[drewcrawford]

A brief history of ship dates:

January 22, 2010: "We've tentatively planned for the first batch of WakeMates to be shipped as early as next month."

March 11, 2010: "the first run of units will go out on March!"

March 31, 2010: "This is the last day of Q1 and we will be shipping out the first units today." (Maybe they did ship out a few? but I was a very early pre-order and didn't get one...)

April 1, 2010: "The next batch of units will ship no later [sic] July 30, 2010. Based on your pre-order date, you should expect your WakeMate no later than 07/30/2010, but probably significantly sooner. This is a conservative estimate; we want to provide you with a firm date. We are confident we can deliver many orders sooner and will continue working night and day to ship yours as soon as possible."

July 20, 2010: "We may not hit the July 31st date at this point, but we’ll come close. We’ll post an updated ship date (measured in days or weeks at worst, not months) when we have a better idea of when it will be"

[subwindow]

I believe they did ship a few dozen units out in Q1. I don't believe they lied in any of those quotes- at worst it looks like they'll miss their July 30 ship date by a week or so. That's not all that bad.

[drewcrawford]

Being even a week late is not my idea of a "conservative estimate" or a "firm date".

I realize we're not talking about a mission-critical product here. But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.

[rstocker99]

I haven't ordered a wakemate. I'm not the target market but I'm always amazed at the level of vitriol that follows their posts here on HN.

There is no doubt that their overall communication strategy is a bit "rough".

I'm always surprised and bit disappointed at the beating people give these guys here. This is a community of tech entrepreneurs who know how unbelievably difficult it is to ship product and a run a start up. I'm not suggesting everyone should get a free pass. I'm all for pointed thoughtful criticism but the verbal beatings seem unwarranted.

[mcritz]

With friends like these, right?

It seems the HN community is all too eager to shoot their wounded.

[ekanes]

I agree that the community could be gentler with WakeMate, but my guess is the frustration comes because the pattern isn't changing. This community seems very forgiving of mistakes, but also expects you to learn from 'em.

[_cbsz]

If WakeMate is any good, it will end up being mission-critical for me. I've lost control of my sleep schedule and I can't move it backward because I just end up wasting a day due to tiredness and unable to keep it from slipping forward again.

[eru]

How about moving it forward enough to make it wrap around?

[_cbsz]

I've wrapped on several occasions by pulling an all-nighter. It just keeps slipping forward to equilibrium. For concreteness, this has resulted in instances where I will awaken at 3 PM one day and 3 AM the next (36 hours later). Staying up extra-late so as to go to bed at a normal time and re-adjust just doesn't do it for me.

[eru]

Have you tried getting a significant other (for cohabitation or marriage) with a sane sleep cycle? Worked for me.

[lionhearted]

Emphasis mine:

> But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.

You've probably never built a product before. It's not that Wakemate is "not living up to it", it's that they're thinking, "My God, this was supposed to be out two months ago. Okay, what's the worst case scenario? Four months? No way it can take more than four months. Okay, let's tell people four months and plan to get it out in two months."

All kinds of shit goes wrong when you're building a new product. Now, if you'd said "be more realistic" or "be more pessimistic" or "get better at estimating", I guess I'd agree with you sort of. But one thing they can't do is "live up to it" by willpower - these are young entrepreneurs trying to get their product out and it's a parade of trivial things are stopping them from doing so. At least, that's what I'm guessing, having built stuff before. I promise, they're trying and feeling about 10,000 times more neurotic and disappointed than any cool exterior would show.

[drewcrawford]

Emphasis mine:

> But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.

Nobody stood over them and forced them to make strongly-worded promises about firm shipping dates. They chose to use those words.

They had missed multiple ship dates in the past; they were certainly well aware of the gravity and customer backlash of making promises they couldn't keep. They were also certainly aware that this would take an order of magnitude longer than they thought. Instead of saying "We're sorry, we have no idea when we will ship these", they decided to make an announcement that they would absolutely positively ship me my product by that date, if not sooner.

[SoftwareMaven]

The lesson here is that you don't give definitive dates unless you are the one controlling those dates (for instance, waiting for a particular event to ship the product that is sitting in your warehouse).

WakeMate wasn't, so they shouldn't have worded things that strongly. Never underestimate the number of things that can go wrong.

Edit: Get the name right, idjit

[gridspy]

Changing the design to accommodate a new flash chip is a pretty big spanner thrown into their works by an outside requirement.

Also, that authentication chip was probably a major headache.

Imho, they have some pretty good reasons for the delay. They don't have the manpower that a large company has to put onto sudden disasters like this.

[utku_karatas2]

A concept also known as Valve Time (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time) ;).

[plusbryan]

After spending 8 months wading through the MFI program myself, I concur that it's messy and poorly managed - I'm not surprised that this is part of the reason for the delay. Keep at it, I look forward to mine!

[clewiston]

Hey thank for the encouragement! IMO the authentication chip has some details that are very poorly documented (and as a result gave me months of headaches). if you want to talk shop anytime please feel free to drop me a line at: craig <at> wakemate <dot> com. would love to have another hardware developer working on apple auth to chat with...