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Not waving, but choking. Many comments seem to be cutting more slack to this announcement than perhaps they would for other companies' products. Nest says they
by lovemenot 13y ago
Not waving, but choking. Many comments seem to be cutting more slack to this announcement than perhaps they would for other companies' products.
Nest says they discovered this for themselves, which indicates that there is some measurable effect and it came up on post-release testing, months after release. Even though some people had been discussing a potential for exactly this scenario when the product features were first announced.
Given this not unexpected error condition, Nest really should have run those same tests before releasing a product whose sole function is safety.
- greatsuccess 13y agoI have said many times before having bought NEST thermos and returned them on multiple occasions, these products DO NOT WORK, and are in fact a scam. I feel sorry for anyone who was bilked out of 3X times what a functioning device costs, and instead bought anything NEST produces. NEST is experimenting on its customer base with prototypes that are so poorly made as to beg the question, why havent regulators already stepped in?
- paulbaumgart 13y agoThings that were once unknown unknowns are always easy to point out in hindsight...
- lovemenot 13y agoThat is true in general. But in this case, what new information arose in the intervening months? There were no reported cases. Presumably the only thing that changed was that Nest's QA team eventually got around to doing what they were likely too busy to do before release. So this appears to be a classic case of trade-off between safety and time to market. I don't presume to correctly judge what would be the right values to plug into that equation, but I think it is fair to raise the question.
- uptown 13y agoIt could also be that their international expansion imposes different requirements, or doing it all under the supervision of Google's attorneys influenced the change.
- trothoun 13y agoIf you think QA is ever complete, then it is clear you have never worked on a QA team. You can always come up with new ideas on how to break things.
- lovemenot 13y agoI quite agree that one can always come up with new tests. But the pertinent question is whether in this case Nests's QA would have anticipated, yet not tested for, this particular error condition. I believe that on balance the answer is yes, probably they did. A question which follows then is, assuming I am right, what is a reasonable amount of blame for failing to test prior to release?
- tensenki 13y agoYea, just like the 4 recalls for my Honda Fit. They should have totally tested all those aspects before. And since I'm only paying $100 compared to the $20K for the fit, I should expect better safety measures than the automobile industry. Because the number of people that die in house fires is minuscule to the number of people who die in automobile accidents.
- ssmoot 13y agoHonda is selling a single purpose safety device with no moving parts called the "Fit"? And it's had 4 recalls you say? Won't that lead to confusion since they sell a car of the same name? With millions of parts? That moves down the road by controlled explosions with chemicals stored onboard the vehicle?
- sliverstorm 13y agoIt's not automatically unreasonable to expect attention to safety comparable to an automobile. Yes, you pay 1/200th the price, but the complexity is also much smaller. I would wager more than 200x smaller. Probably even 2000x smaller. More generally, I think there is also a sentiment that if a device whose SOLE FUNCTION AND REASON FOR EXISTING is to improve safety, then perhaps safety should be a high priority for the development team? In other words, if you don't want to concern yourself with safety, don't sign up to design a safety device.