We had expected to be able to pull the lever on orders for Vivaldi by a couple of days ago. Last month there were some developments that have consequently pushed back the project by about a month. I'll be sending out emails tomorrow to individuals catching them up with this, but thought I'd let people know via my blog as well.
We are still on track to deliver, however a number of things in our supply chain through to retail have ended up taking longer than expected. When I look back at the delays I can see a good reason and ways we will have benefited in the near term from each of them, but that does not make them any more fun to endure.
In more happy news, development of the Plasma Active Mer OS that will appear on the device is progressing nicely with things like hardware buttons, file management and more starting to really slot in. Thanks to the extended timeline to delivery, we will also likely be shipping from day one with the ability to set activities as private and have them locked with encryption behind a password.
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14 comments:
Great news.
Now, I have a silly question to ask: in the videos I've seen of the KDE Vivaldi / Spark, it has been held in the landscape position. Can it be held and use in the portrait position instead?
I find that (portrait mode) a more natural way for reading web pages and ebooks, probably my main use of a tablet device.
Why do people not learn from those who came before?
_Every_ new start up never delivers on time. Best case scenario is usually around four months late (raspberry pie) or a few years late (open pandora).
There are always delays and things out of ones control. Always.
"Once the fighting starts, all plans are obsolete"
I just hope Vivaldi will be in the around four months delay category.
Tom: you don't know if they already had into account that is somewhat normal to suffer delays, so they said they were going to deliver a little bit later than their optimistic expectations were pointing to.
Personally, I'm so eager to have the Vivaldi in my hands, that I don't know if it's going to make any difference. I want it since Aaron first blogged about it (when was that, February?), so one month or two is not going to make much of a difference.
Go Spa^W Vivaldi!
Oh, and I forgot to add that not even startups suffer delays. I wanted to hang myself in the wait of the N900 or the N9. :-)
Tom: part of it is that a startup or product launch has a tight time-to-market time. You can't develop in the blue sky forever, or find yourself in the second row. Such tight schedule is prone to getting delays.
Another part is that a launch always requires _all_ or at least most open ends to be solved to bring the right experience. There are generally more open ends then people have foreseen.
@everybody: That is why everybody should just add a few months extra and maybe surprise people with an earlier date.
So let's just assume that Vivaldi ships in Q3 and nobody will be disappointed.
@tom: Apple was a $50 billion company yet their white iPhone was delayed for ever. We hear more about Vivaldi and Raspberry because these projects (unlike Apple) are honest and transparent and keep us updated with what is causing the delay.
@shwapnil:
I think Apple is evil, but nearly all of their products ship millions on time. Exactly like they promise. The white Iphone4 was just an exception to that rule and it is not like it is their only product.
(And btw the stock price is 10x higher)
the reason Apple appear to ship on time is that they security gestapo prevent people from knowing about the new products until Apple are close to a launch. Sure, there's lots of speculation and rumours, but Apple remain in control of the facts.
For example, noone is sure why there was no iPhone5, instead only a 4S; maybe there was a much delayed iphone5 we don't know.
I'm not an apple fan or hater, but to be honest I'd prefer to have proper announcements with solid delivery dates instead of endless rumours and speculation with inevitable disappointment.
What does it mean "progressing nicely with things like hardware buttons, file management and more starting to really slot in"? Why wouldn't something like hardware buttons be operable from the start?
@SD69: yes, the hardware buttons worked in the sense that when you pressed them they generated events, but those were fairly random (very strange default mappings) and few if any Plasma Active software responded to them. most of the work was in making things like the shell and the web browser do "what you'd expect" when the various keys are pressed ... boring stuff and admitedly not that exciting, but it's the kind of things we've been working on for the past couple of months to make the product as good as we can from the start.
very excited about this.
also extremely hopeful we'll see a plasma active smartphone in the future sometime down the road. its about the only thing that could draw me away from iphone.
For open handsets there is already a Nemo/Mer distribution. You are welcome to help it in any way. So far it lacks different commonly needed programs. Of course if Plasma Active will decide to produce a handset UX it'll be great.
Any news regarding when orders will open?
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