What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
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Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#2The Osborne effect whee announcing a future product before it is made way too early cancels sales of the current project.
People forget when Osborne was losing sales, the IBM PC and PC-DOS was gaining sales and CP/M systems like those made by Osborne had a lot of competition. Microsoft/IBM had a converter program that could convert CP/M-80 programs to DOS programs. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608...
Also Kaypro had won over Osborne customers with their own CP/M machines that reached the market before the new Osborne models.
Commodore had the VIC-20 and later Commodore-64 that provided cheaper computers as did the 8 bit Atari line. Some people would rather buy a $399 Commodore or Atari computer and hook it up to their TV screen.
So announcing a new product too far ahead of time was only one factor in the Osborne effect.
Makerbot has Chinese competition, and they had technical issues as well. There are more factors here than just announcing a new product too far ahead of time. Instead of Osborne it is more like the Apple III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III
Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#3The Osborne effect whee announcing a future product before it is made way too early cancels sales of the current project. People forget when Osborne was losing sales, the IBM PC and PC-DOS was gaining sales and CP/M systems like those made by Osborne had a lot of competition. Microsoft/IBM had a converter program that could convert CP/M-80 programs to DOS programs. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/…
(Author here.) I agree with you, there are several factors at play in what happened to MakerBot. I believe Bre learned the wrong lesson -- going closed might have looked like the obvious solution to their drop in sales. But the one huge advantage MakerBot had over their competitors (and the cloners) was the good will and support from the open source community. With that support gone after going closed, MakerBot had to sink or swim on its own. I think they could have found a way to stay open while dealing with concerns of revealing future plans. For one, they could have kept the plans closed during development, but released all the plans on launch, forcing their competitors to play catch-up. As a user, I wouldn't necessarily need access to future designs for future models, but definitely would want designs to the current model that I owned. But anyway, I now buy LulzBot 3D printers, which are fully open. The latest version is TAZ 5.0. I can't tell, though, just by looking at the LulzBot online repo [1] if plans for future versions are also posted there ahead of official release.
[1]: http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/
[Edit] LulzBot is more awesome than I thought. They post the source for future versions that they're working on, too: http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html "'Kauri' - EVT version of the next printer after TAZ 5.0"
Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#4To avoid the Osborne effect, they could simply have produced new versions and only open the source once released.
That's not the real problem. I guess it was a combination of chinese knockoffs and stratasys proprietary instincts.
In any case, IMHO, the layoffs are a result of losing the open community, which is now being serviced by true open-source proponents like Aleph with their excellent Lulzbot printers.
Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#5To avoid the Osborne effect, they could simply have produced new versions and only open the source once released. That's not the real problem. I guess it was a combination of chinese knockoffs and stratasys proprietary instincts. In any case, IMHO, the layoffs are a result of losing the open community, which is now being serviced by true open-source proponents like Aleph with their excellent Lulzbot printers.
Yup, I only buy LulzBot printers (I own 3 now), pretty much a direct result of MakerBot's decision to go closed.
Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#6[deleted]
Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#7doomed is a strong word, and the article makes no attempt to argue that makerbot is doomed, but rather assumes it without any argument or demonstration at all.
i have no stake in it myself, but if you're gonna make a strong statement like "doomed" you should back it up. layoffs != doomed
Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#8Perhaps an open source model might have mitigated the atrocious quality of the 5th generation Makerbot. I must have replaced our extruder 5 times already, and the entire machine had to also be replaced once. This is all on a maker care warranty, so no matter what they charge, there is no profit left.
If I could have replaced the extruder with an open source clone that functioned better, I would have.
Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#9Personally, I'm wondering how many on HN actually owned an Osborne machine.
Re: What doomed MakerBot? The Osborne effect
#10This seems like a normal result of post buyout restructuring by Stratasys. Does anyone have sales numbers to know if they are actually having issues?