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Early Adopters Experiencing More Bugs?
As the pressure to push out new technology product continues, early adopters are continuing to experience trouble. A reader wrote to mention a USA Today article about some recent new product problems. From the article: "Philips Electronics revealed Friday that it is recalling 11,800 plasma television sets. The Ambilight TVs were sold in the USA from June 2005 to January 2006 for $3,000 to $5,000. Faulty capacitors inside the sets can spark. Nine incidents have been reported, but retardant material inside the TVs has prevented any fires, spokeswoman Katrina Blauvelt says. The problem is not expected to affect other brands, because it is a part related to Philips' unique Ambilight feature, which casts a colored glow on the wall behind the TV."
This Ambilight technology is off the hook! Look at that red glow and flame effect it has on my wall! Technology is amazing! Now movies look completely real and vivid. This is the full theatre experience--I'm glad I paid $3k-$5k for this. I don't know how Philips does it but only Ambilight TVs give you the authentic feel like you really are trapped inside a burning building. And look, the flame even gives me third degree burns like a real fire
My work here is dung.
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Are they seriously suggesting that the people who are first to experience a new product or service may be statistically more likely to experience unintended side effects or consequences of a system which has only had limited & focused testing prior to it's release? Say it ain't so!
Here I was thinking that everything that has ever been done is tested, 100%, with every single possible scenario covered. Even ones the testers didn't think of. You've shattered my perfect world view!
The problem is not expected to affect other brands, because it is a part related to Philips' unique Ambilight feature, which casts a colored glow on the wall behind the TV.
Is that colored glow before or after the capacitors blow?
"It's not a flaw - its a feature!"
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
Of this story, to be precise. To repeat what was said there, this has nothing to do with the actual plasma TV tech, and is purely a problem with the multicoloured lights they have round the back of the TV. Which can be turned off until you get a chance to send it off for the fix.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
It seems to me that early adopters will continue to have problems as long as consumers keep their memories short. There is undeniable pressure to get new products to market fast. This leads to shoddy engineering. Thing is, generally companies do not feel many repercussions when they screw up, because consumers do not avaoid other products from that company. Phillips will take a hit in this recall, but six months from now, it will be forgotten by the world at large and Phillips will maintain the status quo: get new shinies in the store as fast as possible.
Remember that the XBox 360 had a duff power supply? That has hardly hurt the sales of that product and you can bet nobody will associate that debacle with the upcoming release of Vista.
It seems that we just accept these things now as inevitable. When products were produced, even as little as 10-20 years ago, I think they went through a much more thorough testing cycle before they were released to the public. With the advent of the Internet, expecially with software products, this idea of "release broken, patch later" just became the normal way of doing things. Since everyone running a business uses computers, this idea started creeping into products that couldn't be patched over the Internet. Of course, when companies start getting hit with the massive bills for these kinds of failures, I think we'll see the pendulum swing the other way. It's not even about massive consumer backlash anymore. (Which used to be the only motovating factor) It's simply that if Phillips has to pay a technician $30 - $50 (or more) to go onsite and replace a cheap defective part for 12,000 TV sets, they will start paying more attention to testing.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Anyone who buys a complex product that's not in very wide circulation runs the risk of getting more bugs in the system. Take kitchen appliances for example. That $6000 refridgerator that's even been in production for a few years is a lot more likely to have bugs in its operation than the $1200 one that's been around for the same amount of time. Why? Because hundreds of thousands of people buy the $1200 compared to the few thousand who bought the $6000 one. That $1200 unit has been in a lot more homes so the company has had time to better refine the product. Granted if you buy the top shelf item I imagine the manufacturer will jump through as many hoops as possible to keep your business since they did make a tidy profit off of you and want to keep you around as a future sucker... I mean customer.
Yeah, Philips is known for having products with bad caps. I've had a couple Philips DVD players stop working for this very reason. There are whole forums devoted to the issue, you think they would have found a new supplier of low ESR caps by now. In any case no more Philips for me.
I'm agneglectic, too lazy to care if there is a God.
Obviously, the plan wasn't to set fire to the TV as part of the lighting run. But when this works properly, it's rather good. The idea is that the light in your peripheral vision both helps reduce eyestrain, and it subjectively enhances image quality by helping to compensate for the contrast limitations of some displays. As such it's of rather more use on LCD than Plasma however.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
This has been known for a long time now. Apple afficionado's call it the "Revision A Syndrome" where nobody who knows their stuff will buy a revision A. Look at the first iMacs and their hard drive and processor problems, the first iMac flat panels and their arms collapsing or the first imac G5 and their capacitors and overheating and fan noise problems. The first eMacs and their analog board problems making for half a display or the revision A G5 with their PCI and fan noise problems. Revision A 15" powerbooks had screen white blotch problems. Revision A white iBooks had some of the worst screen and logic board problems of any macbook.
But it is fixed in the end and progress continues and there are then models that are gems that are known never to give the owners any problems at all and have few issues to ever have warranty fixes. that is what early adopters are for.
watch it continue with the new revision B iMacs when they fix the intel screen problems plaguing them, or revision B macbook pros fixing the dull flickery screen and keyboard brightness problems and dying magsafe connectors and the revision B intel mac mini when they fix its overheating, DVI flickering and dying hard disc problems.
early adopters pay a price but they get what is coming before anybody else so in that case they are getting an advantage by six months and they know they are sometimes willing to pay for something not as good as later.
FTA: The problems don't necessarily mean tech firms are suddenly designing shoddy products, NPD's Baker says. But they are outsourcing more to save money..
I'm not an overly-critical person, but I think the article is FULL of juicy, one-sentence generalizations like the above.
I'd be more interested in knowing the frequency of this type of issues, the actual brand to which these things have happened (beyond Phillips' issue), and the nature of the issues.
By the way, getting service on a TV, VCR, CD, or DVD machine is interesting. Contrary to the article's statment, you'd be surprised at how many brands are actually in the food chain of a very few companies.
A Passionate Independent Musician
OK, first, of course this is the case. That's why many of you recommend that nobody adopt any .0 release, but instead wait until AT LEAST six months until after a .2 release is out. You also experience the same thing with TV shows if you watch every new series from the first episode instead of catching the first season on DVD and coming in at season 2 - you tend to only watch shows that are hits then, but you are a bit behind for a season.
However, as we all know, early adopters get a huge head start on everybody else in terms of being able to use a new technology months or years in advance. As an example, I'm an alpha tester on a new development tool that I'm convinced is going to be a smash hit. It won't even be available for a public BETA for another month, and by that time I'll have been using it for six months, banging my head against the wall on some things, but learning a lot in the process.
The other thing that EARLY adopters get out of the deal is...input, and access to the designers. The customers who adopted the new Phillips units will have much more say in future product innovation than people who come later, because the cutsomer base is smaller at the beginning, and the team is more willing to listen to the people who give them the first feedback.
RAZR and SLVR users have the coolest phones (if a bit wide), and will be the ones who experience the early product problems. SO? They're still the coolest phones.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
It stands to reason that a new product hasn't quite gotten all of the kinks out yet. With years of experience as an engineer this comes as no suprise.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
As for Ambilight - just what is the point of that feature? It makes your wall glow? I've seen the adverts for it and it just screams gimmick. If you really want that kind of feature, hook up your own lights behind a non-Phillips plasma TV and you're done. I think more damage is done by companies denying there's a fault and being found out.. to quote Fight Club..
'If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago traveling west at 60 miles per hour, and the rear differential locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside, does my company initiate a recall?
You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).
A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall.
If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt.
If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall.'
Keeping up with the joneses, as it were.
Of course the joneses are about $10k in credit card debt.
I use to wonder how these people are able to aford such expensive things, I know my salary is above average but I can't afford them. Then I learned that the Average American is $10k in debt (Bad dept not good dept like home mortgages) then I feel better knowing that they couldn't afford it either, I was just smart enough to not keep up with the joneses and have no Bad Dept and an Excelent Credit Rating. Living humbly has it advantages too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Right? So this is not a new problem.
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If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Of course you are correct that just setting a light behind the TV is not terribly difficult, however some people do like to have nice clean rooms without a lot of cables and or extra equipment floating around, thus their tendancy to buy one of these TVs.
Shawn's Tech Articles
That's what I don't get, though. How many more examples do we need of companies that innovated something being ground into dust by the Johnny-Come-Latelys? Do they even teach anything in business school anymore, or do the teachers and students just sit around rubbing their hands together in greedy anticipation?
WTF? Early adopters see more bugs. I'm stunned. You mean if you buy the very first run of a new product it may not be as good as say, once they've had a few thousand of them on the street and gotten service calls? Really?
Hello? What part of "Bleeding Edge" are they not getting here?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Companies are only fond of statistics that involve dollar amounts. So a dollar amount should be put on first-revision failures.
Whats that? Your product tends to catch fire? There's millions lost in lawsuits, replacement, etc. Something that COULD have been fixed with a few more weeks or days of testing..
Car has a tendency to floor the accelerator, multiple times per day on its own? Billions. SOmething that COULD have been fixed with a few more weeks or days of testing..
A good example is the Sound Blaster Audigy 4 / X-Fi sound cards. There's a horrible problem with crackling/popping/system slowdown when using these cards. It took Creative 6+ months to acknowledge that the problem wasn't with people's machines. I'd say a good 50% or more of the people who bought the card have this problem. I hear there's a class action lawsuit gearing up from people who've replaced everything they own that's near their computers because Creative has blamed the problem on that. There's a story of a man that has tested it on literally 20+ computers and on 15 of the 20, the problem is there. With a fresh install of Windows XP on each machine.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I used to dabble in electronics and from time to time, companies would simply produce a bad batch of capacitors. Unfortunately, you can't really tell if they're bad (unless they simply don't work at all or have the wrong value) until they fail. I don't know that this is the problem, but this can happen in mid-production, just getting a new batch of capacitors that just happen to be bad. It wouldn't matter if it were an early version or late version in that case.
Again, I don't know that that's the case here, and to be sure, bad batches of capacitors, at least in my experience, aren't terribly common...
That's not surprising really. One thing you failed to mention though is the difficulties involved in supporting an audio product.
I worked CLI support for 4ish years way back when. I saw a lot of things come and go, and a lot of problems crop up and get resolved over time. The problem with Audio support is that it's very subjective. Yes I saw plenty of hardware issues with CLI's products that eventually got revised or phased out. I also saw a lot of problems that were indeed caused by environment and / or existing dirty hardware.
As a tech, it's very hard to work these issues as you can try everything in the book and not get any results. You can even get creative (no pun intended) and try tons of your own stuff and not get any better results. Noises (popping or otherwise) are very difficult to remove from a digital AND analogue style system that is common with modern computers. Supporting it / trying to fix it is a major PITA for techs especially when they're flying blind most of the time.
I'm not saying that CLI isn't accountable (I'm not fond of the company now days), but it is possible that they simply couldn't figure it out. I saw a TON of problems like this when the ****** came out. For some reason it just didn't like some systems and we never found anything substantially in common between the systems involved. It was very frustrating. Especially given that the issue wasn't device failure, but rather device performance.
-Duff
P.S. From the support side (at least 8 years ago), we did everything we could to provide a solution as a tech. Be that sending data to developers (and working with them) or by doing extensive callbacks or replacements when necessary. If they don't do it now then shame on CLI. I personally haven't owned a CLI product in 6+ years so I couldn't comment on anything during that time period.