nicolas75;645460 Wrote: > I do agree with almost everything you wrote in previous posts. > I actually do agree with most of what you said in this post. :-)
nicolas75;645460 Wrote: > > - Logitech is not a software company and cannot achieve a competitive > SBS allowing them to go on building squeezeboxes hardware with the > current situation. It is not Slimdevices, they need volume, I am sure > the critical volume isn't reached today, and by far. > > - Logitech is a successful hardware company. > If we are talking about the history, all this is definitely true, but the confusing thing is that both Squeezebox and Revue, the last two products in the audio, video streaming segment from Logitech, is mostly software. So to me it kind of seems like Logitech want to move into the software business but haven't completely understood how to do that and still earn a lot of money. They basically doesn't seem to understand the investments needed to develop and maintain software and which kind of priorities you have to make to get economics in the software business. They might get there eventually, if it's something they like to do. Slim Devices was a completely different company and due to this the SBS/Squeezebox software architecture worked great for them because they mainly sold the system to enthusiasts not the mass market. I don't think we should assume that Logitech management isn't aware of the situation, Squeezebox and Revue being mostly software, there have to be a lot of experienced and smart people in Logitech management team, so I'm very sure they understand this. It's just that they haven't completely understood the difference between software and hardware development yet, they are learning at the moment. They are also new in the music, video streaming business, so they are in a learning phase also from a functional perspective. The difference between the Revue and the Squeezebox is that the software in the Revue is based on GoogleTV, so in the Revue Logitech is getting the core of the software from Google so they just have to package the system and develop and maintain the add-ons they make. This is a bit easier but you still need to understand software development to get economics in the business. nicolas75;645460 Wrote: > > The day Logitech stops to build the hardware, who is going to do that ? > what will SBS be useful for ? > Will those smart guys build hardware themselves, and participate in SBS > development and maintenance ? > Just a few comments regarding this. Logitech's highest priority at the moment in this segment is to add functionality to SBS so it can be a major component in their newest flagship product on the audio, video, picture market, the Logitech Revue. They have had so many problems so far with the Revue so I seriously doubt they would announce that they now have a excellent Logitech Media Server which can be the center of your Revue system unless they seriously believed it to be a long term solution. Start selling the Revue for $99, which might even be lower than the manufacturing cost, and bundling it with LMS and then a bit later announce that they have decided to drop LMS would be a catastrophe for their reputation and customer relations. So even if they would stop manufacturing Squeezebox hardware I believe the SBS/LMS software will survive longer, in one way or another. They will obviously not stop manufacturing Squeezebox hardware as long as they earn enough money on it. At the moment I suspect they have a lot bigger challenge to get economics around the Revue product than the Squeezbox products. If Logitech would decide to drop Squeezebox hardware development, there are people and other companies who use the SBS together with other hardware, just a few examples follows below: http://www.myvoco.com/ http://oss.linn.co.uk/trac/wiki/SkweezyDs http://www.permanence.com/SlimRoku/ And the solutions that makes a Squeezebox out of any iOS or Android device: https://market.android.com/details?id=de.bluegaspode.squeezeplayer http://penguinlovesmusic.de/2011/02/08/playback-comes-to-ipeng/ http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/squeezecast/id344982128?mt=8 http://www.squeezepad.com/ However, without Logitech, SBS development would probably either stay at the last released version and community continue to fix critical bugs, or as an alternative, some other company might decide that certain parts of SBS are good, drop the stuff they don't need, change the stuff which doesn't work good today and adjust the system architecture/design/platform support so it's possible to get economics in the maintenance of it. I personally believe Logitech won't be able to take this step themselves anytime soon, they are too new in the software business to be able to do that and their developers (who knows software development) is probably too tied to this community, existing Squeezebox users, their personal needs for a music streaming system and the old Slim Devices strategies, so it will be hard for them to suggest the right move to their management. Also, it often seems like there is a big gap between Logitech developers and their management, so I'm not that sure they currently fully take advantage of each others experiences. Finally, last but not least, even if Logitech would decide to drop Squeezebox products they have to keep maintaining their central mysqueezebox.com servers and the software on it at least as long as the currently sold hardware products still is under warranty. nicolas75;645460 Wrote: > > - I see no other option than making squeezeboxes hardware something > like "network sound cards" and providing drivers so that much better > software than SBS can allow people to use them. > This is the part I don't agree with, it would put Logitech in direct competition with Apple and their AirPlay solution. The difference would be that with Apple you don't need a computer but with Logitech you do, and as I've said numerous of time, most people really don't want to rely on a computer to play music, view video or pictures in their living room, they just do it today because they don't have a choice (besides choosing Apple). The issue with having this kind of discussions here is that: - No one in Logitech is going to read it and send our ideas to their management. Even if the ideas would be passed to management, the management would ignore them because they think they know better which strategies to choose than a unknown poster on a Internet forum. - The discussion is currently happening both in the wrong thread and in the wrong forum section, what we are discussing now has nothing to do with beta testing of LMS - Probably, at least 80% of the community users reading posts like this doesn't want a mass market product, they want an enthusiasts product and some of them think it's realistic to get that to the price of a mass market product, something which obviously isn't possible to get economics in. - Most people around here want mass market for the volumes and continued success of Squeezebox but don't want mass market to limit the features or supported platforms. They basically care about functionality and product price but not about development/maintenance/support costs. So feel free to comment any above, but my feeling is that it's probably better to invest the time somewhere else than continue this discussion much further here in this thread. My last words is going to be: Get rid of the computer! :-) -- erland Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info)) (Developer of 'many plugins/applets' (http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland). If my answer helped you and you like to encourage future presence on this forum and/or third party plugin/applet development, 'donations are always appreciated' (http://erland.isaksson.info/donate)) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=89143 _______________________________________________ beta mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/beta
