That's a solid and educated opinion and I respect it. I guess I haven't been in this for the long run, but as someone who has only recently learned of the GH, it seems they are up against a lot of unforeseen challenges - as would have been expected but not allowed for in the publicly presented time frame. I think you or I - possibly Trevor and Matt, if we were in their position today, we would have more understanding of the likelihood of having to extend the claimed time frame out and would acknowledged that in our PR better - but at the same time Hopper labs have utilised ignorance in harnessing more backers, so coming at it from that angle - where more backers/pre-orders actually enable continuation, it is beneficial to everyone, even if it is a bit sneaky.

I think what has happened is, they finally thought they had relatively flawless fabrication in place for July shipping for backers - turns out they had two problems in mass ordered supply of both the heater and the back end. They have found the source of issue, found the cause, designed a fix and then have travelled to China to implement the fix. This would allow replacement of an undisclosed amount of parts that would have rendered previous assembled units useless. By the time they discovered said issues, and their extent, X amount of units were assembled, likely with fault, and sent to Y amount of "customers" (investors). So, with Matt and Trevor away from base, and only broken Hoppers to assemble - there has been no reason to employ more people to put them together – or do anything, until VERY recently (which has happened). With no way to know the amount on order, the amount that can be assembled per day per crew and the specific problems (which sound to be a heater sensor, the heater is the most time consuming part of the device to produce) there is no valuable input that can be made by speculations except to provide insight to people, that this project is as effective as if they were to go about it – it’s a massive effort, and they are starting from nothing! Not to mention, supply has been beyond their expectation (it was nearly 3x the indiegogo target for eg.) and so the magnitude of their task at hand is beyond what was time allocated for initially, it has turned into a crazy project by two people who have somehow pulled it off. When we all have our units at our mouths, the world will owe these two guys a massive cheers, bigger than the money offered for the device. It’s an awesome achievement. (even if user reports aren’t anything to go off). Innovation is only so common. __ BTW comparing an indy item outsourced in China to products coming out of the optical industry in terms of QC… I would be horrified if the results were equal. Mechanical blemishes on the chassis of a GH are pretty moot compared to, say, scratches on a lens. Both are GOING to happen in production. I hear your points, but be realistic. This is an idea that so many people have got behind, how do you expect them to pull it off with 100% perfection. I’ll listen to complaints of people who have a bunged up GH from the box, but so far they have been (I want to say laughable) but as a future consumer I’d say acceptable in quality for a reduced in price, pre-release device. I think there will be a medium chance of scratching on SS final release products, but seriously you want these devices in how many hands? When? ON QC: I had to wash fine particles out of my not-that-cheap 4-pc grinder… THAT’s a QC issue that I won’t stand for. I bet the chambers of the GH are clean as fuck (and no, minimal off-gassing isn’t ruling it out of that category). Patience guys you will have it before I will, that money for you must be forgotten by now anyway (or is it the difference in price between this thing and a mighty that’s got all of you so sour?)