05-17-2019 12:56 AM
HP Reverb: The Official Statement. (And my own personal message.)self.WindowsMR
Submitted 7 hours ago * by Voodooimaxx
First, the following needs to be said:
The messages posted by staff of HP Inc or Hewlett Packard Enterprise are the views and opinions of their authors and not of HP Inc, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates... blah blah blah.
In other words, what I post here are my words, not HP's.
Who am I? I'm the Quality Program Manager for HP's VR Team. (No I am not Joanna Popper! :P) I'm the one people dread having in a development meeting as I can put a stop to things if something doesn't meet expectations or I think something will be far worse that others may believe. I'm "That Guy"...
(Oh and if you don't hear from me again after this post, I've been fired... (Kidding. :P))
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Ok, so the official word has been drafted up and signed off on and will be going out. I'm not sure exactly how or where it will be posted, but I believe it may be in the "Notify Me" emails that folks signed up for.
The official statement (These are HP's words):
"It's not unusual for delivery dates to shift slightly as we ramp final production. Shipping will kick into high gear this week and we're pleased with the strong demand we're seeing for the product."
--drops mic - -exits stage left--
--comes back on stage - picks up mic--
What does that mean... Well, it's not untrue, but it doesn't answer the questions many have had: (And believe me, my inbox is in pain right now.)
The Delay:
Development is a fun game. Everything is going awesomely and at the last minute, something trips ya up. That's what happened here. All prototypes have their issues, (They are expected to...) and the fixes are made and tested again on the next round of proto builds. There can be many phases where this occurs until you get to the proto build that simulates what the finished product looks like... When we got to this phase, and it looked good. So, we started production. (Nothing unusual here.)
Production churned away and we tested those units as we would any other development phase, and we found something we didn't like.
I won't go into details as to what popped up, and it was something small, and most folks would never have noticed, but it effected enough of our test samples that we decided to put the breaks on things until we got it fixed. (I think it's fair to say there was a bit of panic in there too.) We knew we'd be under the microscope ("HP? Trying to make waves in the VR space?") and wanted this to go out as close to perfect as possible. (We know we can't please everyone. That's just part of the game.)
The "Recall":
I want to say it wasn't RECALL recall... like a problem that would cause people to die, but that what its called when you pull product back in. These were a handful of units that were shipped out before we found our gremlin. We have no idea if they were effected, and the math says most would not be, but we didn't want to take that chance... (Remember the microscope?).
Shipping Date:
They kept changing as we were pushing hard to get things ironed out... we were a bit ambitious, I think. We were eager to get it out but the last minute wrinkle just wouldn't get ironed out. (I truly dunno where the online chat folks are getting some of their dates though. This is also something I am looking into.)
As production has just started back up again, I don't have an exact date yet, (Hold the pitch forks.) but they will be shipping out as fast as they can be made. (If the first lot comes off the line tomorrow, that lot will ship out then.) You should start seeing things, as orders are fulfilled, within the coming week. When I start getting dates, I'll post here.
Communication:
This is where I have to emphasize that all of this is my opinion... I'm gonna call it a screw up, and I will make the apology.
The VR team is a small team within a big entity and this team has been moving very fast. Many are not used to this sort of thing happening and when HP makes any sort of communication, it can take a committee to write, re-write, proofread, send off to legal, make changes... and so on... For a product announcement, that fine, but for something like this? It doesn't fly, IMHO. We need to be as agile with communication as we are in product development. It might not mean much, but I have been your advocate and I believe the folks have listened. (I'm still here, aren't I?)
So with all that, I do want to thank everyone for their enthusiasm. I did read, and appreciate, all posts and DM's. (Even the really nasty ones. - Was it really necessary to say that about my family?) I did bombard the team with all of your messages, of criticism, excitement, and enthusiasm, and questions. (So much so that I think I may have put a bit too much pressure on... my bad.) For this new team, it has been quite the eye opening experience and your enthusiasm is uplifting and motivating.
Are we perfect? No... but we are trying to be as close as we can get. 🙂
That being said, I do apologize for being quiet, and staying away during all this... so I just have one message...
--Makes not to turn off reply notifications for this post. Orange envelopes make me anxious... I will be checking in though. Just want to unplug tonight. --
I know some people get antsy over non oculus products being discussed on the forum well @moderators feel free to merge all the threads into one HP Reverb megathread @Techy111 @LZoltowski @kojack
05-31-2019 09:48 AM
05-31-2019 10:02 AM
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05-31-2019 10:46 AM
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05-31-2019 12:02 PM
Shadowmask72 said:
Ordered. Should arrive between June 6th- 10th
05-31-2019 01:11 PM
05-31-2019 01:45 PM
05-31-2019 03:47 PM
05-31-2019 04:00 PM