When bad design/support spoil a great product

You bring up a very good and fair point Tony. I'll start by saying that I DON'T share your viewpoint on buying in to the first generation of a product, but you raise a good point about being an early adopter.

I'm very much a first generation product guy, especially in the last four years or so. Technology needs people like me, the theory of Diffusion of Innovations has been trying to explain this for over 50 years now. I'm definitely an early adopter, and probably will be as long as I have sufficient income to do so. That varies a little depending on the type of product, but generally anything I'm interested in I'm in the first wave of buyers.

People love to make fun of the early adopters, think of the endless jokes made at the expense of the people who stood in line to shell out $700 for the first generation iPhone. I wasn't in on the early iPhone because I didn't have that kind of money in 2007 plus I hated the company who was launching it, but if that were today I'd be there in line with the rest of them. The general sentiment among a lot of reviewers when these smartwatches that are on the market today launched recently was "wait until the next generations to let them get the kinks worked out", but the problem with that logic is that if nobody buys the first generation and holds out for a better second version...there may not be a second version.

Technology NEEDS people like me who are willing to spend $550 on a watch that will very likely get updated with a vastly superior model in a year or two from now. People that stood in line for hours to buy a phone a few years ago are the reason that we can all walk in to most stores today and get a very good smartphone for $99.

However, with all that said, along with being an early adopter does come a certain level of frustration tied to using a product that has not been volume tested. I've heard the argument that you can't be an early adopter and then complain about problematic products. I'll agree to the point that I shouldn't constantly whine or gripe about issues, but companies like Pono and Apple need us to be vocal about issues with their products if they're going to get those fixed.

Knowing how first generation products go though, I very rarely give up on a product early on and typically stick it out as things get improved. When I first posted on the Pono player here I laid out every single issue I had with the player, and then STILL said it's the best sounding player out there and have used it continuously over the last few months. So, although I'm complaining here, I've got a fairly high tolerance for early generation products with issues as long as they're at least usable.

HOWEVER...

What I don't have a tolerance for is bad customer service. Sure, I'll take a bad experience here and there and just live with it because you could be dealing with a service rep who just got chewed out by his supervisor or just had a horrid experience with an unreasonably irate customer. But when I consistently have bad customer service from a company that's more of a culture issue and tells me they don't actually give a **** about their customers, well then I'm done. It's the reason I don't buy Samsung these days, I've had (literally) nothing but bad customer service from them.

Unfortunately that's the issue I'm having with Pono at the moment. I've reached out to them three times on separate issues, and all of those encounters have resulted in frustration. I'm getting very slow response times from them (days between replies) and the replies I'm getting are basically worthless form-letter type responses typed up be people who clearly have no desire to help me.

I'm bummed about the overall experience with Pono so far, I was hoping for better service from a company so seemingly focussed on 'people'.

That's a great example Steve, satellite radio has been another of my big disappointments given how cool it should be. When Howard Stern leaves they're either going to have to really change or they're going to lose a ton of their customers.

westmassguy wrote: »

According to what I've read, some software would flag it as Windows 95/98, and not install. To avoid that, Microshaft went directly to Windows 10.

Stuff like this is why Microsoft gets a pass in my book. Although I don't enjoy the experience of using Windows as much for my primary computer (my gaming rig is obviously Windows), I fully acknowledge what a technological feat Windows is. Because of their open standards and letting everyone under the sun make software and hardware for Windows, Microsoft has to deal with a metric **** ton of issues ranging from full compatibility across the board to stuff like you posted above. They don't get it right every single time and we all love to **** about Windows, but it seems to work the vast majority of the time.