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Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

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Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#41
post #39
post #11

"In essence, we were not building the phone for the customer—we were building it for Jeff" http://www.fastcompany.com/3039887/under-fire

It seems not quite different from what Jobs did. The real difference is the degree of vision associated with reality.

Steve obsessed over details that would benefit users; Bezos apparently forced choices that would benefit Amazon. Seems quite a bit different.

Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#42

I flew up in First Class on Virgin to Seattle next to a key lead on the fire phone. We had a nice long talk about the project and what happened. He vehemently defended the Fire Phone and touted its great and unique aspects while I examined it and admired the hard work he put in. 3D modeling, gyroscopic-driven interactions, an universal activity feed -- some interesting stuff was there... But there were some serious p…

Go read the book "Everything store" and come back. You're not the first one who's been saying stuff like this about him. While reading the book I was amazed how the entire history of the company is full of doubters saying he's doing it wrong and the company will fail. Yet time after time the doubters were proved wrong, and after two decades its growth is only accelerating. Sure he's not perfect and how the company treats employees is far from ideal, but he definitely is not a blind pathetic CEO.

Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#43

I flew up in First Class on Virgin to Seattle next to a key lead on the fire phone. We had a nice long talk about the project and what happened. He vehemently defended the Fire Phone and touted its great and unique aspects while I examined it and admired the hard work he put in. 3D modeling, gyroscopic-driven interactions, an universal activity feed -- some interesting stuff was there... But there were some serious p…

That's life. Companies make bets, hire people to execute, and when things don't work out, plans change and staffing sometimes need to adjust. No reason to bash Bezos for taking gambles. They certainly didn't risk the company.

The entire bull case for AMZN is always "Amazon reinvests all their cash flow into the business" and "Bezos is focused on the long term". Why are they calling it quits already?

The same is true for Google. So much lip service about moonshots and long term thinking and the new CFO comes in and talks about cost discipline and potentially capital return. Turns out dual class shares don't make you anymore 'long-term focused' than the next company.

Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#44

I flew up in First Class on Virgin to Seattle next to a key lead on the fire phone. We had a nice long talk about the project and what happened. He vehemently defended the Fire Phone and touted its great and unique aspects while I examined it and admired the hard work he put in. 3D modeling, gyroscopic-driven interactions, an universal activity feed -- some interesting stuff was there... But there were some serious p…

His instincts on the Kindle paid off spectacularly, which is why his instincts on the phone were trusted.

Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#45
post #15
post #7

Amazon fires Fire phone engineers.... /s TBH it sucks that the developers are the first ones to go , when it generally isnt their fault... it's bad product management/sales/strategy that caused the device to fail...

Why is this always the case? I've been on a couple of projects that were complete flops, devs are always first to go. Meanwhile the idiots who actually wasted all the money and bloated the feature set start working on version "2.0".

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#46
The problem with the Fire Phone isn't the hardware, the hardware is great, the problem is Fire OS. No one wants a half baked Android fork and a walled garden. My wife purchased the Fire Phone during their last promotion, and within 15 minutes she was reflashing to CyanogenMod.

The phone would have been successful if they had simply run stock Android, preloaded their own bloatware like Samsung does, and perhaps a dedicated button for Firefly, which is a pretty neat app. The reason the Fire Phone failed was Bezos is an egotistical asshole who doesn't care what the customer wants.

Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#47
post #42

I flew up in First Class on Virgin to Seattle next to a key lead on the fire phone. We had a nice long talk about the project and what happened. He vehemently defended the Fire Phone and touted its great and unique aspects while I examined it and admired the hard work he put in. 3D modeling, gyroscopic-driven interactions, an universal activity feed -- some interesting stuff was there... But there were some serious p…

Go read the book "Everything store" and come back. You're not the first one who's been saying stuff like this about him. While reading the book I was amazed how the entire history of the company is full of doubters saying he's doing it wrong and the company will fail. Yet time after time the doubters were proved wrong, and after two decades its growth is only accelerating. Sure he's not perfect and how the company tr…

You could almost be talking about Steve Jobs there.

Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#48
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems not quite different from what Jobs did. The real difference is the degree of vision associated with reality.

Steve obsessed over details that would benefit users; Bezos apparently forced choices that would benefit Amazon. Seems quite a bit different.

Please list the features that were patently anti-user and done for Amazon's sole benefit.

Re: Amazon Curtails Development of Consumer Devices

#50

The problem with the Fire Phone isn't the hardware, the hardware is great, the problem is Fire OS. No one wants a half baked Android fork and a walled garden. My wife purchased the Fire Phone during their last promotion, and within 15 minutes she was reflashing to CyanogenMod. The phone would have been successful if they had simply run stock Android, preloaded their own bloatware like Samsung does, and perhaps a dedi…

Wasn't the phone ridiculously expensive with lots of features that nobody wanted?

Once again, betting on 3d leads to a loss.

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