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Agora Android Phone Delayed By Glitches
An anonymous reader points out this report at News.com.au which says that "THE first Australian 'Google phone' set to go on sale within weeks has been delayed indefinitely, with the manufacturer Kogan forced to refund early buyers. In a statement released this afternoon, the company said the delay was 'due to future interoperability issues.'The Agora reached a very late stage of development, manufacturing had commenced and we were within days of shipping the product to customers,' company founder Ruslan Kogan said in a statement."
Why don't you believe it? I see 2 different ways this could happen:
1) Someone finds a few apps that don't work at low res at all... Good apps like Google Earth or something.
2) The programmers assure him that it can be handled right up until the end, when they are forced to admit they can't do it after all because they finally found the fatal flaw in the plan.
As a programmer, I've had both things happen to me during a project. The first is just oversight and the second is usually due to some asinine quirk in the API that can't be worked around.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
A couple of guys came from Google. Our CEO had been waiting for them by the door. someone says they went straight to a meeting room and were there for less than 20 minutes. no one saw them leave, but as soon as they were gone our CEO called a meeting. He looked very pale. he said: "I've halted the production on the Android phones." he said we were not to ship any of the products that have already rolled off. he told us to cancel all orders and refund all pre-orders. then he left the building with the marketing director.
Our CEO has not been back since then. This must be big.
I think you just said, "Of course this can happen -- because even though its a device manufacturer, they still have to deal with the fucked up world of software." Nice rejoinder.
Release it and then just patch it repeatedly for months on end, fixing some things and breaking others in the process. Eventually, say the phone is past the end-of-life and instead of fixing anything, suggest that your customers buy your newest phone.
This seems to work for most other businesses.