The lack of significant public milestones is a little concerning, but Glowforge has consistently been vague about progress over the last twelve months so I’m not reading too much into it (which of course is why they are consistently vague )
I’m still cautiously optimistic. They have delivered betas to at least a few people which suggests they have a product they’re more or less happy to ship, pending a few adjustments. And they have announced the end of the pre-sale, which I wouldn’t expect them to do until they are confident they can ship soon. Relatively few people will order if there is a) no pre-order discount, and b) still no actual product, so they are going to keep that period as short as they can get away with.
Spent almost a year of my life wondering about the information flow. Not going to do it anymore. But then my excitement on anything never gets much above “that’s purty good”. When the shipments finally start, not sure how well I will cope with a forum full of folks screaming “The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!”
If you take the list of Glowforge functions or deliverables on the software side of things as detailed on the Glowforge website and compare it to what the public has actually seen, you’ll realize there is a significant gap. So even if every last one of the Glowforge units from the crowdfunding campaign was in a box in a warehouse at this point, they may not ship until the last possible moment so as to give them maximum opportunity to reduce the expectation gap we will quite likely experience on that software side of things when the units find their way to end user’s hands. Possibly better to further defer shipment and risk losing a handful of customers than put out good hardware with lacking software that 10,000 users are going to complain about publicly risking many more potential future customers. Maybe. . .
The one advantage of the cloud software is that they can update on the fly. I agree that there will be a lot of disapointment, but I myself would rather get the hardware and wait for some of the software functionality to be added in the near future.
The key is communication, and we know that the GF team is not great at communicating in this regard.
I agree with you on this but I think Dan has made it fairly clear that they’d rather hear moaning about further delays than about something not working.
“Cautiously optimistic” is my feeling also.
Considering the pain of the delay borne by all including Dan, I expect the low level of communication is a reflection of the intent to avoid building hopes, and having to bear the brunt of promises unfulfilled.
I am confident the plan this time is to under promise and over deliver.
We shall see.
Let’s see… I know my forge’s name is Pearl and I’ve started wearing a pearl ring for the first time in my life… I know where she’ll sit in my workspace:
(Mostly where the orange cat is, but probably creeping into grey cat territory. I’m thinking I need to put a plywood table top across 2 cubes and put wheels on the bottom, but I’ve still got time.)
My project list is overflowing…
The delays have been hard and I understand people being sad about, but I’m more worried about Dan’s blood pressure and our forges being top quality than I am about speed. If anything, my support system has been rooting for a slow release to allow us to put together funding for an upgrade.
thanks chad, no it’s my craft space BUT i do run an online crafting shop. The Cutting Cafe…yulp it truly is my dream space…after spending 10 plus years in the garage freezing in the winter and sweating in the summer with all of the creatures that would sneak in my space…you can see more pictures of the room if you like here or here.
)
