Let me put it this way, I was backer #816. They currently have 37,987 backers. They raised $4,882,784 during a global pandemic. I think I’m not off base when I said “If you can get one.”
No one has one - none have shipped. Your backer position is irrelevant right now. If they had released a batch of 2000 and you missed out, yes I'd be upset. They are still fine tuning their tooling to mass produce. It's way behind schedule, but with everything on kickstarter - allow for 2x the time to avoid disappointment.
While I understand that there has been a long history of Kickstarter projects underdelivering or not delivering at all... I would think the context of a global pandemic causing record resource shortages would allow cutting these guys some slack, yeah?
I mean, if Nvidia and AMD can't get a graphics card into my hands over the course of a year then I can't imagine a super tiny group of engineers would have much luck bootstrapping the supply chain for their brand new product.
The fact that Nvidia and AMD are having trouble highlights that supply chain financing is a risky business where even professionals lose their money. Requiring customers to take part in it as a condition for (eventually) buying the product feels icky to me.
Producing anything to sell commercially requires work up front. That work has to get paid for. While that work is happening, the people involved need to eat and to keep their families fed. Is the universe a big ol' meanie for "requiring" people to keep eating? I guess.
Regardless, up-front money is required. Previously something like this could only happen if you managed to find somebody with millions of dollars sitting around and then managed to convince them to give you enough to get your product built. And then you had the problem of finding your buyers, which cost more money for marketing.
I have my issues with Kickstarter. But inviting the individuals who want your product to participate in financing it seems like a giant step forward to me. If you have a better idea, I'm all ears. If not, maybe just block Kickstarter in your browser? Then you'll be free of any perceived burdensome requirements.
You don't have to back the project to be able to buy one though: you can preorder from the second production wave on their site currently. It isn't as if they are only selling to backers and won't produce anymore after that
They're not out yet. Have you ever used Kickstarter before??
You're phrasing this like they're GPUs. But those GPUs have general availability, at least on paper. There are no people, other than the Flipper devs, their friends, and perhaps selected reviewers, who have one of these in their hands to play with. It has not hit 1.0 yet.
Ok, it’s clear where you stand. I’m not here to be negative, only to share with folks interested in the product that they are significantly back logged. Hopefully everyone knows what the means in a Kickstarter context. Their marketing is great, the jury is still out on their actual product.
If you're not here to be negative, then 1) don't say "no sign of getting it" and "I've given up" about something that's going through the early to medium stages of production with lots of updates, and 2) don't just say you ordered it "last April" without even mentioning that it was already expected to take 10 months even then.
"If you can get one. They're behind schedule and haven't shipped any yet." would have been fine.