Does this mean that Android users (who stated they were Android users in the original $5 sign up orders) have been waiting while Apple decides to provider certification for the iOS version?

I saw a WakeMate advert recently, which really frustrated me given that long-loyal customers(-to-be) have been waiting for their units. If the Android app has been delayed for iPhone certification then I'm going to get really annoyed.

Please WakeMate, I really want to buy one of these thins but I'm loosing patience.

The Android/Blackberry version of the WakeMate has its own bugs which we have been resolving. The Apple certification has nothing to do with the Android release.

Jesus christ. Don't these people learn anything: stop telling us how close you are, it's like death by a thousand papercuts. Just give us the news.

If you look at it as a group of kids figuring it out as they go, it's an interesting adventure to follow. If you look at it as a group of kids running a business, it's embarrassing.

The fact that they hit so many completely unexpected hurdles really makes it seem like they had no idea what they were getting into. Not a good thing when you're taking people's money up-front.

What horrifies me is the complete lack of learning. It's been clear for so long now that they have a communication problem: they say the wrong thing, they don't keep people up-to-date, they change the specs as they go then not/mis-communicate that. And here we are again. And again. And again. Again with this post - they're getting peoples' hopes up. It's astounding.

what do you mean? People said they weren't communicating enough, so now they are writing blog posts like this regularly to keep us updated. Nothing wrong with that at all.

The only thing to be critical of is they are poor at giving time frames, but it's hard to be critical of that without having experience launching a hardware product.

In this post they're communicating badly: the heading tells readers that they're almost there, the content of the post is a big disclaimer about why they might not be true.

So this delay has been due to delays in being approved as hardware for the iPhone?

I remember being excited that Apple was opening the 30-pin dock to 3rd parties, but it seems like that was over a year ago and the only things released that I can name are Square and Pedal Brain. Am I right to assume that hardware approval is much more difficult than normal app store approval.

It's not that hard if you are a larger company. My company just had a medical device that connects to the 30 pin approved by the FDA/Apple. The difficulty is less Apple and more the intrinsic challenges of hardware. Once you get into atoms bugs get harder to fix, costly to iterate on etc. It's really impressive that the wakemate guys have gotten so far with so few resources.

Square connects through the audio jack. Maybe part of the reason they decided to do that was to avoid the approval process? Probably more of a "get on as many devices as possible" situation though.

Its much cheaper to manufacturer a device that uses the audio jack than one that uses teh 30 pin adaptor.

This and we can manufacture only one reader and have it work on iPhones, iPads and pretty much every Android device.

I apologize if this is a silly question, but I pre-ordered a WakeMate two jobs ago, before my son started Pre-K and before I switched to Android, so I'm fuzzy on the details---plus all that's happened since then, including the $5 refund.

Were the pre-orders final? I'm assuming not but I don't want to run into any surprises of course. Once it's ready to ship, will I have the option to cancel my order?

Nevermind, found the answer:

http://blog.wakemate.com/2010/08/17/timing-update/

Kind of interesting, but "Wakelytics", come on.

That's awesome - I put in a backorder for one months ago and would love to see this go well for the developer.

Sounds like they're 90% done. So this means only the other 90% to go! :)