On February 20, 2007 at 14:07, CoastalHome said...
...
There will always be Microsoft haters. I've learned to
stop trying to convert them. When establishing my business
model I looked at the bigger picture of who is going to
have the muscle to help penetrate this market in a way
that will create main stream buzz amongst consumers and,
for once, a pull market instead of the push market that
it is now. As far as I'm concerned Crestron and AMX have
had their chance. They've been around for a long time
and created some interesting closed system products. In
that time they (and a handful of others) have been able
to create approx. 5% market share for home automation
and practically zero brand awareness among John and Jane
Consumer. I think it's time for some fresh perspective.
It's easy to stand on a soap box and yell "Microsoft sucks,
blah, blah, blah" becasue you have a desktop computer
that crashes once a week. I tell you what; I had an Elan
system that crashed on a daily basis. My desktop computer
at work is a lot more reliable by comparision.
...
Crestron and AMX is closed, but LW is not open, either. It is also a closed system and the technology that runs it is not open source. However, both platforms offer a certain level of development. in the case of Crestron / AMX we can use the system to communicate with almost any device in the manner that we specify. if i wanted to run a Flash interface that communicates with Crestron in the Actionscript / XMLSocket object, i could do that. hunderds of wall mount, remote, and virtual interfaces... and not limited to Crestron/AMX devices. LW offers 3rd party hardware, but the interface always comes back to MCE. With the ability to have untethered customization, I personally disagree with others who embrace the ability to tweak out GUIs with pictures, marble grain, etc... I actually think of my GUIs as a "factory" look and feel, consistent, much like LW considers their GUI an integral part of the product, only I am at a much smaller scale... but... at least I have that decision to make, while others are free to take a different road.
i too applaud steve and company for coming here. debate, even critical debate, is not negative debate. it is ok to disagree, and when that happens, we all are enriched by the process. i also applaud LW's venture. Other traditional automation companies' limiting factor in growth is not the technology or market, but their desire to stay in the market that they are experts in... the high end, and acknowledgement that they do not want to expand beyond the logistic reach of their installer base.
i don't appreciate the marketing rhetoric that was originally prescribed... LW has identified the fatal flaw in existing automation and now that they have corrected that, they have a superior product. save it for the glossy brochures, not a professional forum. a more balanced perspective of a certain % of capability for a certain % of the price... more suited to the mass market audience that LW is targeting, versus the high end niche automation that many of us now cater to. i do not see the markets being exclusive... they only overlap by a fraction. hi risk, high reward. the risk component is certainly great, as the mechanism that is in place has great potential for unrealistic client expectations, not meeting client expectations, problems with the "dynamic" of the product... like exactly how is a client that buys a box from BB going to happily transition over to a custom installer? where is the planning that traditionally goes into installations, usually carefully thought out? with LW, a large percentage of the installations are going to start at the retail counter. to each his own, and i'll be curiously watching. half hoping that you succeed, half expecting that you won't, but definitely no ill-will or biased opinions that would keep me from an open mind - especially if LW does something that should make others pay attention to.
