Nostromo wrote: > ChrisOwens;181947 Wrote: > >> Throwing out the Slim Devices way of doing business is not part of the >> plan. I have been in meetings at Logitech now where we discuss >> products that have been flops (or worse, are in the process of >> flopping). I don't want to insult my new coworkers, but many of these >> flops are due to very strange thinking from a Slim Devices point of >> view. You can spend a lot of time doing market research and interface >> design and writing specifications and developing hardware and software, >> release it, fix some bugs, and start the whole cycle over again... >> >> Or you can make it powerful enough and flexible enough and open enough >> that the *customers* can *turn it into* the product that *they want to >> use*. Naturally there still has to be support and direction on the >> Slim Devices side, but there are definitely real business benefits to >> the Open Source approach. >> >> > > I'm not disagreeing with you. I think that going open source was > brilliant move by Slimdevices. But a counter-example would be Apple. > The iPod is hugely popular, but its barely customizable, compared to > the Squeezebox. >
Apple has huge funds for marketing. SD hadn't. They targeted a specific group of tech savvy people who would want such a product and consider the OS nature of the system an advantage as well as insurance against the company going under. I was one of those who bought the first SliMP3 and it was a bit of a leap of faith to buy something from an unknown company that had only just obtained a back cover. But the system was exactly what I wanted, so I got one anyway. They weren't cheap back then either. Regards, Peter _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
