Did not abandon. Still support it. Was a Gen 1 product for sure. Ring is our V2 and so far has been very well received, great reviews and very happy customers.
We did do a $99 upgrade for everyone that had bought a Doorbot .
We had already been doing a lot of direct business before we changed the name to Ring (we were formally Doorbot).
I basically made the assumption that if Ring.com increased our direct sales by X%, how many years would it pay back. It turned out that even at a very high price for the domain it did not have to increase sales by a lot (single digit) in order to pay itself off over just a few years.
We launched Ring.com in October and so far it appears that the benefits are happening however it will never be something that we can 100% be sure of.
I am actually not a big fan of domains anymore but I think a extremely marquee one like Ring.com was worth stretching the budget for.
Appreciate your opinion (really do). The design was driven not just by what we wanted it to look like but also the physical constraints around some of the features the product has. The main drivers:
1. Battery that lasts for one year (5,250mah)
2. Infrared night vision with a IR cut filter
3. Advanced, programmable motion detection that can detect people up to 30 feet out at 180 degrees from the device.
4. Powerful WiFi antenna
Each one of these drives a certain amount of the design. I say this not as a excuse but just to give some background that the design did have some physical drivers behind it.
I am very happy with how the device looks and also the feedback from the customers.
The domain was definitely not cheap. So far I think it was the right decision to buy it and I believe we have seen enough benefit from it to make it worthwhile. However we will not know if it was really worth it for at least another year or two.
We more then asked Apple we had submitted the project to them through the MFI process. Apple changed their policy and I have to think it is because of the incredible response this story got.
I am Jamie Siminoff the inventor of POP. We are in the process of confirming if the changes that Apple PR told the press are true. If they are then POP will be made and I look forward to delivering it to all of the doubters out there.
@Devilboy, I hope you order one as I will hand deliver it and take that $10:)
Just want to add some points to this thread as I am the inventor of POP.
For those who question our motives, your reasoning is fair but let me clarify some things.
We started Christie Street because of our our experiences with POP. We have been getting closer and closer to this decision since Apple announced Lightning and began its new rules on the adapter. While we were going back and forth and waiting to see if we could still build POP we realized that we did not have a good way of refunding to our customers. That is why on Christie Street we built a automated refund system for our inventors. So when we finally realized that POP just could not be made to what we promised, we wanted to use our platform to do the refunds as it would be easier for us to manage. Also it would allow us to test and tweak the system with real customers. We are all trying to build better companies/products and looking at a loss on POP this seemed like a good way to at least salvage something out of it while delivering a above average experience to our customers, I would call that a win-win.
Lots of people also seem to want POP even without Lightning and our upset that we did not poll our customers to see if a USB only version. But they are missing the point, we said in our campaign that we would support the iPhone 5 and at the time had no reason to believe that would be impossible. Why would we have thought that they would sell the new adapter any different then the old 30 pin?
We are not willing to compromise on the product or deliver something that was not as promised. If that brings skeptics, so be it but at the end of the day today I know that we are doing the right thing, not the easy thing but the right thing.