Rob Studdert rightfully complained:
I just because it's apparently of no real bother to you when an upgrade
camera
is due or what its final specs are doesn't mean that it doesn't matter to
or
bother others. Info about what's coming from Pentax is important to me and
will
sway my decision to stay with or move away from Pentax.
Moving away from Pentax will be both costly and time consuming for me so I
really would like to know which way to go. Timing is an issue to me for
various
reasons which I'm not about to publish here.
Unfortunately, you're just the type of person Pentax is trying to keep
hanging around until they actually release the *ist D upgrade. If they
didn't tell you what they were going to release, you'd have no problem
making your decision, expensive as it may be, and go in another direction.
They want to keep you around and are releasing as much information as
necessary to do so.
One of my systems was excedingly popular. For its first release, we shipped
the second highest iterations of any commercial system (OS was the highest).
While we were working on making it more effective and efficient, our
competitors started releasing specs about their "vaporware" so as to both
interest prospective purchasers and give us additional enhancements to add
for our next release. Their initial releases were scheduled to be earlier
than our enhancements. To keep our customer base from bolting (and I'm
talking about a 7 figure system), we had to release prospective
specifications before I knew just what would really work. I had lots of
araguments with marketing over that issue.
Unfortunately, it's often about who you know at the releaser. I'd get calls
from customers I had good relationships with, asking about specific
capabilities. I had to walk the line of telling them what I expected to
release as tested and working without giving any guarantees as to what would
be there. I'm sure this is working with the Pentax upgrade, but the people
getting the skinny aren't allowed to spread it around.
You've got a business to run, and this doesn't help you to make timely
decisions. I've been there and I know how hard it can be. I remember
designing another system based on the promised capabilities of a database
enhancement. I really didn't like gambling a lot of people's food and rent
money on someone else's promise and worked out a drop-dead date for adequate
proof to be available before cutting off pursuit of alternative (and
expensive) paths. It was a painful period.
Larry in Dallas
