The other side of the coin is that this also smells of hubris and inexperience, the belief that your seed only needs soil to grow, and that once planted it will flourish.
Anyone who has grown anything, financial or agricultural, knows that there are infinite variables in-between, and inexperience can lead you nowhere faster than just about anything else can.
The fact that they’re assembling boards on a mass scale shows they’re serious about delivering. The fact that the boards are being assembled at a factory in the SF bay area or simi-valley California (with some of the highest per hour minimum wage guarantees of anywhere in the United States) tells you that the cost of the endeavor is probably quite a bit beyond their initial expectations. The fact that it took 6 years to get to a product that’s still being assembled and still short on pieces to finalize the deal says that someone involved in logistics had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
There is no excuse for the disparity between the initial promises and statements of a production ready product and the reality of this update for a product still under development, but in the real world outside of kickstarter, people invest and lose money on ventures like this all the time with nothing to show for it.
The difference here, is that kickstarter investors are customers investing in a product which does not yet exist, and investors in the real world are generally people expecting either an ongoing return on their investment, or the return of the initial investment plus some agreed upon multiple of that investment in a lump sum payment. In both cases, accountability is negotiated by the initial terms and kickstarter (in this way) does not provide what you would consider “favorable terms” for investors, or “backers”.
At the original price this looked unrealistic and farfetched to imagine they could deliver a device that meets expectations. At the current forecasted price, one can imagine a product being delivered but as chiasticon points out, there is literally no advantage to buying this over buying a couple of SH-101’s.
I’d love to see something that is not the MS-1, with a keyboard, in a beautiful form factor which can act as an acceptable substitute for an OG SH-101. I am not, however, willing to pay $2000 for “that product” I’m imagining even if it’s currently available and shipping today.
Bummer. But whether by delusion or fear of God, it’s nice to see that they’re still at it in some capacity which allowed them to post an udate!
See you in another 6 years Space Bee!
