"“We don’t have units in public locations yet so people can go use them, which was our goal,”
-Dan
This is very different than “We don’t have any beta units in the hands of any testers”.
If your remember, the goal was to get some beta units in both public places as well as private testing.
And remember that @dan wanted to get the betas used by as many people as possible, so public places would most likely be the focus of the usage. While I agree its not 100% definite, to me its 99% clear that the betas are still not out.
To continue the quote:
“We’ve found enough improvements to be made on early models that we don’t want to build up new ones or put them on unattended display until we’ve finished the fixes.”
Betas that were supposed to go out did not, as they found sufficient improvements to make and delayed that shipment.
100% clear? maybe not, but in my opinion pretty definite.
The good news so far is that @dan thinks that they are still on track, which is good. The bad news is there is little confidence given the lack of substantial updates.
Question: How do you think they “found these improvements”…
I will tell you how… It’s called "Testers"
Ya can’t find something unless you look for it.
Putting a beta unit in a “public” space is not always the best thing to do unless you have a dedicated person to record and monitor everything full time. People tend to break things and just walk away, and that does nothing for the testing.
Trust me, units are being tested, and feedback is providing invaluable info.
Yes, I do not doubt units are being tested. They have been tested since the early prototypes. That is not however the Beta program as I understood it to be, and how its been described.
How many of the next revision of the system were shipped out in December? As far as I can tell, none.
Testing is an ongoing thing, and the systems are being tested. I do not believe since there is absolutely NO evidence that the beta units are out to anyone.
Again, you and I can infer what we can from the little updates available. You seem to have a glass is half full on interpreting what is out there. I am more of a realist until told otherwise.
Let @dan give a meaningful update of where things stand, what the next steps are, and what still needs to be worked on. Until then, nothing else matters.
And . . . What about Naomi? 
Or something else…
I don’t see much point in continuing this. Some are convinced betas are out and some are not. Nothing short of a statement from GF themselves will settle it and I don’t see that happening.
Is it possible that it represents an evolution of thought or maturity of the process? When you are sitting around in the early going having a beer, kicking around ideas and laying out a strategy, you think putting a “not ready for prime time” iteration in the wild (e.g. public makerspace) is a way to got a lot of exposure, feedback, etc. But after you have raised $37,000,000 in funding and pre-orders, maybe you begin to realize that this venture has elevated itself to a whole new plane with significantly different expectation paths in the market. You sit back and go “Woah, I know we said betas to the makerspace space, but man, in hindsight that just seems like a bad plan given this given the [big time] environment we find ourselves in here. We were too good at marketing and that’s raised the bar so high that any public access to the product we had envisioned that would serve multiple masters just seems like such a bad plan now. We can’t put it out until it is truely ready for prime time.” But the comment is out in the public domain, you can’t pull it back, so you have to live with it. Revised beta. . . rotate the beta units through the hands of those that serve the only important master at this point, getting it right.
Anyway, if this old school guy had to guess where we are at currently, that would be it.
A wise thought
I’ve always assumed the “before August” quote from a while back. Gives me plenty of time to become a laser expert before it arrives. Thanks @dan for the update. Keep juggling.
You’re just jealous that you hold no expertise in tomatoes. Haha!
I do not, but with the large delay in glowforge shipping I will have plantains to learn about them, along with all of their laser variants
@dan, I would really like to see a breakdown of sales, both during the crowd funded period and up to present, and a breakdown between basic and pro units would be nice. That way we can kind of figure out where we are in the pecking order. Thanks.
Unfortunately that’s not something we’ve got planned - the time to do the analysis comes at the expense of other stuff, like shipping. (Plus there are a lot of people eyeing our success who would enjoy knowing more about how things have been going since the campaign, and we’d rather keep that to ourselves for now).
As far as beta units - we don’t have units in public or in the hands of people who can talk about them right now. When we get them there, I will let everyone know!
Thanks @dan for clarifying the beta discussion 
Keeping the hungry masses updated will help squash any riots the peons might be thinking about!
The following percentage split was posted after the first week or so. You can be sure that the Pro/Basic split changed since that time. (By Oct 22 the Pro was up to 55%) But for the 30 day pre-order it would be close to $3000 per order. If you know what the ticker was at the time of order then you can figure out (+/- a bunch) where your order falls. For example the ticker was about $780,000 when I finished my second beer at the brewery, so my order should near #260.
Using that logic and my flawed memory (which tells me the total was over $300,000 but under $400,000) I’m between #'s 100 and 133. 
Edit: (For the record I posted my reply thinking I was in another thread. I’ll leave the post seeing it’s somewhat relevant)
Could folks who have better memory or records recreate the trajectory of the sales total in the first 30 days which would help to fine tune the guesses. Just meaningless activity to take up the time until further information is trickled out.
That is the best thing I have read on here in a long time…
