DigitalHype wrote:
Ardvark wrote:> * * *> I’m guessing you’ve never worked in the corporate world. When you sell a product to say best buy (or walmart, or any of those places) you have to sign a contract saying you’ll have X number of units on the shelf by Y date. If you don’t you pay a huge fine, and they have the right to re-sell the shelf space to someone else. Because of this, devices are often shipped months before the “final” firmware is ready. Even if they can delay it, they have a date that they MUST be shipped by or they face this fine and possible loss of shelf-space. This is even worse this time of year as this is the “pre-holiday” season.> Thats why most devices have a “Day-1” patch, so they can continue working on the software side of things while the device is being shipped and produced. > My guess is the devices shipped either before they found the bug, or right-after and they assumed it would be resolved for the “Day-1” patch. Maybe it was more complex than they thought, or something else happened.> This is all hypothetical of course, but my guess is it’s not too far off- i’ve seen the same story over and over and over again from almost every manufactuer. The real villian here is the big retail chains who put these kinds of constraints on their customers and suppliers.
Plenty of experience in the corporate world. No need for the ad hominem stuff.
So, because Western Digital doesn’t want to incur fines from thier retailers, or lose potential shelf space, the customer pays for a product that does not function according to specification. Where the firmware is, as you correctly pointed out, not ready.
According to TonyPhy12345, WD caught the bug before it release, and temporarily removed the media library functionality. That being true, WD couldn’t have shipped first. Else, there would be some models on the shelves with the bug, and media library still enabled for network shares.
Yes, I’ve also seen this story before. Chances are I didn’t enjoy it last time, either.
Sorry about that - a lot of people honestly don’t know.
So let’s assume they caught it, were working on a fix, and had to ship or would miss the deadline. By that time the manuals need to be completed, translated into umpteen languages, boxes printed, etc. - no way to “remove” the feature from the litature, and no way to not ship the product. When I say these fines are huge, i mean HUGE - sometimes 7 figures. For a $100 product, it might not even be worth selling when you consider that these contracts are likely all going to give the same or a similar date. Remeber that a company is beholden to its stockholders- they can’t do anything that will lose them money or risk the wrath of wall st.
Also, it’s a minor feature - it’s not like the remote is non-functional, or 1/2 the codecs supported don’t work. It would be a very bad busness decision not to ship due to this one thing not being ready. Especially since it will be added in the near-future (I’m almost certain we’ll have it before christmas- they will want to minimize returns durring black-friday sales too so likely even before thanksgiving). Also consider this - if the drive doesn’t get good shelf-space less people will buy it. If less people buy it, they will be less focused on adding new features and support in the future.
That shelf-space is also very expensive and it’s loss could be paramount in helping to sell the product.
