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Looper's Delight
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Makes sense, though we'll probably never know enough of the story to even make an informed opinion.
Jeff wrote:
<<If it was "almost ready" then
it doesn't take hundreds or even tens of thousands of dollars to
finish and distribute. If you've got programmers committed to the
project they'll make it happen. Sales weren't going to give Adam and
the other two principals a nice salary but what the heck, get it out
there and recoup at least some of your expenses.>>
<<This is of course pure speculation but something is fishy. Some
likely possibilities:
1) They never had anything and did the classic vaporware play hoping
for an enthusiastic response they didn't get.
2) They grossly underestimated how hard it was going to be to
port firmware designed for custom hardware to a general
computer OS with all the associated UI, performance,
plugin hosting, and latency issues. It wasn't even half done.
3) They outsourced the development to relatively disinterested1, 2, and 3, are way off base. I don't know if 4 is close or not. I do know that they would have finished it and sold it if there were any possible way to do it. Without going into any kind of speculation here on this marvelous Interweb, I will say that's it's pretty much all a moot point. It's not available for sale, nor is it available for an outside person to 'finish up'.
programmers with no financial stake in the product's success.
Once the contractor money dried up, there was no one left
that knew how to finish it.
4) There were really almost done but ugly internal politics
shelved the project and the code rights now reside
with one of the principals that doesn't know what to
do with it.>>
And to address a few other points that others brought up, no Peter Toms has no stake in the company, nor does he currently have any control over the sale of the OS software. He only has a stockpile of parts and is one of the few repair shops that actually owns schematics to the entire line.
There were three different owners (or groups of owners) of the Electrix brand. Each one failed to communicate well with the public, though to lump them into one large group is to miss the individual characteristics that each owner (or group of owners) brought to the table. Each one had a different style of communicating with Peter Toms, some more readily available, some not so much. None of them did well with the public side, though they weren't connected with each other, nor was there a master plan passed down from tribe to tribe to keep the rest of us in the dark...
I still have three of them, they serve me quite well, and though I've owned (and still own) several other types of loopers, nothing does it for me (and my style) as well as the Repeater. May its creators know that they are appreciated...
Stephen