No cases this week, but how about this other cool stuff
November 3, 2009
We’ll deal with the not-so-shiny news first, then we’ll get onto those mysterious photos. The not-so-shiny news is that we won’t be seeing the first production cases this week:
Sorry everyone,
I had to pull the countdown timer. I dared to be brave and got bit in the ass once again.
Craig suggested I was crazy but there didn’t seem to be anything else that could be screwed up at this point and I even factored in a couple extra days.
There was one part coming out of the molds messed up and they were to fix it, make new parts and ship everything tonight. Now, two more molds need the extra treatment and will take a few more days. I’m hoping they ship new parts this weekend but no more count downs. Unbelievable.
The countdown timer MWeston refers to had been up on his site (openpandora.ca) since Sunday, and in the name of Extreme Caution was not advertised here on the blog. Then, like magic, the case factory went and burst Michael’s bubble. Balls! It’s not all bad though. The good news is that the 3895 boards are done and on their way to being populated, a process which should be complete by November’s end. In the scheme of things, a few extra days on the case won’t make a difference.
So, what about these pictures? If you hadn’t guessed already, these are the famous Pandora case moulds, snapped in the factory and beamed out on the Twitterix. Lovely innit! Click to embiggen, and be warned, they’re huge.
ohh pretty
sux about the case, but what are ya gonna do?
Bitch endlessly about it and declare the Pandora vaporware? That’s what everyone else on the internet is going to do.
Agree keep bitching until it passes vaporware.Looking forward to the next appalling delay.Well lets guess 1 the cases will have a other mistake 2 There is some mistake in shipment to the assembly location 3 On arrival there are many damaged ore not up to standard cases anyway 4 There are miraculously part missing of the whole Pandora 5 There will be a massive conflict with the posting company to deliver to the customer and the delay will be a 2 to 12 months.
Well all the delays lies incompetence stupidity is making this whole project a joke.
I recommend just laugh and hope it will materialise one day so there will be massive Pandora hugging going on.
Don’t get upset it is just a toy not a live line.
PS is this bitchy enough.
bitchy enough fo’ sure
“Pandora library” (oh please), many “new” games, moulds, oh and of course these lies.
Something any one person could come up with if he had some programming skills and a shed. Not to mention the enormously used con skills.
The Open Pandora people keep begging for trust but they refuse to give up any tangible evidence that this isn’t a scam.
Five to ten years from now this is being investigated by police world wide as one of the biggest scams in history while the one to few people enjoy their margaritas in Hawaii.
Boy, I sure hope to one day be able to spend 4-5 years with a group of 10 guys so we can split 1.4 million dollars! Or wait, maybe we could all just get jobs instead.
Seriously this is like the worst scam ever if it’s really a scam.
What is this “population” process that will take nearly a month? I thought creating/completing the boards was supposed to be a fast process?
Making the PCBs is a two stage process. The first is to make the boards themselves, which at a glance just look like flat green wafers but are actually very intricate and multi-layered. The population stage is where they solder all the bits on; chips, nubs, sockets (power, SD, USB etc), and all the little components like resistors and capacitors. It’s never really been said that this was a fast process – it’s much slower than making the cases (which is why a small case delay doesn’t matter).
Craig says the company populating the boards is the same one who does Beagleboards, so they’re in good, experienced hands.
Comparing PCBs to wafers makes me want to eat them.
That makes sense.
It’s only an 8-layer, wafer-thin board!
Yum!
Nah, f**k off, I’m stuffed.
That makes sense – I might have guessed that, but wasn’t certain. An interesting point of being misled (again!), then. We were told how fast the company could make the boards once they were ordered, yet it was conveniently left out how much additional time it would still take. I remember not so long ago, when there was a delay in the boards, and the comment was “oh, it’s just a small delay, the last big bottleneck now is the case, which will take a while still, so this little bit doesn’t matter.” My how things have changed…
They do have about 100 boards already done and ready to ship once they have cases. But it sounded like those weren’t going to go out to the buyers anyways (devs and press first) so in terms of people who preordered it doesn’t change the timeline but in terms of the “First official Pandora ship date” it’s setting them back a bit.
Craig says:
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/50243-countdown-to-production-unit-showcase-7-days/page__view__findpost__p__770055
embiggen?!
It’s a perfectly cromulent word.
^_^
Enbiggen I can understand – It’s Gruso after all and his butchery of English is world renowned.
But Cromulent takes the freak’n’ waffer.
“embiggen” and “cromulent” are words invented by “The Simpsons”.
All it takes to make a new word is to get it used in 3 or 4 different places that are cite-able. There’s a TED talk about it here…
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man
“I or Michael will be posting a much more accurate schedule soon.”
I very much doubt that
If it only refers to processes already completed in the past, can you still call it a schedule?
You do know that most of the problems at this point have nothing to do with them specifically right? they’re using the timelines that the companies give them, if the companies suppying parts drop the ball it’s not like the OP team is to blame for just repeating what they’ve been told.
I’ll agree with you, but just up to a point. There have been a number of delays that were not OP’s fault. *HOWEVER* they could also have done better research on timing from their end. Given that the mould creation took over 40 days, and they hadn’t even begun the *prototypes* for the moulds (which would require several sets of international shipping), there was absolutely no way we would could have ever had the Pandora two months after preorders opened last year. It’s just one example, but there have been others. Did someone not do their homework? Looking back, it seems like either (a) we were mislead, or (b) someone was negligent, or (c) both (most likely). You decide.
Point in time accuracy. Bull-shit to some of the less faithful. Me! I love the sound these deadlines make as they whoosh by, and appreciate the information. All part of lives rich wafer.
Looking at this page, there’s a google ad underneath this comment box that is advertising ‘Plastic Moulds in 3 days High Quality Fast Turnaround’
Oh the irony!
Excellent spotted it did put a massive grin on my face.
They just have to go to these guys and the Pandora will be finished soon so we can play chess with it.
No doubt they will be 3 or 4 times the cost of their Chinese counterparts…….
That sort of thing tends to annoy me. Especially when they advertise something that’s better than what I’ve just purchased.
Really Ad companies should filter for that sort of thing, since it’s a waste of the advertiser’s money anyway.
Plastic Moulds in 3 Days “High” Quality “Fast” Turnaround
What? plastic molds would only be good for making clay figurines! we need steel molds guys!
Well, only one word can describe what I’m feeling right now.
Bummer…
Another delay? Big shocker there.
Hey come on guy’s, I’m just as anxious as the next preorderer to get my grubby mitts on this thing but I really can’t see how comments like this would benefit anyone.
If I were on the receiving end it would certainly not encourage me to do better (even if I could). In actual fact it would piss me off and leave me thinking why did I bother!
We (The community) need to remember we asked for this project. Any RND project like this always has to deal with setbacks, delays and budget blowouts (and the team have managed it without raising the price!).
I wonder how many of the bashers could do better? That is ofcourse if they were even prepared to try!.
Owen
I hope they can take a few comments like this because, quite frankly, OpenPandora is lucky to not have gone down in flames by now. They are a year late after already being six months to a year late. They took preorders with absolutely no knowledge or intention of getting the product out anywhere near promised. They threw a big hissy and tried to blame their bank for everything. They shafted anyone who preordered especially if they don’t end up ever reordering and through them. They let the Wiz beat them to the market by six months and counting. They are very lucky that the PSP Go didn’t include a hardware revision whether it’s an open system or not (I know…it isn’t). They’ve been hanging the two month carrot in front of everyone’s face for most of the last two years (I actually passed on the GP2X F-200 solely because I was going to wait the three to six month for Pandora to come out. LOL!) The carrot is still there even though we really don’t have any idea how much longer, if ever, it’ll be (hey, stranger things have happened). And yet here we are…still eagerly waiting…hoping that we’re in the home stretch (if I had a penny for every time I heard that euphemism).
They are lucky to have such strong and loyal support after all of the abuse. They can take a few pot shots here and there until the Pandora makes it into our hands.
P.S. Please don’t read the above as if I’m some kind of raving lunatic going off on a rampage. I assure you, I’m quite calm.
This all just makes me smile especially i jumped onto the vaporware term as well wile it is more like noware because there is no-ware and it seems to go noware.And yea i rather see the Pandora be put in tupperware now just to see it gets someware.
Maybe they could use some tupperware as case.
And yes i am wellaware i am stepping on pandorwares huggingware.Lets hope soon pandore will fareware.
Not at all. I agree with you completely.
For the record you DO sound at least mildly raving.
That’s why I post scripted my comment. I knew that it would sound that way while one was reading it. Personally, I’m just patiently waiting for the second batch right now. I told myself that if they didn’t have a working final prototype by the time we were forced to re-preoder that I’d save myself the headache since it would probably be another several months before these things were built and shipped out. I’m glad I did, although, I won’t be when the first batchers finally do get theirs (for obvious reasons).
Sigh.
2 more months…
told you so!
Ohno. I hope it’s just a delay of a couple of weeks
Think it will cost…. uuuh.
Just another ‘two more months’.
christmas 2009?
Sorry…
More like January 2010
Back when Craig missed the July deadline, I thought long and hard about the delays, and I said “I will give them until end of January 2010, after that I’m canceling my order if they haven’t shipped out any units.” So all this info and hype has been nice thinking it would get out faster, but I am still fine as long as i get it before Feb.
I want that copper Pandora
It’s inside-out! This means you would need to be able to fit within the void whilst the PCB is exposed to the rest of us. Plus there’s not a lot of travel in copper. Those keys are going to be might hard to hit.
I’m pretty pumped just to see the lovely mould pictures, it somehow makes it feel more real if you know what i mean. The slight delay is no biggy in the scheme of things so I’m not gonna be bitchy about it what’s the point. Atleast we can now see the finish line through the trees. I’m gonna have to send a crate of beer upto pandora hq when all this is over. You’ve got to give them credit for taking all the crap flung at them over the year, lol. I’m sure we’ll all laugh about this when it’s all over. All i need to do now is whack the christmas tree up and wait to place my pandora under it to open christmas day. Yeah right, as if I could leave it untouched under the tree till christmas. Actually thinking about it OP should send the pandoras gift wrapped with a christmas message from craigx, mweston and Ed with the jingle bells music. Great job so far guys, lets hope you can pull this off for christmas, even if i have to put it together myself!
Glad to see your Christmas was not year specific.
Best put the artificial tree up this year so your Pandora can sit there nicely wrapped up for 11.5 months to fulfil your wish. I was thinking 2nd week of Dec (maybe a little earlier) but now it’s going to be mighty mighty close. I have hope but not much.
It’s interesting to see that more and more people are getting upset with delays.
Here for christmass ? …
Good point to try that but it won’t be there before 2010, I’m quite sure of that.
They should think about a SD Card sponsor right now! This kind of news would be no problem if they add gift in return for so much delays.
I really don’t care about the delays, as long as I get it sometime. But if it takes say another year then I would start to get upset, but I really don’t think its going to take another year so its all good. I got my PSP for the time being.
Well I’m not upset about delays, but I’m upset why the mould went wrong and why the company can’t speed up to correct this problem for their sake lol.
So no one has actually mentioned that this delays it an entire week? Not 2 months not a year a week! 7 Days! That is not a long time.
Confirmed:
Do you perhaps work for Fox news, Atomic?
I ASK THE QUESTIONS HERE
Whatever the problem is, there is not much we can do except wait (again and again I know it’s boring).
But this experience made me aware of something I already know.
It’s really a shit-plan to deal with customers.
Whatever passion for the project you may have.
It is certain that the public will criticize you to death
(even if you are Sony or Nintendo).
And I can not blame them because it is also my case.
I am really dismayed by so many delays…
But I vaguely knew it before supporting this project.
Less than 50 days I hope this time !
We all signed up to fund their start up. Unlike regular funding a startup, we don’t get a share of the companies profits. On a similar vein, profit was never a motive for the pandy (and if it was, it was so pathetically implemented as to go way past laughable).
We’re essentially paying for the gang to get some wicked ass experience. After this project, *if* they pull it off (it looks like they will, after all, their entire futures are in the balance, I mean, 4000 people sue them for 1 million pounds, it will be high profile in geek circles at least) they will have device manufacturers lining up to offer them jobs. They will know ground up how to build a device, and have hit pretty much every snag there is (most of them largely due to the small numbers they are producing).
If they had the politcal sway of Nintendo or Sony it would’ve been in our hands before June. They have the political sway of a bunch of guys in their garage. Taking that into account, January 2010 would be impressive.
Taking into account that it is literally 5 guys with a heavily modified beagle board and a dream, and (atm it looks like) it only took 14 months to go from that to high quality end result, and that they had no experience with this before hand, you’ve got to give them a round of applause for getting this far at least.
Still to my knowledge there is no publicly available near Ghz device with 3d accel and USB host that can fit in a pocket, and it’s looking like Tegra is having just as many delays as pandy, it seems like the sort of thing we are all living through (though nowhere near as much as the pandy devs) is totally par for the course.
Heck, I don’t know of any USB host device that can fit in a pocket.
I agree with you that funding this startup is something we agreed to. However, they did mislead us. They made it sound as if they had more experience than they did, at least with the process, and many of their initial estimates still seem fabricated. I’m OK with this, since I’m still interested in the Pandora, and I still think it’s going to be one of the best/most powerful devices out there. Taht said, don’t fool yourself about the 14 months. That’s how long will have been since they started taking orders, there had been board/case/nub design and planning that had already happened for at least half a year by that point, and the concept had been kicked around for a year or so before that.
At least the Zaurus SL-6000 and the SL-C3000 had USB host port:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus
Both fitted in the pocket (acknowledged, a big pocket indeed). But they were of comparable size to the pandora.
There are a number of devices with USB host. Quite a few mp3 players, as well as cameras these days.
I agree with some of your points but there are a couple that aren’t correct. Many of us didn’t agree to fund a start up company. We ordered a product that was supposedly complete. Manufacturing was set to start one week after they took preorders. That meant to me that they were done with the design process, had *all* of the parts and were just waiting to see how many preorders they received. It wasn’t until after the refunds started and everything went bad that they spun the whole story about us knowing that we were funding the project and that they were still in the design stage (as they decided to switch to a newer version of the board). If they’d have come out and told everyone this up front, they would have had far less irate people screaming at them.
The second point I would disagree with is the “14 months”. I have no idea where that came from but most of us have been expecting the Pandora to be finished within two or three months for most of the past two years. As I mentioned in another post on this article, I was thrilled when GPH released the F-200 because they finally put directional controls on their device that would allow me to play a lot of the games that I just can’t play on my MK2 because the controls are so terrible. Right after the F-200 was announced was when the Pandora (called the Craiginator at the time) was initially announced to the world with the goal of being out by Christmas (2007…ironically about two to three months away). I decided to wait for Pandora instead of spending another $200 on a d-pad and touch screen upgrade for my GP2X. According to the team (I think), they had been working on it since January (’07). It’ll have been at least three years from start to finish, probably longer.
Now three years isn’t really all that long for a project like this. It would’ve been nice if they hadn’t strung us along like they have though.
I too remember the F200 release and the discussion of the Craiginator. I remember thinking how awesome it sounded, and that it was way too early in development to be close, but I followed it anyway. Hard to believe it’s already been three years, now. Easy, at the same time.
When they opened up the first pre-orders, they made it very clear that they needed the money for the production itself, and that they weren’t “quite” ready. They didn’t have the parts yet, because they didn’t have the money to buy those. I was OK with that, and even with needing the money to start the process for the boards/cases, which I also felt was OK. But the fact that so few of the pieces were anywhere close to being done, that there were so man delays that were problems with timing (as opposed to not being their fault – say a holiday), it awful. I think this post expressed it well:
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/49986-will-we-all-have-our-pandoras-by-xmas/page__st__45__p__763811&#entry763811
But I still think we have a right to be angry at them for it. I’m hungry!
We knew that they needed the money to actually build them but they made it seem like that was the only thing they needed. You can’t be ready to manufacture in a week if you still have to do all the things they’ve done over this past year. I remember when production would resume the moment they could land their hands on some LCD screens…or when they found a new company to supply them with analog nubs…or when whatever excuse they were handing out at the time was resolved. I’m half-way expecting them to fall back on the April/May time table again once Christmas is determined to be a lost cause.
Plus, I’ve pretty much been chased off of the gp2x forums. There are some cool people on there like Gruso, Tag and many others but there are just too many people that make the place not very fun to hang around.
Don’t worry Pandora peoples, I still believe in you ♥ Just make sure I get mine before the end of the year haha
So, are you planning on realising this with Duke Nukem Forever preinstalled? awesome!!
that would be sooo cool
So, what’s the yearly interest on $1.2M?
Approximately 50k.
so still no news 3 days delay no way more like 2 weeks
Dunno.. I’d put pressure on the mouldfactory to get it fixed asap.