Stephen Mack Avatar Taken from TiVoCommunity.comStephen Mack (Director of Service operations at TiVo) has put together an interesting post on his blog in which he talks about the TiVoToGo Mac slipup. It’s worth a read if your interested in TiVoToGo on the Mac.
Scheduling and estimating for any project is an inexact science. Issues come up, things happen, people underestimate, bugs occur. TiVo has seen its share of missed deadlines. (Although we never seem to get any credit for the countless software and hardware and service releases that occur on time.)
Recently, Wired Magazine included us on their “vaporware” list for TiVoToGo for the Mac. There are a lot of TiVo employees who love and use Macs, and all of us want to see this released soon. It’s fair to say this is late, since we announced it for mid-Summer of 2006.
I’m not close to the project, so I don’t know when it’ll be ready. But Jim Denney, a VP I work with, wrote a good explanation of what’s going on. I agree with the philosophy that we should never announce a release date until we’re 100% sure that we can hit that release date. And given the lessons of the esteemed Fred Brooks, usually the only time you’re 100% sure is when it’s ready to be released.
Thanks Steve for taking part in the conversation and for providing us with this information. It’s great to see that TiVo knows there is a problem….
I’m personally interested in the whole TiVoToGo Mac thing since I’m probably going to buy a MacBook sometime in the near future. Please keep us updated if you/when you find out more.
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