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I own several of the Pine devices. They are all alpha in different ways but that's fine, I'm paying for the future. The thing that worries me is that they are

by xrd 5y ago

I own several of the Pine devices. They are all alpha in different ways but that's fine, I'm paying for the future. The thing that worries me is that they are launching a lot of products. They are all adjacent in some ways. But, should I as a customer, or Pine as a company, be worried about the cost of supporting all these different kinds of devices? I recall reading a long time ago that Google intentionally offers products where they can get away without offering support from a real person. That's obviously not true anymore but many of their products are entirely self supported (or GTFO...). The obvioys reason is that support is so incredibly costly and you never recoup a penny of that cost because it only happens after the purchase is made in most cases. Is this the true brilliance of Pine, that they've created a community of people around them that are willing to help get all these products to the next level and they can avoid this costly facet of any organization? Or, is this a fatal mistake that will kill Pine? I'm super excited about all their products and some of them will undoubtedly sit in my closet after the initial use. But, is that ok for the second wave of users who will demand something better?

freedomben 5y ago
I've had many of the same thoughts as you, and I have some theories. I'm not affiliated in any way with Pine other than I love (and buy) a lot of their stuff. My theory is that they view themselves as the hardware people, not the makers of consumer devices. They follow an "if we build it they will come" approach. They have dipped a toe in consumer-facing stuff but the bulk of their stuff is "we make the open hardware, let the software people figure it out and support it, etc." I'm very comfortable with that, especially given that it allows them to make things really affordable (which IMHO is a super important aspect). It especially seems as though Manjaro is answering the call. I know there are some Fedora community members that are as well.
bluGill 5y ago
They are moving to a model where you can buy direct from china and no support; or from in country resellers for more money and support provided. If they can get the second wave to move to the resellers (pay for it) the model looks good.
blihp 5y ago
Don't worry about Pine getting spread so thin that they can't support these devices. The reason being that they don't support them (from a software standpoint) currently! The brilliance of their business model is they are very up front about only producing and supporting the hardware. The software support is entirely on the open source community. As far as the hardware, their support generally only extends as far as defective hardware. Think DOA battery/display/etc. If a particular revision of a device has a hardware bug, but is otherwise functional, they will tend to fix the bug in a future revision. Customers bothered by a given bug typically have to buy a future revision if it really bothers them. For example, I got the first public version of the Pinephone which has a USB-C bug that only works with dumb chargers. The next revision of the Pinephone fixed that bug and they offered a discounted board replacement for those bothered by the bug. Their main target customers are (hardware and software) hackers who should understand what they're signing up for.

by xrd 5y ago

freedomben 5y ago

I've had many of the same thoughts as you, and I have some theories. I'm not affiliated in any way with Pine other than I love (and buy) a lot of their stuff. My theory is that they view themselves as the hardware people, not the makers of consumer devices. They follow an "if we build it they will come" approach. They have dipped a toe in consumer-facing stuff but the bulk of their stuff is "we make the open hardware, let the software people figure it out and support it, etc." I'm very comfortable with that, especially given that it allows them to make things really affordable (which IMHO is a super important aspect). It especially seems as though Manjaro is answering the call. I know there are some Fedora community members that are as well.

bluGill 5y ago

They are moving to a model where you can buy direct from china and no support; or from in country resellers for more money and support provided. If they can get the second wave to move to the resellers (pay for it) the model looks good.

blihp 5y ago

Don't worry about Pine getting spread so thin that they can't support these devices. The reason being that they don't support them (from a software standpoint) currently! The brilliance of their business model is they are very up front about only producing and supporting the hardware. The software support is entirely on the open source community. As far as the hardware, their support generally only extends as far as defective hardware. Think DOA battery/display/etc. If a particular revision of a device has a hardware bug, but is otherwise functional, they will tend to fix the bug in a future revision. Customers bothered by a given bug typically have to buy a future revision if it really bothers them. For example, I got the first public version of the Pinephone which has a USB-C bug that only works with dumb chargers. The next revision of the Pinephone fixed that bug and they offered a discounted board replacement for those bothered by the bug. Their main target customers are (hardware and software) hackers who should understand what they're signing up for.