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WakeMate: The Home Stretch

blog.wakemate.com

11–20 of 59 posts

Re: WakeMate: The Home Stretch

#11
So, you're reasonably confident that you'll hit your deadline or come close to it, but your shipping schedule depends entirely on the actions of another company (Apple) who is known for being slow to approve things like this? How does that work?

Re: WakeMate: The Home Stretch

#12
post #7
post #6

Wakemate: I could design you a silicone bracelet and have renderings today, a rapid prototype tmrw, a prototype silicone part made off a cast of the RP in a few days, make changes as desired, then get them tooled and start shipping parts by next month. Just, you know, if your into that sort of thing :)

What kind of silicon bracelet are you talking about? Something like the LiveStrong? Just curious, what's the cost of these things?

Yep, 50-70 durometer silicone, any color. Cost varies widely depending on how many you want to make, how complicated the tooling is, the number of parts per tool, cycle time, how much material the parts use, how detailed your logo/features are, mold finish... From $1500-$75,000 for tooling and $.05-$1 pp.

Re: WakeMate: The Home Stretch

#14
A brief history of ship dates:

January 22, 2010: "We've tentatively planned for the first batch of WakeMates to be shipped as early as next month."

March 11, 2010: "the first run of units will go out on March!"

March 31, 2010: "This is the last day of Q1 and we will be shipping out the first units today." (Maybe they did ship out a few? but I was a very early pre-order and didn't get one...)

April 1, 2010: "The next batch of units will ship no later [sic] July 30, 2010. Based on your pre-order date, you should expect your WakeMate no later than 07/30/2010, but probably significantly sooner. This is a conservative estimate; we want to provide you with a firm date. We are confident we can deliver many orders sooner and will continue working night and day to ship yours as soon as possible."

July 20, 2010: "We may not hit the July 31st date at this point, but we’ll come close. We’ll post an updated ship date (measured in days or weeks at worst, not months) when we have a better idea of when it will be"

Re: WakeMate: The Home Stretch

#15
post #9

So with WakeMate I'll have to wear a bracelet and keep an app running on my iPhone whilst I sleep?

Unlike the ship dates, that aspect of the product has been very consistent for months, yes. (It's not entirely clear whether you have to keep the app running, but you probably do, and the bracelet is the whole point.)

Re: WakeMate: The Home Stretch

#17

A brief history of ship dates: January 22, 2010: "We've tentatively planned for the first batch of WakeMates to be shipped as early as next month." March 11, 2010: "the first run of units will go out on March!" March 31, 2010: "This is the last day of Q1 and we will be shipping out the first units today." (Maybe they did ship out a few? but I was a very early pre-order and didn't get one...) April 1, 2010: "The next…

I believe they did ship a few dozen units out in Q1. I don't believe they lied in any of those quotes- at worst it looks like they'll miss their July 30 ship date by a week or so. That's not all that bad.

Re: WakeMate: The Home Stretch

#18

A brief history of ship dates: January 22, 2010: "We've tentatively planned for the first batch of WakeMates to be shipped as early as next month." March 11, 2010: "the first run of units will go out on March!" March 31, 2010: "This is the last day of Q1 and we will be shipping out the first units today." (Maybe they did ship out a few? but I was a very early pre-order and didn't get one...) April 1, 2010: "The next…

I believe they did ship a few dozen units out in Q1. I don't believe they lied in any of those quotes- at worst it looks like they'll miss their July 30 ship date by a week or so. That's not all that bad.

Being even a week late is not my idea of a "conservative estimate" or a "firm date".

I realize we're not talking about a mission-critical product here. But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.

Re: WakeMate: The Home Stretch

#20

Sometimes I'll forget to turn the A/C on in the summer and I'll wake up drenched in sweat. The new wristband looks like it will soak up an awful lot of sweat and probably start to smell rather funky after a while. Is it washable? If not, is the monitoring device removable so I can fasten it to my own elastic wristband? I'm thinking along the lines of a FitBit style component that I can clip to my LiveStrong bracelet?

I am very, very curious about this as well. It is something I hadn't thought about until you mentioned this, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they haven't though of it either. At the very least, giving early adopters a free upgrade to the washable version when it is available would be good.

Luckily, there probably won't be a significant amount of summer left once we get the thing.

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