Classic Unsurprisingly, B&N blows the launch date

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by ifonline

Wow. Lucky for you, you aren't ranting about other people ranting. That would have been awkward and made you look foolish. Phew. Good job avoiding that one.

*snicker*

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

there is not that much difference in the actual function of the device. all of that should have been resolved weeks before the release was even announced.

Unfortunately, in today's business world, people just don't share technology with each other. If Sony/Amazon figure out how to put out an eBook reader, they don't share the software (the key component here) with others. So each company gets to hire developers and reinvent the wheel. It isn't an ideal world. The upside is that we have Adobe at least trying to make it easier with their SDK that supports PDF/ePub, and is helping standardize the market on those formats as a result. Still, it isn't like B&N can go somewhere and buy prepackaged software components for the key stuff, even if it has been done before. It's the downside to the concept of Intellectual Property.

That said, you still have a point here. Software should have been 'done' quite a ways back. Software needs to be put on in the factory, which means the firmware likely went final about the time of the announcement if not earlier with the last round of bugfixes (depending on volume, mid-Oct would be the absolute drop-dead, gotta have it finished date). Now, if their testers missed something huge and found a ship-stopper after that, well, that's where speculation can begin. But odds are the delay would be closer to 2-3 weeks if they found one of these ship-stoppers the week of launch. You don't just fix it, test, and reflash thousands of devices overnight. And even to get it done in 2-3 weeks would be expensive as sin to B&N and lots of late nights for maybe a dozen people.

FCC delays, or lawsuit delays are about the only things that make logical sense so far as to why the shipping delays unless we want to assume B&N is out to steal money from us unsuspecting consumers who haven't even handed it over yet.

[kindlekitten]

I am certain that there is a fair amount of corporate espionage and employee hijacking that goes on to cover many of those knowledge bases

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I am certain that there is a fair amount of corporate espionage and employee hijacking that goes on to cover many of those knowledge bases

If it was as common as some people think, we'd see more lawsuits over it (a lot of states let companies use anti-compete/poach clauses in their employee contracts).

And it isn't about knowledge per se, it is about writing the code. You can't just hire a guy and say "regurgitate the book worth of text you wrote for this other company and hit the build button". Even if they could do it, it is copyright infringement. At the cost of the lawsuit, they could simply hire 3 guys and do it 'clean room' instead and get it done faster. And then on top of that, ignoring copyright infringement/etc, the firmware for each device is slightly different and just copying code around leads to bugs that need to be investigated, fixed, and so on. That's ignoring the huge differences between an Android device, a standard Linux device, Windows CE devices (in about 3 dozen flavors), and so on. Half the time the code can't even just be copied, you have to write it from scratch anyways.

The knowledge on how to read eReader, Mobi, ePub, etc is there and shared... you don't need to poach anyone into your team to make that stuff happen. Specifications are a wonderful thing in the software industry for that very reason, and the great software devs out there can sometimes make do without that and just poke around the data long enough to figure it out. That won't write code for you, nor have any guarantee that the end result will be bug-free. I've been in the industry long enough to know the realities of software development, even when we know exactly what we are 'building' with our code.

EDIT: As a side comment, I don't really think the FCC has any hand in the delays anymore... what I discovered there is posted in the other thread.

[kindlekitten]

I meant more on the roll out team levels,kind of the business admin end about getting everything out the door

[supermighty]

Originally Posted by Kolenka

If it was as common as some people think, we'd see more lawsuits over it (a lot of states let companies use anti-compete/poach clauses in their employee contracts).

Unless you live in California where last year their supreme court rejected noncompete clauses (link) in employee contracts.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by supermighty

Unless you live in California where last year their supreme court rejected noncompete clauses (link) in employee contracts.

Which is true, I just wasn't specific on which states weren't in that 'lot'. But it also depends on who they poach from, and whose laws apply. I know there have been court cases that have hinged entirely on whose laws applied, and if the employee was still on the hook because of it. Even though it might take place in a California court, they may have to use another state's laws to resolve it depending on when/where/how the contract was entered into.

Still, I'm not sure poaching managers to run a product rollout is the best use of risk-taking. A good manager in this area is a good manager, they don't have to have experience in an ultra-specific market in order to make it work.

But in the end, there are a few things that could lead to delays in shipping.
- Manufacturer screwing up on getting the boxed devices out to B&N. Not exactly common, but it does happen occasionally.
- Show-stopper bugs that pushed back software development a week, but they thought they could make up elsewhere in the run-up to the launch (by changing up shipping to express to the local warehouse). I've seen this happen, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't... and I've seen how frazzled people get either way, it isn't pretty.
- Lawsuits always throw a wrench in things. It's also hard to predict the sort of advice a lawyer will give a client when the hearings start.
- If the engineers and the marketing folk can't agree on the time table... this tends to get ugly as well. Marketing will win on what the schedule says and the engineers will win on what the schedule is. This isn't horribly uncommon any time marketing decides a product must be out in time for Christmas, especially when both groups are too stubborn to compromise.

If there wasn't a lawsuit, we could pretty much say that a group of people at B&N were too stubborn about getting it out in time for Christmas that they had no buffer in the schedule in case things went wrong. This is never a place a company wants to be in, as things do go wrong, and you need the buffer because you don't know exactly what will go wrong (if you could know, you could just add it as part of the schedule).

But because of the lawsuit, and the simple fact that everything between the lawyers and B&N is covered by lawyer/client confidentiality, we will likely never know the real truth, and just have our speculation.

[GPWS]

Originally Posted by Propheous

To be honest I am not sure why everyone's panties are in a twist. Anyone who did not anticipate a delay in receiving their product was pretty much ignorant of how first gen technology gets pushed out. ...

No offense but grow up, this is how businesses work. We no longer expect to get things on estimated dates, hasn't been like in a long time. If things start to stretch beyond a week into a couple weeks then we have a legitimate concern and our ire should be rank with the blood of those we want to slay. As for right now I think we are all over reacting just a little bit.

I'm not sure why we should be tolerant of "how businesses work" a small shipping delay of the actual product is one thing; the failure to have demonstration units in the stores is quite another. After the B&N clerk told me "No, we don't have a demo unit because there was so much demand we are fulfilling customer orders first", I asked to be directed to the "Incredible Market Failures" section.