed but apparently they’ve given you your money back without problems. So you could have toned down your emotions to come across as less angry and whining…
When disappointed backers are refused their money back, I’d feel more with you.
I for my part am happy that I did not get a hardware-defective phone, been there with my Openmoko…
That’s actually quite a good point to counter line of attack targetting to position Purism as company having problems with funding (irresponsible management or whatever) - the company which is having problems with funds can’t refund usually as it would require to withdraw money which under these conditions will be frozen or otherwise restricted.
I was not aware that there were two Aspen batches… interesting. Normally a batch should be identical devices. Is this public knowledge, or did you derive this yourself from pictures?
Anyhow if true, this sounds to me like multiple prototype rounds in the Aspen window. Would have been unlikely anyway that they nailed it on the first prototype.
. I see you are disappointed, and your threshold of patience was crossed but apparently they’ve given you your money back without problems. So you could have toned down your emotions to come across as less angry and whining…