First I would like to apologize to those that may experience discomfort seeing that someone else received a TextBlade before general release, I do sympathize. I have been there. For those who wish to know the secret to be chosen for TREG as far as I know there isn’t one. For those that think “brown nosin” is necessary I invite to look over my posts and I do not believe you will find any. Mark was familiar with my posts.

Let’s get to the first impressions. After some misdirection with FedEx I finally got my hands on the package Friday night around eight. Much has already been written about the packaging and the attention to detail so for now all I will say is the prior assessments were correct. After opening the package the first thing I noticed was how small the TextBlade was. I had seen the pictures and videos but holding one in my hand it was smaller than expected. After putting the unit together I paired it with my iPad Air 2 and attempted to type. I soon discovered how different typing on the TextBlade would be. Although I spend many hours each day behind a keyboard I have always considered myself a lousy typist and am trying to correct years of bad habits while learning this new keyboard. I typed with my wrists resting on the surface of the desk since it is not necessary to move your hands to reach all of the keys. The amount of movement by the fingers to go from one row to another is minimal. That was all for Friday night and I left it alone until around 1 pm Saturday when I had my phone call with Mark.

I am not going to try to give a detailed report of the conversation but will try to summarize two major things I came away with when it was over. These are not his words but mine in an attempt to summarize several hours of conversation. After hearing Mark describe in great detail the processes they went thru in developing the packaging up to the current version of the TextBlade I would call him, in the words of Stan Lee, a “True Believer”. Mark has a vision for WayTools and the TextBlade that he will not deviate from. Time and profit are secondary to the goal of producing the product in his vision. All of the time that has passed and problems that they have encountered were not expected but if they are necessary to get to the product in his vision so be it. He does not want the people who have stayed with him so far to wait one minute longer than necessary for their order but he will not release it one minute before it is ready.

The second thing is regarding updates. I suggested that updates be made more often even if they were just a simple statement that “We are still on track to ship in Q4”. I think Mark sees updates as a “no win” situation, my words not his. If they are done every two weeks there will be complaints that they are not done weekly. If they are done weekly there will be complaints that they are not detailed. If they are detailed people will want specific dates for completion and if they are not met they will be called liars. Again these are my words not his. Although I would like more, detailed updates I cannot fault this logic since we have seen this behavior in the past. Rather than spend time on updates he feels that the time is best spent on getting the product ready. I think he feels that general release is the one thing that will silence the critics.

I am sure that there will be some who will say that I have partook of the kool-aid but I am posting what I see from my point of view, just as I always have, but this time with more information to go on. I will try to post about my experiences using the TextBlade in a few days as I adapt and learn.