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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 :)
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.
How hot the wristband gets was initially one of my main concerns. I haven't had any issues with heat or sweating while wearing mine.
which is still on their site..Is nothing like the final shipping product
http://blog.wakemate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wristban...
I would say its a multiple of degrees less 'designed' or 'professional' ...
I still want my pre-order as long as it will ship working with android.
p.s. You need to use your current iteration on your homepage photo; cause the one you have on there now and your current iteration have very very low correlation imho.
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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.
The electronics are removable and the wristband is definitely washable. How hot the wristband gets was initially one of my main concerns. I haven't had any issues with heat or sweating while wearing mine.
I definitely would order this if they come out with support for WebOS.
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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.
> But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.
You've probably never built a product before. It's not that Wakemate is "not living up to it", it's that they're thinking, "My God, this was supposed to be out two months ago. Okay, what's the worst case scenario? Four months? No way it can take more than four months. Okay, let's tell people four months and plan to get it out in two months."
All kinds of shit goes wrong when you're building a new product. Now, if you'd said "be more realistic" or "be more pessimistic" or "get better at estimating", I guess I'd agree with you sort of. But one thing they can't do is "live up to it" by willpower - these are young entrepreneurs trying to get their product out and it's a parade of trivial things are stopping them from doing so. At least, that's what I'm guessing, having built stuff before. I promise, they're trying and feeling about 10,000 times more neurotic and disappointed than any cool exterior would show.
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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.
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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.
Emphasis mine: > But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it. You've probably never built a product before. It's not that Wakemate is "not living up to it", it's that they're thinking, "My God, this was supposed to be out two months ago. Okay, what's the worst case scenario? Four months? No way it can take more than four months. Okay, let's tell people four months and plan to get it out in two months…
> But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.
Nobody stood over them and forced them to make strongly-worded promises about firm shipping dates. They chose to use those words.
They had missed multiple ship dates in the past; they were certainly well aware of the gravity and customer backlash of making promises they couldn't keep. They were also certainly aware that this would take an order of magnitude longer than they thought. Instead of saying "We're sorry, we have no idea when we will ship these", they decided to make an announcement that they would absolutely positively ship me my product by that date, if not sooner.
