Your right, I am angry I didn’t read it, because I didn’t know it existed, because it was on the forum and never shared via via the communication methods recommended by @Dan and the Glowforge team Get e-mail updates and signup for the automatic forum e-mail updates.
I am also frustrated I didn’t see it when I looked because it wasn’t getting a lot of traction at the time and didn’t appear in popular threads. Should I have watched announcements more? Yes. Should I have to dig through the forums for product updates, I say no, but you may disagree with me.
You took this completely out of context, it was a post made on the first day prior to any knowledge of the information in the thread and was illustrating what would help increase my confidence in the Glowforge development. Do I feel a better about not yet canceling my Glowforge now that I have seen this announcement, of course! But if you read my post, you will see that having this information is great and useful for the moment, but it really doesn’t mean much in another week or month if it’s not updated regularly.
Has that one question been partially addressed? Yes, completely by complete happenstance. Does that resolve the problems, absolutely not… There are a lot more concerns that my post outlines and number of serious issues, most of which still lack an answer 4 days later.
In my case the part of the announcement that bothers me the most is the timing. In Dan’s announcement he states that in early November they knew that they had an issue. He know’s that they had promised a delivery by the end of the year and that they would not make that date. He then waited until the first of December to make the announcement.
To me it seems kind of obvious that they had not increased production to actually deliver on what was promised. They had to have known long before December 1st that they would not be meeting the delivery dates that were promised.
I haven’t canceled my order yet. I am still deciding if that is what I want to do or not.
I haven’t commented on this before, but I keep seeing it pop up.
"In Dan’s announcement he states that in early November they knew that
they had an issue. He know’s that they had promised a delivery by the
end of the year and that they would not make that date. He then waited
until the first of December to make the announcement. "
I don’t think that anyone would argue that just because an issue appears to have arisen is cause enough to send out a notice. How many times as makers have we seen an issue, and then found out a way to work around it that allowed us to stick to the same delivery date. Dan may have noticed something early November, but held meetings trying to discover just how bad of an issue it might be. It could be not as serious as he thinks it is and can be overcome, or it could turn out to be a showstopper. In this case it stopped the show and he used the extra time to figure out what Glowforge was going to do about it. He came to us prepared and apologetic. I do not blame dan for waiting to tell us.
So far it seems to be a history with Glowforge to promise a date then right before that date to delay the product for another six months or more. This is just my opinion but they have had unrealistic projections on when the product would be ready. I live in Las Vegas and if I could take a bet on it I would bet against receiving my unit before the end of July 2017.
I am not saying that they don’t have good intentions, or that they are not trying to build the best product possible. I applaud Dan’s choice to make the product in the USA. They could probably make a little more profit by doing what so many other companies do by finding the cheapest source but they have not. that is a step in the right direction.
I don’t think anybody would dispute you on any of those points. I’m a betting man, and even I wouldn’t take that bet. But I do expect 2017 delivery. I’d make a wager on that. Care to make it interesting?
One thing to keep in mind…there is no good time to make such an announcement. The reaction from us would have been the same six weeks ago. He opted to let everyone enjoy Thanksgiving first, or he might have needed to firm it up before committing to disappointing everyone. Either way, a couple of weeks don’t really matter.
And I’m going to post this here, as well as in the Q&A, if Discourse lets me do it…so that more people who don’t hang out on the forum regularly can see it.
How to Get Regular Status Updates on your Own
I know it’s not an update from Dan, and it’s in it’s infancy…but there are new threads going up by @marmak3261 about the Pre-Release units that you all might want to go and read through.
He is video taping as much as he can, from the arrival of the machine at his doorstep, to the unboxing, the setup, using the software, and showing the results of his first prints…
He’s just a user like we are, and he’s being open about everything he sees. It’s one of the ways that we are getting information about how to use the machines. (And showing that they do, in fact, actually exist, chuckle!)
This is what we are going to do when they come…it’s worth taking a look at.
(And he might not have figured out how to go about doing fancy things with it yet, so try not to ask him to build a replica of the Eiffel tower just yet. ) He is going to work his way through things like connectivity issues, using the machine on various devices and assorted issues as he goes along.
It’s a pretty major undertaking, so be understanding, just look, and don’t slow him down. The Regular users here have got a lot of things for him to test, working with Glowforge, and you will get to see some of the actual development and testing as it happens.
If you keep following along those threads, you’re going to have a pretty good idea of how things are going overall. So that is an excellent way to get some pretty detailed input into how things stand.
@dan might or might not be able to give regular “official” updates to us…this is one way that we can keep up with what is going on.
And one last thing… @marmak3261 has an outside job as well, and he is not required to show this to us, so this is a voluntary thing that he is doing to help the rest of us, on his schedule … be nice. The development threads are not the place to argue anything, they are the place to work out problems so that the machine can be improved. Further refinement of processes for how to do specific design requests in the software are going to come later, so they don’t need to be asked now. If it gets to be too much, they might have to move the development back to the Beta forum and we won’t get to see it.
(The Betas do have their own forum where they can discuss problems and solutions without getting swamped with questions from us, and switching those threads to that one requires a single click.)
All of the Beta Projects and Pre-Release Projects can be found in the Made On A Glowforge Category.
From what I can tell the Glowforge team has made a lot of design improvements in the last year. I can’t help but think that this is probably a factor in the delay. I don’t think that there has ever been a perfect product that every made. At some point the Glowforge team has to say that this is the final build and we won’t be making any more changes in this model. Not saying that they can’t make improvements in future models as that would be expected.
As someone in the IT field I know that design or scope creep is a constant problem that delays implementation. There is always something new around the corner that would be nice to implement but every change further delays the process.
Oh, I don’t have time to look up the posts, but they haven’t changed the design. That is to say no new features have been added. All design work, as I understand, was completed long ago. @dan has stated, as I recall, that hardware development is, in fact, done. That would be, of course, barring any further issues discovered during beta/pre-prod testing. The work now is on the software side.
I expect somebody will re-enforce what I’ve said with the actual quotes. But, I hope your concerns about that have been put to rest.
Now… About that bet… Whataya say? If either of us get a Glowforge in 2017, that person must buy the other person a nice bottle of wine, sand blasted with a message stencil forged with a production Glowforge, simply saying “(Ken or Tom) is a winner!”
I was away for the weekend, so I seem to have missed a “little” back and forth on the latest delivery schedule update.
There’s no doubt that everyone’s baseline is that all purchasers of a Glowforge unit and we all receive a quality, state of the art product. That’s the starting point. However, there always seems to be 2 camps emerge every time we get a new delivery schedule update.
Camp 1: timing of delivery had a high priority on the importance scale when making the purchase decision.
Camp 2: timing of delivery had a much lower priority on the importance scale when making the purchase decision.
To confirm this you need only read a handful of reactions to the latest schedule update. It’s wildly emotional and ugly.
The thing both camps have in common is that they each expect a quality product. Everyone, three cheers for what we all have in common.
The big difference for me, however, is that the Camp 1 crew don’t care in the least that delivery timing for the Camp 2 crew has a lower priority. Very much a “live and let live” attitude towards the other camp. The Camp 2 crew, on the other hand, adamantly oppose the Camp 1 notion that delivery timing can hold high importance in the Glowforge purchase decision. The Camp 2 crew voice their disapproval of Camp 1 choice of purchase priorities every time a Camp 1 type wishes to comment on delivery timing in the forum. Very much the “if you can’t have the same priorities as the rest of us, please just ask for you money back so I don’t have to listen to you anymore”.
Interesting for me is that I believe that through the passage of time, many many of the Camp 2 crew would find themselves ultimately migrating to the Camp 1 prioritization of delivery timing importance.
Looks like you’ve all had an interesting few days. . .
You missed a potential third camp.
For them delivery timing is not in and of itself a priority, but a change in schedule is distressing simply because it is a change.
This may be the smallest but most vocal group.
At the last delay, people made the same observation… they HAD to know well beforehand, so why not say anything? I believe Dan’s explanation was essentially “we delayed the announcement so that we had time to figure out a plan and tell you what was going to happen.”
Well, OK, they goofed up again. Obviously, the plan was not solid.
But I do understand the notion of waiting to make an announcement until you can announce a complete plan. If, a month ago, they said, “there’s another delay” but were unable to answer questions like, “ok, when do we get our Glowforges?” then people would be even MORE upset.
Sure they could have told us earlier. Then they wouldn’t have had all the good stuff to help soften the blow and there would have been no plans for him to set out what we can expect next.
I’m sure if that had happened, most of the same criticism would still be thrown along with "Why announce this if you don’t have a plan?"
That’s another major concern. Dan and his team put out a press release 8 days before this announcement that included the December production date. A lot of news sites picked it up, and personally I used it as confirmation that shipping was happening in December and I would get my Glowforge for Christmas. From the posts there are a lot of people who feel the same.
Me neither! I go “Glamping” - aka in our Truck and Luxury Camper. It has heat floors, rain-forest shower head, satellite TV, Wifi, a full kitchen and queen size bed… LOL - I’m so “roughing” it in the wild right??? hahaha
It’s interesting how we can interpret the same announcements differently. When I read that pre thanksgiving announcement my first thought was “oh crap, they’re just now sending out preproduction units?” I was still cautiously optimistic but yeah, I had a feeling
) He is going to work his way through things like connectivity issues, using the machine on various devices and assorted issues as he goes along.
