Well yeah. Buying something early is the most expensive time to buy it. The inefficiencies haven't been worked out of the manufacturing process yet, and there's not an established wide customer base to spread the R&D over yet.
Radios in the 1920s cost over 100 hours of wages for a lot of people. TVs in the 50s were stupid expensive. Computers in the early 60s were literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. And all of these things were pretty garbage compared to what you think of today. Hell, the computer from the early 60s could probably lose a math race to a seasoned abacus veteran.
In exchange for the high risk and high payment, you get to play with something that might be cool, and you get bragging rights (depending on your personality type, one of these might excite you more than the other).
> Any decent company would fix it, full stop.
Well, probably. I'm not going to defend samsung here. They're acting pretty garbage.
But the point about new tech being risky, is entirely fair. If something's still exciting, it's probably a good idea for the risk-averse to avoid it.
It's the true in everything, gen 1 version of cars, fridges, you name it.
I try to get gen 2 or later after a new revision.
I made an exception with my current car because all the electronics are new which to be frank are probably the biggest risk, but Isuzu engines, drive trains and gear boxes have barely changed in 10+ years. And they're the parts I'm more worried about and the 6 year warranty covers everything else.
But as you said, the same reliability can never be expected in consumables like computers, phones and the like.
> But the point about new tech being risky, is entirely fair. If something's still exciting, it's probably a good idea for the risk-averse to avoid it.
Seems like you're saying a person who bought a thousand euro phone and couldn't get it repaired under warranty after a month of mild use is "risk-averse" if they dislike that experience.
Would a truly non-risk-averse person be overjoyed by this experience or see no problem with it? Would they accept it as the price they pay for being an early adopter and see no reason to complain? I'm confused.
> Seems like you're saying a person who bought a thousand euro phone and couldn't get it repaired under warranty after a month of mild use is "risk-averse" if they dislike that experience.
I'm saying that a person who is risk-averse should probably avoid this. There aren't very many third party repair places yet, so you're completely at the mercy of a single company.
There's also an increased risk if said company is based outside your country (or supra-national political union, should you live in one). It's harder for a country to force a company in another jurisdiction into compliance.
The point wasn't that it was expensive. The author happily paid the expense. They claim to even be happy to suffer the annoyance of downtime and repair even though they didn't abuse the device. Those are the only 2 things an early adopter is obligated to asorb.
The point was that it was all 4 together of: expensive, immature, unsupported, and not sold as unsupported.
It was sold with a standard warranty like any product, yet in reality they just deny the claim no matter how valid.
The expense only means that's why you care, that they take your money which did not break on them a few weeks later, and don't honor their promises.
Well yeah. Buying something early is the most expensive time to buy it. The inefficiencies haven't been worked out of the manufacturing process yet, and there's not an established wide customer base to spread the R&D over yet.
Radios in the 1920s cost over 100 hours of wages for a lot of people. TVs in the 50s were stupid expensive. Computers in the early 60s were literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. And all of these things were pretty garbage compared to what you think of today. Hell, the computer from the early 60s could probably lose a math race to a seasoned abacus veteran.
In exchange for the high risk and high payment, you get to play with something that might be cool, and you get bragging rights (depending on your personality type, one of these might excite you more than the other).
> Any decent company would fix it, full stop.
Well, probably. I'm not going to defend samsung here. They're acting pretty garbage.
But the point about new tech being risky, is entirely fair. If something's still exciting, it's probably a good idea for the risk-averse to avoid it.