#Rumors and speculation
5 messages in this thread
Pete,
CBM has been burned in the past with early product and/or release
dates. They were jumped on royally because they missed the date. As a
result, they (CBM represenative on line here) stated that they would no
longer give release dates unless they were positive they could meet them
and in no even…no more than 90 days prior to public availability.
That's what they said…they had good reason for it, and I presume
they intend to stick to it. Perfectly reasonable to me.
Don
I can't dispute the reasonableness of their actions. But, as with
everything else, there are two competing issues.
On the one hand, if they provide early release date info (as NewTek did
with the Toaster), there is a penalty to pay if the date isn't met.
Agreed. On the other, if they DON'T give out any info, people are going to
find it out somehow anyway. Then they go to Commodore to get it confirmed
and get angry when the Commodore folks don't know (or won't say) anything
about it.
Tentative release dates, and tech support staff who are permitted to say
"Yes, we're working on that, and we're hoping to release it on XXXXX, but
it's not finalized yet" would appear the be the best compromise. Certainly
it would be better than what I'm seeing on this board at the moment, where
rumors get passed around so much that they eventually get given out to
unsuspecting users as fact by well meaning people who don't have definitive
information themselves…….
Pete
The problem is, the minute a company even tentativly says "well, maybe
possibly if everything works out we might have it on XXXX but we don't know
for sure", everyone will still hold the company to that date, and will be
madder if it doesn't come out on that date than if the company never set a
date to begin with.
Of course, there's the additional problem that traditionally an
announcement of a new product will kill all sales of existing products.
Look what happened to Osborne. I'd personally prefer that Commodore hold
back on announcing something until they were _absolutely_ sure of it,
rather than trying to appease the rumor mill.
–
-Mike
Currently, with 1.4 and the rumored line of monitors upcoming, I
would recommend people wait. It hurts commodore whether they say what's
coming or not.
— Ethan
There's no perfect solution to the problem. But if the rumor gets started
I think at least someone could confirm, "Yes, we're working on that but as
yet there is no announced release date."
It's really frustrating to have someone totally deny something you know is
true.
Customer support reps swore up and down that there was no A1000 upgrade in
the works as recently as Monday ("It would be really nice if they did it,
but don't hold your breath.")…..
Pete