[HN Gopher] PlayDate Fulfillment Delayed
___________________________________________________________________
PlayDate Fulfillment Delayed
Author : gen220
Score : 114 points
Date : 2021-11-11 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lists.play.date)
(TXT) w3m dump (lists.play.date)
| exolymph wrote:
| Hardware be that way under the best of circumstances, and 2021
| certainly isn't the best of circumstances for physical
| fulfillment. So it makes sense.
| mfer wrote:
| What I find interesting is the things you can't get chips for vs
| the things that are shipping without issue that use chips.
|
| Look at what's happened to the auto industry. Cars, which most of
| the time have a need rather than being a toy or not needed, have
| issues with chips.
|
| But, IoT devices that are monitoring us to phone home with
| surveillance on us see to not have a problem.
|
| I'm sure I'm missing something. Am I wrong?
| Klonoar wrote:
| Automakers are notoriously looking for years-old chips because
| they don't update their products the same way. I believe that
| stock is just dead, more or less.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Dirty little secret: none of the leading-edge sub-10nm parts
| are of any use whatsoever without peripheral, power
| management, and analog parts built on those "dead" processes.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Maybe IoT garbage can ship with just about any chip that will
| run Linux, while cars need specifically certified components?
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| I don't think so because there's rarely a drop in replacement
| unless you designed your board ahead of time for multiple
| options (of course exceptions exist, there's drop in
| replacements for many devices including the esp8266 I mention
| below).
|
| But for example, an ESP8266 hasn't really lost much value in
| the past few years, and is unlikely to lose significant value
| if it sat on a shelf for another few years, so they don't
| mind a bit of an overstock.
|
| Meanwhile the current year car model will lose a ton of it's
| value when the next model comes out so they don't want to
| risk over-stocking it.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Not only certified (e.g. ASIL*) but long term availability.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_Safety_Integrity_L
| e...
| duskwuff wrote:
| Which neatly explains why STM32 microcontrollers are in
| such high demand -- most of their microcontroller portfolio
| has a longevity commitment of at least 10 years.
|
| https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/quality-and-
| relia...
| baybal2 wrote:
| Espressif also commits to 8 years exactly because they
| want to capture lazy manufacturers.
| protastus wrote:
| The bigger the BOM, the higher the probability something is not
| available, blocking the product from being fully manufactured.
|
| Cars have bigger BOMs than IoT devices.
|
| Given the long lead times, tech companies are scrambling to use
| alternative chips: first finding something functionally
| equivalent and pin compatible; that failing, qualifying
| something close enough and redesigning PCBs with an updated
| component footprint; last case scenario, porting FW to a
| different chip and redesigning circuits to accommodate.
|
| Traditional car companies largely rely on suppliers to redesign
| electronics (at even greater cost and lead time). There's also
| more liability with cars so last minute redesigns have to be
| taken very seriously.
| klodolph wrote:
| I suspect that IoT devices also have a much shorter
| turnaround when they need to redesign the board to use the
| chips available.
| livueta wrote:
| Anecdotally I think this is right on the money. I've been
| buying lots of LoRA hardware over the course of the year
| and I think I'm up to 9 different permutations of the
| "same" board via swaps of the LoRA SXnnnn/ESPnnnn/GPS Mn
| units for whatever is currently available. Turns out to be
| a good way of discovering firmware bugs.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I'm guessing BOM doesn't mean Byte Order Marking here?
| progman32 wrote:
| Bill Of Materials
| hervature wrote:
| Bill of Materials - all the components required to build a
| circuit
| 19870213 wrote:
| In this case, Bill Of Materials, as in a list of all chips,
| resistors, capacitors and other electronic components.
| [deleted]
| suifbwish wrote:
| This is partially true. Vehicles are needed but most of the
| computing the modern ones do is completely unnecessary for the
| primary function and purpose of the vehicle. There is really
| nothing important I can do with my Tesla that I can't with my
| 1980s Ford ranger. There are definitely important things I can
| do with the old pickup truck that I can't do in the Tesla.
| Until we reach a point where the car can legally drive you home
| from the bar while you are passed out in the back most of the
| stuff chips are used for in vehicles pretty much is for sales
| purposes and turns it into a giant smartphone. Add in the whole
| remote exploit thing about some of the models of different
| 2000s models with dash computing that never get firmware
| updates but still have remote network connectivity and it's
| actually a pretty shitty idea overall until actual self driving
| cars are a thing. Before anyone mentions that you can track
| your car if it's stolen, it's important to remember most of the
| thieves going after new cars will back up to the vehicle with a
| metal box truck lined with some kind of faraday material then
| pull your car into it.
|
| Having an electric vehicle doesn't mean it needs the fastest
| hardware. You can run the entire base mechanics sensors and
| outputs of an electric vehicle on an Arduino with some extra
| breadboards.
| VLM wrote:
| IoT are OK with high risk and move very fast with startup
| mentality. You have qty zero of CPU model XYZ in stock and qty
| essentially-infinite of CPU model ABC in stock? Our new
| product, which will have zero support after shipping, will ship
| with CPU ABC which is in stock.
|
| Car mfgrs are in the risk adverse capital preservation mode and
| it takes years for changes to be made. You only have model ABC
| CPU in stock? Has that undergone enough approval and testing
| processes to be an automobile ABS controller? No? Then we wait.
| It'll take years for model ABC to be approved -or- similar
| years for us to design a new brake controller system.
|
| If you ship an IoT product its assumed it'll have zero
| aftermarket support, be wide open to new security holes, and
| probably stop working in a couple years at most. Cars are
| expected to have parts available for 20 years, never be hacked,
| and reliably operate in a life critical environment for
| decades.
|
| If the IoT temperature sensor is 2 degrees high, nobody cares
| anyway, ship it and fix the software. If the automotive brake
| controller only applies the brakes 99.9% of the time perhaps
| because it has less memory so the stack crashes under weird and
| rare conditions, it'll pass trivial levels of testing while
| killing lots of people causing a financial and PR nightmare...
|
| A better comparison to automotive would be aviation, or perhaps
| ocean shipping.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Automakers effectively pulled the rug out from under their chip
| suppliers by asking them to severely cut production, then
| turning around and asking for a lot more than their original
| quantity. In general, those suppliers canceled their supply
| capacity with their factory partner, so when automakers turned
| around and placed new orders, those factories already sold $xx
| months of that factory time to someone else, making it hard for
| the semiconductor manufacturers to get back to their own
| production capacity and fulfill the auto industry's orders.
|
| https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2021/06/15/car-chip-s...
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| I remember reading somewhere that automakers trying to get
| the governments involved to have them to lean on the chip
| suppliers to give the automaker the highest priority over
| other clients.
| TomVDB wrote:
| You're exactly right.
|
| Somebody at a major chip company told me that they went
| looking for, and found, new customers after the automotive
| customers canceled their orders.
|
| So not only did the car companies ordered more than before
| after they realized that demand was not dropping, even if
| demand for them had returned to what it used to be, the total
| demand from other customers is now higher too.
| sroussey wrote:
| Blame this on just-in-time supply chains where no one wants
| to hold inventory. It's been MBA dogma for the last two
| decades.
| notananthem wrote:
| Neither JIT nor many other things factors in "global
| pandemic," but proper JIT that knows how to scale up/down
| theoretically could handle things, its just the human
| element that fucks up the system. Yeah beancounters are
| beancounters but trying to blame JIT is really off
| course.
| kmonsen wrote:
| Isn't the problem that is is not easy to scale some
| things up and down? This sounds a lot like no true
| scotsman.
| sroussey wrote:
| I disagree, respectfully. Not that I think everyone
| should inventory a year of everything. But the ethos of
| JIT is that you can treat your supply chain as if it's
| infinite, and this keep it close to your projections.
|
| Automotive got hit especially hard since any feature that
| requires electrics has the microprocessor embedded in
| that feature. Very cost effective-you don't ship extra
| cpu power for unused features.
|
| Tesla did the opposite though--centralized processing and
| over allotted cpu cycles by also made it easy to upgrade
| via software only.
| depereo wrote:
| TAM for semiconductors turned out to be wayyyyyy bigger
| than the world's manufacturing capacity for semiconductors.
| I don't know how this caught manufacturers by surprise, but
| perhaps there's bottlenecks in talent, supporting industry
| and infrastructure that I'm not aware of that would have
| made additional expansion difficult previously.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There's just not flexibility built in to the supply chain
| because flexibility adds cost.
|
| When things go well this just in time manufacturing is
| lauded as a huge money saver, when they aren't... you get
| now.
|
| The business of running everything to the wire on credit
| and working "cost of capital" so much into business
| decisions gets us here.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Automakers effectively pulled the rug out from under their
| chip suppliers by asking them to severely cut production
|
| Automakers only make few percents of MCU market. Just the
| most profitable one. Plus, a lot of MCU makers have own fabs.
|
| It's very unlikely they took "months" of factory output. They
| just got their small batches to wait until the tsunami wave
| of mainstream part runs is done.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Why isn't the result of those actions that those auto
| manufacturers either pay more or go without, rather than
| _every_ buyer paying more and /or going without?
| dlp211 wrote:
| Because all capacity is being used. So it's not that
| today's capacity costs more (this capacity was sold and
| paid for months/years ago), it's future capacity that costs
| more. Until there are more chip factories, this is going to
| be an ongoing problem for the chip industry.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Sounds like someone at the car manufacturing has a shit ton
| of IOT stocks and knew exactly what they were doing
| floatingatoll wrote:
| No, they're just being short-sighted and revenue-first.
| Think about how the rental car companies sold their idle
| car stocks and now can't rent cars reliably to anyone.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| This is just the quoted lead time. When the cycle eventually
| turns, there will be an enormous wave of push outs and
| cancellations and those who actually wanted the full order will
| get the product much sooner
| matwood wrote:
| The Decoder podcast had on the CEO of Anker and he explained
| (IIRC) that chips coming off of 12" wafers are impossible to
| get, while chips from 7" wafers are plentiful. The problem is
| recertification, which for autos can be a very long process.
|
| Why that occurred is another question.
| funnyflamigo wrote:
| All the big industries got scared when COVID hit thinking
| consumer spending was going to plummet so they drastically cut
| orders.
|
| Meanwhile the IoT space has been growing rapidly in the past
| few years, and those suppliers didn't cut their orders. IoT
| devices like the ESP8266 can sit in a warehouse for the next
| few years before being sold for use in some smart lightbulb,
| but automotives will lose their value as they become last
| year's model.
|
| With the supply chain disruptions and increasing consumer
| spending automotive industries basically lost their reserved
| spots are struggling to claw back their manufacturing and
| shipping capacity.
|
| So basically in this game of musical chairs the automotive
| industries stood up while the IoT space stayed sitting, and
| then the supply chain disruption removed the chair the
| automotive industries had been sitting in before...
| topper-123 wrote:
| This doesn't serm right. The car manufacturers would surely
| just buy their way into the front of the line, if it was just
| this. Chips are a fraction of a car's value and the cost of
| stopping car production lines must be a lot higher than
| buying slots in s chip production facility.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| "Buying your way to the front of the line" may work if it
| involves paying $18 for a part that normally costs $15.
| (Even so, the automakers will scream bloody murder over
| much less.)
|
| That's not what's happening. What's happening is that the
| $15 part now costs $150, and is only available from sketchy
| Asian brokers that aren't on anyone's list of approved
| vendors.
|
| The semiconductor houses had better unfuck themselves SOON,
| or 2022 will go down in history next to 1929. I don't think
| anyone understands how serious this situation is getting.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| > The car manufacturers would surely just buy their way
| into the front of the line, if it was just this.
|
| Those older nodes "chairs" that the automotive industry
| used are less profitable in general. One doesn't simply
| spin down and spin up a semiconductor fabrication plant.
|
| >> the supply chain disruption removed the chair the
| automotive industries had been sitting in before...
|
| Replacing the (old) chair is easily in the billions of
| dollars. Not everyone can foot that kind of bill.
| topper-123 wrote:
| In that case it was an incredibly stupid move for car
| manufacturers to wind down orders for semiconductors,
| even in the face of covid. The down side risk is huge.
| [deleted]
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| The automotive industry presumed they were higher delivery
| priority than they really were. By volume they were not thus
| they had lower priority when things got squeezed.
|
| The auto industry also had unreasonable chip reliability
| demands - physics doesn't care that they wanted 30-year life
| while also having 7-10 nm CPU performance - you can NOT HAVE
| BOTH!
|
| IoT is primarily NOT 7-10 nm performance nodes - AVRs and many
| ARMs are not at that level - you can get by with larger
| geometries which can be made on older processes. So not so much
| shortage issues.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| No, there are legitimate shortage issues, and the "Automakers
| screwed up their forecasts" excuse is starting to wear
| awfully thin.
|
| Intel FPGAs aren't typically used in cars, for example, yet
| we're seeing quotes of $500+ on parts that used to cost $50.
| Lead times? "Don't ask."
| katmannthree wrote:
| Automakers more or less started the shortage, as a result
| of that everyone is in squirrel mode buying up what they
| can because they rightly fear having to reengineer and
| revalidate every single production run. That our new
| economy has a greater thirst for chips just compounds the
| issue.
| PeterisP wrote:
| If there's a shortage and buyers willing to pay a premium
| in one segment, it affects all other segments because at
| least part of manufacturing capacity is interchangeable
| (with switching costs, but those are bearable if someone
| wants to pay) and it becomes profitable to randomly shut
| down production of various niche parts to save some car
| manufacturers arse, or have essentially a bidding war
| between those niche parts or car parts in order to discard
| any customers which aren't willing to pay increased prices.
| jackpirate wrote:
| I don't understand why car manufacturers haven't just started
| remanufacturing some of their older (say 2010) model cars that
| don't rely on so many computer chips. I'm sure there's lots of
| costs to retooling their factories, and these less computerized
| cars are going to be less desirable to most customers, but with
| car prices currently 150% of what they "should" be, it seems
| like it would be profitable for at least one company to go the
| "low chip" route.
| dlp211 wrote:
| It takes close to a year to re-tool a factory for a different
| auto model. The suggestion to just produce an older model
| just doesn't make sense in time or money.
| fmntf wrote:
| My 2011 car has ECUs for: engine, brakes, ABS, air bag, air
| conditioning, alarm. All of those are connected to a gateway,
| that is another ECU. Do you want parking sensors? That's
| another ECU. Multimedia? That's one or two. Cars of 2000 have
| not much less ECUs. Consider also that components to build
| such ECUs are now totally obsolete and out of production.
| Aloha wrote:
| My old 1997 Town Car has about as many controllers as my
| 2011 Crown Victoria does (many of them are even the same
| parts), and the 2021 300S I just ordered doesnt have many
| more.
|
| Though the 1997 Town Car, had many more controllers than a
| 1997 Taurus for comparison.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| My guess would be they won't be regulatory compliant. Few
| cars have already removed non essential things like touch
| screen.
| nradov wrote:
| Some manufacturers already did remove advanced vehicle
| features.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-06/chip-
| shor...
| joezydeco wrote:
| BMW is pulling the touchscreens off of certain models:
|
| https://www.autoblog.com/2021/11/05/bmws-losing-
| touchscreen-...
|
| Slightly confusing since it's not the removal of the entire
| infotainment system, just the capacitive controller. The
| system is still controllable with the joydial. Seems like
| that's not really a $500 cost center, more of a way to
| appease the customer.
|
| And some makers like Mazda pulled the captouch off their
| IVI with the recent generation of cars pre-COVID, it just
| wasn't worth the cost.
| crooked-v wrote:
| For Mazda it was also at least theoretically to reduce
| driver distraction and increase safety. I mostly believe
| them on that point, given how much they focus on safety
| ratings in other ways.
| joezydeco wrote:
| It's like the whole world needs STM32F7 parts and nobody can get
| them. What a pain in the ass.
| klaussilveira wrote:
| You might have more luck on marketplaces:
| https://www.sourcengine.com/search?q=STM32F7
| amelius wrote:
| At least tell us what CPU you are using!
| huhtenberg wrote:
| 180 MHz ARM Cortex M7F
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Playdate
| amelius wrote:
| Thanks. Any idea what CPU will they be moving to?
| paxys wrote:
| It's a bad time to be a non-top tier hardware manufacturer. I'm
| sure Apple, Samsung and the like are having supply trouble as
| well, but they have the scale, connections and money to handle
| it. Smaller companies are getting demolished.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| i've started modularizing my designs again
|
| 10 years ago it was pretty common to design small submodules
| and stitch them together into a final assembly, that would get
| upgraded piece-meal as tech/product needs evolved
|
| about 2-3 years ago it became more economical to just design an
| entire bespoke board for any new project, and then run an
| entirely new board for any subsequent changes. i loved not
| dealing with interconnects anymore
|
| but now I'm back to reusable modules and sub-assemblies again,
| because by the time i'm finished designing an entire board, a
| single part will be out of stock and i'd have to start from
| scratch :(
| riskable wrote:
| Yeah but what are you doing about connectors to join the
| boards together? There's serious shortages of things like JST
| connectors right now just like chips.
| bluesquared wrote:
| It is quite frustrating. I'm a medical device hardware
| engineer, so our quantities are in the low 1000s per year for
| our highest-running SKUs. Just today had to deal with a
| panicked contract manufacturer who was going to bring our line
| down for an oscillator and a capacitor that they were shorted.
| Distributors will tell you they're sending a reel of 1000 parts
| or whatever, but you open the box and they just threw in 30.
|
| Every other week it's another *drop your NPD responsibilities
| and come up with a solution to this shortage so we don't stop
| our assembly lines* which is quite frustrating to keeping "on
| schedule" and "in a flow state"... If it's not in *your*
| warehouse or allocated to you in *your* contract manufacturer's
| warehouse, it doesn't exist.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| This was known before they (and Valve) took preorders.
| [deleted]
| ngngngng wrote:
| Seems like everyone's pretty understanding, although I haven't
| checked twitter yet. The Playdate discord is nothing but
| supportive of the team over at Panic.
|
| The worst part to me is knowing that they had 5000 completed
| units, and without the battery issue, mine would probably be at
| my door already by now since I was one of the first orders.
| Le_Dook wrote:
| I think the support has a lot to do with just how transparent
| Panic have been about the entire process. You can see a lot of
| people being able to emphasize with the human element behind
| the product and the company.
| hrrsn wrote:
| I've always been impressed with Panic's level of
| communication. Many companies could learn a thing or two from
| them!
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| From their blog they literally talk to people like they are
| little clueless kids. If that is how people like their
| interactions. I personally find it semi-annoying and mildly
| offensive.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| Maybe it sounds like that because they are marketing a
| toy?
| hrrsn wrote:
| They write in a colloquial, friendly style and use
| language that is easily understood by people that exist
| outside of the HN echo chamber.
| [deleted]
| urda wrote:
| I would rather them take the time to get this right, than
| potentially launch new hardware that flops and slaps them in
| the face.
| Ecco wrote:
| Does anyone know which exact CPU they were using and which one
| they're switching to?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| You would think in that long interaction they could have
| provided some actual details, yet they spend so much space
| repeating themselves and acting like their customers are small
| children.
| zalenka wrote:
| It's a 32bit ARM CPU running around 200mhz I think. I'm sure
| they just used a similar ARM CPU.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yeah whatever,
|
| Every single software company that jumps hardware finds out in a
| sour way how completely different the two worlds are.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Chip shortages are real, but shipping capacity is also very tight
| at the moment.
|
| Peak Design had some issues[1] with shipping their phone
| accessories (tripod, bike mount, etc) because of the shipping
| capacity crunch. Apparently large electronics companies like
| Apple have booked out most of the air freight capacity.
|
| 1. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peak-design/mobile-
| by-p...
| dpedu wrote:
| What a shame. Such a niche and cute and nostalgic little project
| will probably be dealt a deathblow because of this. I have no
| doubt Panic will find a way to move forward but it's going to
| take time. And that kind of delay is so much more hurtful to
| niche projects.
| flatiron wrote:
| the weird thing about these products if they seem to go two
| ways.
|
| one is "what a cool quirky company, they always do stuff like
| this, i like their quirkyness i wonder what they will do next"
|
| or
|
| "what fever dream did they have that they could put together a
| gameboy clone? they don't know the market. haven't they seen
| what happened to the lynx and neo geo pocket and the wonderswan
| and even the vita? its like invading russia in the winter, you
| don't make a handheld system in the age of cellphones"
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I was really surprised when I found out that the 5 pin JST XH
| connectors I need are out of stock seemingly worldwide. It's just
| metal pins and a plastic housing. I looked at stock levels of
| alternatives and it looks like Molex is the winner. Hundreds of
| thousands of their similar connector in stock at Digi-Key.
|
| My hope is that these supply shocks will teach people to better
| prepare for this kind of thing in the future, leading to more
| robust supply chains.
| riskable wrote:
| Yeah seriously: Why _are_ JST connectors so scarce all the
| sudden? They 're _literally_ just some metal and plastic
| (Polycarbonate?). Unless there 's a shortage of metal wire (cuz
| that's all it is; pressed into a squareish shape) or plastic
| why would the world be running out of JST XH (and other JST)
| connectors?
|
| Are there serious bare wire and/or plastic shortages right now?
| I've read about price increases but not shortages.
| aemreunal wrote:
| My completely uninformed, wild guess: the manufacturing
| plants capable of creating those are creating other wires
| that are more in demand / profitable for them, rather than
| these cheap ones.
| laydn wrote:
| The lead times for the STM microcontrollers have gone way beyond
| unreasonable. "730 days" I think is a polite way of saying "we
| may never supply you with this chip".
|
| I may be way off here but my observation is that chips that are
| very configurable are the hardest to purchase. For example, the
| STM32 series have something like ~3000 SKUs (
| https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/embedded-microcon...
| ).
|
| Normally, this allows every designer to pick the most suitable
| part and have the lowest total BoM cost. However, in today's
| challenging supply/demand environment, the total number of unique
| parts that must be manufactured must be causing a huge problem.
| twarge wrote:
| STM32H7 is the upgrade path, but it doesn't seem to be any more
| available.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| The part number explosion may not be as bad as you think: ST
| very likely does some relabeling/fuse programming of the same
| die to make multiple part numbers. As the most classic example,
| the STM32F103C8 promises 64KB of flash, and the F103CB (note CB
| vs C8) has 128KB. But it turns out that some of the 64KB
| actually have 128KB [1], and they've just been fused to report
| the smaller part number.
|
| [1]: https://mecrisp-stellaris-
| folkdoc.sourceforge.io/stm32f1xx-d...
| janekm wrote:
| True, and then every variant in every package version. But it
| does cause problems in the current climate as each of those
| variants do have to make it through the production pipeline
| (after die fab) which is also constrained at the moment. And
| of course ST is prioritising "high value customers" (like car
| manufacturers).
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| Oh for sure, it's not like fab capacity is the only
| bottleneck at this point. Seems like _everything_ is the
| bottleneck.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Car companies are just few percents of MCU market. A car
| may have a lot of MCUs, but that's probably less than 30
| per economy car. The entire car industry is a drop in the
| ocean for The Big Semi.
|
| On other hand, I've seen very expensive STM32s being used
| in near semi-disposable goods.
|
| Car companies are doomed because they required special
| "automotive grade" MCUs, which are usually just very long
| running die series with a lot of testing.
|
| Being on old die users, they can't share the benefit of
| much larger mainstream MCU die batches. They are now in the
| end of the queue waiting for big batches of dies for
| mainstream MCUs to finish manufacturing.
|
| IMHO, lots of auto parts uses automotive grade MCUs without
| any particular necessity. It's just because they were well
| moneyed, and they can. Some Mercedes car literally have one
| MCU per button, which just sits on CAN bus, and blinks an
| LED.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| The same thing happened to the Steam Deck so it's not really a
| surprise at this point.
| xd1936 wrote:
| I'll have a Blue... Christmas... without you...
| andrethegiant wrote:
| As a pre-order customer, I don't mind the delay. I'm glad they're
| doing it right instead of rushing to meet a deadline.
| rimher wrote:
| Tbh I was 100% expecting it with all the shortages and chip
| crunched. Hardware is hard, no way around it If anything, I
| appreciate the transparency
| brink wrote:
| Battery issues are so common. I ordered an electric unicycle last
| spring that came with dud batteries, now I have to pay $150 in
| shipping to get it fixed.
| dang wrote:
| There's also this article:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/playdate-delays-to-20...
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29191933, but we merged
| that thread hither)
| Chris2048 wrote:
| So.. the crank _doesn 't_ charge the battery?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Of course not. The crank is an input device, like a joystick.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Would have been cool if it was an input AND charged the
| battery.
| kube-system wrote:
| .
| aneutron wrote:
| That's ... what they did. They say so in the article. They
| swapped the CPU on a revised board.
| gambiting wrote:
| I swear, do people not even read the articles anymore and just
| jump straight to comments?? That's exactly what the company has
| done already.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Everything is COVID-19's fault. Long hold times.. COVID-19.
| Terrible customer service... COVID-19. The reason we lied to
| you... COVID-19. Get assaulted by an angry fast food worker...
| COVID-19.
|
| It is like the free excuse for almost any business.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| This is terribly lazy thinking.
| stnmtn wrote:
| To ignore the impact that Covid had on almost all aspects of
| our society seems like a bad idea
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| For businesses to use it as an excuse for practically
| anything, for example in this case they provided very little
| actual details but a lot of fluff and this is because you
| know the supply chain issues with COVID. They literally could
| have over promised and under-delivered, never securing any
| contract in advance for manufacturing, but instead now they
| get a free pass because of COVID. That is all you have the
| say anymore as a business and you can keep on using it no
| matter the actual circumstances.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| You don't have to be so salty, you know. You can cancel
| your order and get your money back.
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| > very little actual details
|
| Either we read different posts here or have wildly
| different expectations - I was completely satisfied with
| the level of detail.
|
| > now they get a free pass because of COVID
|
| Who is giving them a free pass? Do you have a pre-order?
| Cancel it if you don't like the news.
| stnmtn wrote:
| What's an example of more detail that they could have
| given? They gave plenty IMO but I'm curious if you can
| think of any extra detail because it sounds like you think
| they gave none
| post_break wrote:
| I honestly still don't understand the hype around this thing. To
| me it's up there with Tiger electronic games, but for a lot more.
| smoldesu wrote:
| There's apparently a pretty big market for plastic doodads that
| do the same thing your computer can, but with a crank. It's
| like they ripped a page straight out of Apple's playbook and
| made an iPod for gaming.
| dbreunig wrote:
| Panic has a history of delivering thoughtful, well-made
| software. Their initial foray into games (Firewatch, Untitled
| Goose Game, Nour) were all excellent and novel. Combine that
| with Teenage Engineering's similar novel and excellent track
| record with hardware design and you've got a very interesting
| product to those that like Panic's software and/or like good
| hardware design. If nothing else this product will be novel and
| well considered.
|
| If that's not your cup of tea, cool. But there's a lot here for
| several communities.
| amelius wrote:
| They could release just the software then, which would run
| fine on Android and iOS machines (which by the way offer way
| more value for people who appreciate good hardware and good
| software) Who needs more e-waste?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The playmate has a unique interface with its wind up arm
| thing. I would assume all the already made launch games
| will use it
| tpush wrote:
| > Their initial foray into games (Firewatch, Untitled Goose
| Game, Nour) were all excellent and novel.
|
| Note that Panic hasn't developed any of those games; they
| published them.
| mbreese wrote:
| The story is less about the device, and more about the chip
| shortage. Having to wait two years for a CPU is just crazy, and
| it's interesting to watch the hoops that these companies have
| to go through in order to ship products. I don't know anything
| about the device itself, but do you find it interesting to
| watch how do chip shortage is affecting different
| manufacturers.
| colesantiago wrote:
| Such a shame, I'll put the xmas wrapping away for this one.
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