Slashdot Mirror
How Not To Launch a Gadget
An anonymous reader writes "Starfish sells itself with this slogan: 'The next biggest thing is the next smallest thing: The world's first ever interactive iPhone and iPad mirroring device on your wrist.' The reality is that building products is hard. Building products with amazing feature sets is harder still. And, as the old saying goes, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. From the article: 'On Thursday morning when the show floor opened, Starfish’s booth was completely empty—no product, no marketing materials, not even any people. Come Friday, various permutations of representatives appeared at the booth intermittently. ... Saturday arrived, but the watch didn’t, at least not at first. After hourly promises of its imminent arrival, a single prototype of the Starfish watch appeared sometime before 1 p.m. My colleague Dan Moren got to the booth before I did, and the Starfish device wasn't working then. It had apparently worked, briefly, in some sense of the word "worked," when a reporter for TUAW visited the booth. ... The sole representative at the booth when I returned wouldn't give his name. What information he did give me didn’t mesh with what [the CEO] had told TUAW. ... "Why did he send you to man the booth if you can’t answer questions about the watch?" I asked the rep. "I’m done talking to you," he said, as he moved to position himself directly in front of my face. His expression had gone from brusque to combative. "Did you hear me? I’m done talking to you." My accompanying colleagues and I took the unsubtle hint. We left the booth.'"
If you think 3D printing can solve everything, you will be in for a very big surprise !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Unfortunately, so many companies have bought into the idea that hype - any hype - will lead to funding, which will lead to product development .... which will lead to the product that was being hyped.
... *sigh*
And we keep falling for it
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Having people who have terrible people skills represent your interests usually ends badly. Just ask the LAPD. Or [hated political group]. If you can't manage that, at least bring scantily-clad women to the party... nobody expects them to answer questions about the device, and as a bonus, you'll get a lot of pictures of it. This isn't rocket science...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
iPhone-ista Outrage!
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Surprise, surprise. It was funded, at least in part, by Kickstarter. Kickstarter businesses, by definition, are almost always going to be the worst of the worst simply because of the nature of funding. The company founders couldn't borrow the money, they couldn't get anybody to invest, so they ultimately end up on Kickstarter, begging for handouts from the clueless general public. Of course, some Kickstarter projects are run by intelligent, capable people who use Kickstarter because some kind of principles that they may have, but the vast majority of the projects are there because the owners didn't have any other options.
Personally, I see it as a real karmic kick in the ass to the people starting these "projects" every time one falls over. Inevitably, they're people who think they've got the next idea for the next big Apple accessory, but they pooh-pooh the mundane details of engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution, all of which they look down their noses at (an attitude often espoused by Slashthink, too). As an actual business owner, that provides actual services for people, and deals with actual, physical products, I have to smile every time I see one of these holier-than-thou fools fall flat on their proverbial faces because they can't figure out the nuts and bolts of running a business.
Running a business is hard. It's very hard. Coming up with an idea for some new gee gaw is about 1% of the effort required to do something like this project. The other 99% is the fun, yet very difficult business-y stuff that these kinds of people try to ignore.
I don't respond to AC's.
Yes, but you have to wash it down with hot dog flavored water.
Also, you have to listen to shrill, horrible music.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
A device called "starfish" turns out to be vaporware? Color me surprised.
Am I the only one a little concerned by how intent Lex Friedman (author of TFA) was on getting information from the representative that clearly didn't know anything. He took pictures of the booth while he waited around for the CEO to show.
Yes. The inspiration came from having their heads up their asses.
Without being so annoying as to be told to f-off, he wouldn't have a story. So he does seem to be trying to get a reaction.
As it is, it's just a product planned for launch that wasn't ready to launch. Well that's same as usual for new products. Once you realize the guy there isn't a rep with any knowledge, hassling him for knowledge you know he doesn't have, is designed to illicit a negative response.
Perhaps it was a slow show and he had no story.
Starfish? Really? I bet their product umm... stinks. It probably comes in Zune brown too.
is a tattle-tell
Now the Pebble has definitely caught my eye as a way to put your phone on your wrist like this: http://getpebble.com/
Looks awfully like this here thing http://getpebble.com/ but I was only going off the look from the photo in the first link. Still, it's a poor showing on their part to not have anything to ...show. I hope Pebble goes better, or at least something decent in both price and and function.
Also, if they were rude, you should have just gone away - don't give them the time or exposure; just let them be dicks and lose everyone's respect.
...and his lack of personal hygiene, confrontational nature, total lack of empathy or ability to understand or identify with any viewpoint except his own, complete obliviousness to how he comes off to others (remember the pages-long travel missives?)...
...I'm modded "flamebait" or "troll." Heaven forbid there are people who point out the man's numerous flaws. Ordinarily it'd be ad hominem, but he's a spokesman and figurehead, which makes every single one of the points above completely relevant.
Please help metamoderate.
So what's the legal definition of assault? Was he just threatened?
What's new about a wrist phone? Swatch had the Swatch Talk wrist phone in 1998. Samsung had one in 2001. If you want one right now, there are several on Amazon. They're cheap, too; well under $100 for an unlocked phone.
There's even a full Android device in a watch size announced. This thing can supposedly make phone calls, shoot video, browse the web, get your location, etc.
Looks very much like a MetaWatch SDK to me. Anyone with some programming skills can slap together something like that -or something that actually works in some way- for $200.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
from starfish since they're a company who's website is a facebook profile...
"Did you hear me? I’m done talking to you."
And thus, with nine words, a company dies. They clearly have no manufacturing capability, little-or-no software development capability, and have done no market research. The have a half-baked idea, and a part of a marketing plan. Probably saw a piece of existing hardware, and figured they could customize it to do something different - and were wrong. There have been successful products that launched way too soon, but not with THAT kind of press. Done for, now.
How can a company be _so_ ignorant of it's own abilities.
I mean the main problem is getting a proper case and interfacing with iOS. The rest is just a wristwatch sized computer with Bluetooth. Give a good engineer some time and it'll find a way to resize the screen. It probably won't be perfect, but hey what do you expect?
The problem inside those companies is that three problems come together.
First of all, you have people to stupid to realise that they are wrong.
Second, the people who know a bit more, don't interfere with bad decisions for various reasons.
Third, people who actually know what they are doing will be worn out struggling against the idiots and simply leave the company.
Granted, this is an extreme example, but it happens quite often. There are 'idiot companies' out there. They are the ones thinking that OPC is a good idea. They are the ones basing their company on some VBA scripts.
In lighter cases you get all those little gadget which require you to have some complex software products to use them, and which will end on the dump once installing the software is more effort than the device is worth.
you've met my wife!