Why Kickstarter's Ouya Looks Like a Scam

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With $3m Ouya’s problems are just starting
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Kickstarter's Poor Track Record in Tech
Of the 21 "most funded" projects in Kickstarter's tech-heavy "design" category, a grand total of four appear to be currently available for sale. Of the top 12 "most funded" in Technology, four are available. Yes, many are available for "pre-order," which is another way to say "we'll take your money for a product that doesn't exist yet."

These projects aren't all new, either. ZionEyez took in $343,415 starting a full year ago and still hasn't delivered a pair of heads-up camera sunglasses. Plenty of the projects have little updates explaining that oops, the products are taking longer to make than expected.

Yes, this is heartbreaking, because many of the products look gorgeous. Many have prototypes. Many have had demos. I want some of them. I want to review some of them. But. They. Don't. Exist. Just because you can build one of something doesn't mean you can get proper quality control out of a factory line.

A success rate of 33 percent is good for a venture capitalist, because actual investors expect to hit it big often enough to offset other losses. But when you give money to Kickstarter for a tech product, you're not a real investor. Investors have equity. You're just a buyer who isn't getting your gadget for who-knows-how-long.  The longer you don't have the product, the less value your money had - and if you never get that product, well, remember, they don't have to refund your money.

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one?

Companies have to have a manager on site of production to insure quality control.  Real companies request certificates of compliance for all products delivered.  The company that built Commodore's power supplies once changed the specs on them without telling them and they had a shortage until the next shipment came in. 

If you were selling the Natami as a kit, wouldn't you give out a few to see a few people build it before you started mass producing it as a kit?  Wouldn't you want to know what kind of problems people were going to have assembling it?  The same thing holds true to manufacturing companies.  How do you know they won't have problems assembling it?

My dad had electronic parts like resistors and wires in a storage shed for 20 years.  I asked a retired guy in electronics if they would be any good.  He told me that you even have to check new products to see if they are up to specification.  What if you have a 1K resistor that isn't working.  How would you know unless you tested it with a multimeter?

I bought a LOL shield from Adafruit because I thought it might be fun.  In case you don't know what it is, it is here:

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How would you test quality control on such an item?  I took all the LEDs and connected them to a coin cell battery which is its own resistor and checked to see if all the LEDs worked before assembling them.  You don't want to assemble something to find that a part isn't working and then have to figure out what isn't working.  There are 126 LEDs which is going to take a while to solder but then I have to check all 252 solder joints on the board.

There was also a company that made vaccines and they ordered stoppers for their flasks.  No one bothered to measure the stoppers that were delivered so when the person in the production line went to put the stopper in the flask and it didn't stop at the top, the stopper went right into the flask and through the hole and contaminating the vaccine and they had no way to cover the rest of the flasks so the company lost something like five million dollars because everyone assumed that the stoppers they were delivered were the right size because no one makes mistakes.  No one checks things until there is a loss and has a reason to check. 

Suppose you order 10,000 resistors and the guy reading the part number off of the shelf at the warehouse reads the number only on the first box and the boxes behind them are out of order but the picker only reads the first box and shipps them to you.  He doesn't assume that there is a mistake so he doesn't check all of the boxes before shipment.  Now you have a problem but have you identified that problem?  Until the Natami doesn't work as advertised, there isn't a reason for uninformed people to check because they don't learn to do checks until they have experience with things going wrong.

The problem is who makes your electronics.  I've listened to the webmaster of Society of Robots and he has had problems having people build his Axxon microcontroller and he has lost money and he doesn't really go into it that much.  Imagine that someone is going to drop parts on the floor.  Maybe they solder the wrong resistor in the wrong spot.  It is different than Foxconn where they say "no talking" during their employee's stay there because they don't want their workers distracted because they can mess everything up by not paying attention to what they are doing.

Don't you test drive a car before you buy it?  Why?  Do people make mistakes?

Cisco ESD Training Program

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IPC ESD Training/Cert page with link to a FREE ESD training preview video (full video, but low res):

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The more training they've had means that you possibly have to pay them more because they know they're trained.

It's off the shelf components for a price other gadgets deliver siilar featureset for. No idea how the low volume translates to cost, but i believe there are no reasons why they shouldn't be able to deliver.

However, I do believe people expect a bit too much from it. it'll not be the next big game console. not that i believe it'll have longavility if it gains some support. but i like the project.

WAIT wasn't the VIC20 and the Apple I and ][ build up from off the shelf components?

It looks like a development kit that was already made.  In that sense, it already works but will the console as a whole deliver as promised?

It is kind of like expecting the Raspberry Pi to behave as good as a real computer.

You are right, their ram didn't work right so they had to use someone else's ram.

Their power supplies came from China.  Their cases were most likely made there as well.  Microsoft Basic was outsourced.  Their 1541 head mechanism came from two different vendors.  If you go back and watch some videos on the Commodore 64, some of the original programming wasn't even done in house.  I'm sure the Datasette components weren't all made in house.

Commodore hired Bob Yannes to build the SID chip but he didn't stay at Commodore.  Mr Mensch who was the co-holder of several 6800 patents didn't stay at Commodore.  When Jack Tramiel left Commodore, he basically took the Commodore 64 team with him and the Commodore basically became Atari because Jay Minor was from Atari and the people he brought with him were from Atari.  When Jack ran the company, he gave people a month to do something or they were fired and some people didn't stay with the company because he was ruthless in that manner.  So everyone wants to rave about Commodore who had a Commodore 64 but they didn't disrespect the Amiga because it was from Atari even though the 6800 was a Motorolla product and the operating system and Basic for Amiga was written once again by Microsoft.  Commodore users did disrespect Atari by calling their units not as powerful as the C-64 not knowing the new staff was from Atari.

When Commodore built the C-128, they got the Z80 technology from outside.

That is a very odd way to look at it.
what i mean with off the shelf components is that i go out into the local hobby electronics store and ask for a component they have.
It's off the shelve because it quite literally is off the shelve then and there.

41256 Used to be a off the shelve part, This is DRAM BTW.
I considered a 6502 a off the shelf component because it was widely available.
Same fore the Z80A.
My list goes on and on.

I don't have enough time to point out all glaringly big errors your post is full of however the processor was a 68000 series which have nothing to do with the 6800 nor the 6809 series.
Microsoft provided a BASIC interpreter which isn't that strange given MS BASIC was the de facto standard for home computers. They didn't however have anything to do with the operating system which was a mix between a internal kernel/driver development (EXEC) and the DOS* that was a port of the TRIPOS system.

Commodore designed and made most circuits themselves in their own US owned and sited manufacturing facility.
(* DOS doesn't imply MSDOS, it's a generic term for disk operating system)

It depends on which definition you use:

World English Dictionary
outsource  (ˌaʊtˈsɔːs) 
 
— vb 
1.  to subcontract (work) to another company 
2.  to buy in (components for a product) rather than manufacture them 

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Megol,

Which standard?  Everyone's Basic was a little different than the other company's.  Apple had a print using statement and Commodore didn't.  Some had sys and others didn't.  Even if you knew BASIC, the machines were sometimes incompatible with each other so the standard meant nothing except Microsoft's Basic worked.

"The language and its ***variants*** became widespread on microcomputers in the late 1970s and 1980s, when it was typically a standard feature, and often part of the firmware of the machine."

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A college owns BASIC.  Bill Gates didn't invent it.

Chuck

Everything else was stolen.

It was produced by a company that was bought by Commodore in 1976, though, long before the VIC 20 became reality. Without this deal the Commodore we knew would not have become reality.