Originally posted by gazonk Really? I've developed for several platforms, including iOS, and the iOS APIs appear to be pretty well-documented to me.
Yet Apple must approve and, at least according to PRAC, they didn't as regards RAW export to iPad for use in PP (Apple is concerned about tablet battery life). So someone has to engineer software that sends RAW over a local wireless network to a horsepower device and limit Wi-Fi to jpeg (or at least allow a choice) - which is precisely what a Eye-Fi
Pro X2 card does. Rather than engineer ROM software Pentax co-developed easier Eye-Fi card linking built into its new cameras.
An Eye-Fi
Mobi card is optimized to easily link to a phone or tablet and only transfers jpeg - and does that instantly (from personal experience).
I do not believe this is the final step - I believe it is a temporary step to buy time.
Aristohanes - is a Wi-Fi main board chip $10 or $6? In the last 24 hours you've quoted both costs. And either way, that is a fair hunk of money for a device whose build cost is less than $300. At that build cost a company is searching for pennies to save.
Supposing they make 500,000 K500/K50 units. $10 is $5,000,000 - a fair hunk of money for a company the size of Pentax. How many units opportunity cost are missed by omitting W-Fi? (alternatively, how many additional units are generated adding Wi-Fi?).
Again, you write in absolutes - balck and white- Pentax did or didn't do right or wrong. Business is rarely so cut and dried - there are value judgements and business risk/reqward decisions, and limits to available capital. The most important decision is the marginal decision, the decision between the last two equally important items that can be done with the l;ast few dolalrs of capital. One or the other must be chosen - both cannot be done.
Where was Wi-Fi in the ordered set of investments that Pentax could make with the scarce capital allocated for these cameras? I certainly don't know - but beans are important and bean counters have jobs to do too.
Last edited by monochrome; 06-20-2013 at 11:57 AM.