I was gifted a Hero 2018 when I left my last job. I use it for recording my cycle commute because I guess my death at the hands of a homicidal taxi driver should at least be recorded.
It comes with a basic set of features. 1080p video and some simple time lapse options. Pretty barebones.
Anyway it occasionally freezes when disconnected from the charger so I went and checked if there was a firmware update and it turns out that the Hero 2018 is the previous year's high end Hero 5 Black crippled by software. Someone put together a tool to load that camera's firmware onto it and now I have a 4K camera with GPS, a wide range of time-lapse and high frame rate features, stabilisation, wind noise reduction...
This is common company strategy. IBM used to sell upgrades to their hardware that would take a technician visit to upgrade the machine. The thing was that the tech would only have to make a small change to the machine to upgrade it. Tesla does this as part of their offerings.
It's not a bad thing. As a consumer I can buy a cheaper product and not have to buy features I don't need.
People seem to forget that companies need to make a profit to stay in business. I don't care if GoPro stays or goes but it has to at least break even to stay around to produce their products.
The base cost of a Keysight Field Fox spectrum analyzer is $6k. You then enable $60k worth of licenses on it, but all the hardware is already in there. Pretty crazy.
I used to work at Keysight's spectrum analyzer R&D group. They do this to simplify their manufacturing logistics and to try to get volume production efficiencies.
The monthly volume of any one particular SKU is so low that if they didn't combine all the models together, they would essentially be custom making everything.
>The price of things is not always related to the cost of it's components.
that's besides the point entirely - we all already know that an item's price isn't just a reflection of BOM. here the point is that they're literally just inflating the price arbitrarily.
Imagine you're the CEO of a hardware company that refreshes their products every year. Last year, you overestimated the demand for your premium product and end up with thousands of extra units.
Now, you're planning to launch this year's line of products. You have a brand new premium product that's slightly better than last year's, and it's priced $50 higher. What do you do with all your extra stock of last year's premium offering? You can't sell them side-by-side, otherwise everyone will just buy last year's stuff and you'll have the same problem next year. You can't throw them away because you can't afford the losses (GoPro was trading at $8 in 2017).
So you take last year's premium product, and install some software to turn it into this year's entry-level product. You have to sell it for way less, but hey — you might break even. Consumers are content because they're getting what they expect: entry-level features at a reasonable price.
It's not necessarily evil. Perhaps it was mismanagement. Ultimately, GoPro found out that the market for action cameras isn't as big as they hoped.
It is a bit odd for a car though, you have to admit. Imagine buying an ICE car with a fuel tank that had an artificial limiter. Add 4 gallons to the tank for $x (120 miles). Would people accept that?
If the actual functionality is dependent upon Tesla’s systems, sure. Otherwise you’re just enabling a jailbreak market. There’s even precedent for this with Malone tuning.
I cannot find it, but a few years back I saw a car hack whereby you could buy a basic model car and enable some premium trim features (I think it was underbody LEDs) via CAN bus hacking - the hardware was present in the basic model car but disabled.
So yes, people do accept this even if they don't realise they're accepting it.
People will accept that. Pair it with a trendy automotive themed name that ends with the suffix 'ly' and pass it off as "a different type of car company".
Imagine you bought a Ford Focus only to find out it was a leftover GT chassis and driveline with a focus body and a crippled computer. I'd call that a fucking win.
The reality is you are getting what you want but you got a lot more, only they tried to hide it. But if you find it, hack it, their loss is now an amazing gain. It's actually a great bargain.
Dishonest in my book would be if they simultaneously sold a high and low end model which contain the exact same internals save for a few software flags and model number. That would be shitty.
edit: Most CPU's are sold this way too. Remember the Intel Celeron, what was it 300 or 333? They were crippled 450/500MHz Celerons or possibly Pentuium 3 cores which didn't make their spec so they were derated and sold as lower end. So You bought two and plugged them into the famous Abit BP6 (I had one), overclocked and got a badass dual processor machine for half the price. I think with decent fans you could push 550MHz. Powerful rig circa 2001 or so.
Imagine you bought a house from someone, went bankrupt and foreclosed, then heard from someone else that the previous owner had hardwood placed over a solid gold living room floor.
You lost the alternate life where you didn't have to pull your kid out of school and move cross country. You lost the business you could have started. Buyers of gold lost the option to purchase from you and bought from further away at a higher total cost. As CEO of the world, would you want idle resources sitting around or would you want them to be in the hands of someone who would use them? It seems like it would be best to reassign people who work in destructive roles that diminish/obscure value to more productive roles that create value.
Are they? Sure, the hardware is capable of x, but if you want to save money by having software limit it to x/2, how is that a lie? And before the "but they didn't tell me!" argument, we may care on HN, but 99% of consumers don't care whether a limit is hardware-enforced or software-enforced, and probably 80% of consumers couldn't tell the difference if they had to.
How is it disrespectful? They might be cutting features but they are also cutting the price at the same time. Savvy customers can get superior hardware for a lower price if they decide to patch the firmware themselves.
Depends on your definition of evil. IMO taking an already-produced product and spending actual resources to weaken it / rebrand it as inferior is worse for everyone as a whole overall, and looks like a really selfish move. It's a stereotypical "late-stage capitalism" meme that betrays the good parts of capitalism and its place in public opinion.
> You have a brand new premium product that's slightly better than last year's
If it's better then it will sell just fine alongside the previous generation. If it's not actually better they shouldn't have made the next generation to begin with.
I suspect a number of Garmin watches at different price points using the same chips, yet each price point has a different range of features enabled. Some are clearly artificial differences. Like my wife's watch can't "resume a run later" if she pauses it in the middle, but mine can. She either has to save the run, or listen to reminder beeps every five minutes until she starts again.
A lot of manufacturers do this. Many of the Flir thermal cameras share the same sensor and limited only by software. There are tons of hack for Rigol oscilloscopes to flash better firmware. On the recent ones, the manufacturer lets you unlock features with a software key. Tesla Model S has its battery capped by software. John Deere limits its tractors HP in software, and the list goes on.
The hardware itself is cheap. 50-80% of the price is R&D.
It's cheaper for them to only develop one hardware version and limit the features in the software, than develop multiple versions of the hardware.
Speaking as someone who bought a FLIR camera _because_ that hack made reasonable features available at a reasonable price, I think it's important to consider the market effect that such a hack, if properly managed, can have.
Corporations aren't gonna buy a camera and hack it. If a professional thermographer is telling her customers that she's using an E8, the bezel had better say E8 on it. But today's hobbyists may be tomorrow's corporations (My employer bought a C2 after I got sick of bringing in my E4/8), and brand recognition and experience have value.
And as has been said, if they have more of the high-spec units than they're selling (or the low-spec ones were a way to use up crap-binned sensors but might get good sensors too), then selling "the same" hardware cheaper might make good market sense. As long as they're not losing money on it...
I do wonder if someone might've wink-wink-nudge-nudge hinted that these units can do more than they're specced, Mike, you should tear one down... and then sales of that unit went absolutely through the roof. I know tons of people who have one now, and not a single one of us would've paid the E8 MSRP for it, and maybe only two of us would've found the E4 crap resolution useful.
Rigol took a different tack, and started simply giving away the decoders that everyone was hacking them to enable anyway.
Can anyone tell me what Rigol I should buy and to what I can turbo-charge it through firmware hacks? Is it possible to buy something entry-level (say, $500) and make it into something that I can decode Modbus messages with, and also look at the exact waveform of my house 230V electrical installation?
(these questions probably show how little I know about these things and I know how someone who doesn't know anything shouldn't be messing with electrical installations. Humor me.)
That one is probably obsolete now, but if you search around you may find that this is still possible for whatever is Rigol's current entry-level scope.
The DS1054Z is currently the cheapest, but it is a few years old. If you have the money I would buy the MSO5072 it came out last year.
Look for tests. Dave's EEVBlog is a good point to start.
And with the FLIR stuff, I think there are actual strong laws governing what happens between firmware that outputs 9fps and 30fps. It (probably) wouldn't make sense to make two different sensors with two different readout rates, you just lock it in firmware or with a laser at the die level.
Why? If that would be the case they would only sell in the higher price tier. Currently, the more expensive product covers most of the R&D of the cheaper product.
Yes, from a user perspective I would like more repairable hardware. I also see that developing hardware is hard. These things are complex and any modification could cost thousands of dollars. It's not black and white.
Most user doesn't care about repairability. I don't see a lot of people buy the Fairphone. They complain about John Deere but don't look for alternatives. They always chose the cheaper alternatives.
If we could somehow separate the development cost and the manufacturing cost, we could get super repairable hardware. Just like with OSS. If someone sponsors the development the product is great otherwise commercial software wins.
And forcing companies to make the of their firmware source code available would fix all of this.
The market will always steer everyone to the lowest common denominator and as a result fails when the externalities of pollution and e-waste are concerned.
I held the same perspective until I worked for a manufacturing company. Many of that company's products, and indeed many products throughout the world, _would not exist_ without market segmentation. Selling the same hardware with different software often makes the company more money than only having one model. In some cases, that extra money is the difference between the product, or even the company, existing or not existing.
In fairness, CPU segmentation is not just disabling working hardware. Silicon is a lottery and a many dies will be only partially working, or have worse performance than other dies, so you fuse off the bits that don't work and sell the die as a particular SKU. However, if you don't have enough defective dies for a particular low-end SKU, I assume that does result in working parts of dies being fused off.
Somewhat infamously, Intel once sold some low-end CPU models primarily to PC OEMs and then turned around and offered end-users a $50 software patch to unlock the other half of their L2 cache. Meaning that the whole cache passed QA even for the low end parts and half of it was disabled purely to prop up the price of mid-range parts.
e.g. The cost of developing and installing the full Enterprise version of Windows is the same that to develop and install the Home version. Still, Microsoft took the time and effort to create the different versions, to test them, etc.
For some reason, it seems more outrageous when it applies to hardware.
I have no answer if this is an ethical move or not. But, it seems a moral paradox that requires some extra though even if market segmentation makes monetary sense.
If you think that proprietary software should exist and that companies are free to license their software under a proprietary license, why wouldn't a "hardware company" be allowed to do the same with their firmwares?
When you buy a certain model (gopro or something else), you also buy the corresponding license. Changing the firmware to another one is probably illegal without having a proper "license" to the latter (just like you can't install Windows "Corporate Edition" on your Windows "Starter Edition" legally without paying).
Of course one can disagree that this model should exist at all, but let's not pretend it's any different from proprietary software companies, there's nothing specific to hardware companies here.
Very common in the car industry, where engine power is often limited by the ECU chip only. I know the BMW Minis did this when they were first launched (the One and the Cooper had the same engine mechanically, just with a different ECU flash). It ends up being cheaper for the manufacturer as they only have to produce castings and parts for one engine which they can product en masse, lowering unit production costs.
And Tesla does it today, many examples of this in the Model 3. Most directly, the Model 3 Long Range and the Model 3 Long Range Performance are almost entirely exactly the same car, with some firmware differences. The thing is, though, Tesla is proving this is a viable way to extract a profit from the market in the EV space (as others did before in the ICE space) so don't expect it to change. Is it morally wrong? I don't think it really is, this is the manufacturer getting the most out of the market that they can, and that helps fund the great technology those manufacturers are then providing and even allows more people to access the lower-cost versions of the product.
Reducing it to just engine power is very simplistic. Electronic fuel injection is controlled by software and that software can optimize two out three metrics at the expense of the third. Performance, efficiency and emissions. During dieselgate VW detected whether the car is being tested and simply reduced efficiency or performance to optimize emissions. This is the reason why the recall resulted in cars that perform worse than before the recall even though the engine is still the same.
Yes, many electric cars have a buffer. Not all Tesla though. That's why it's not recommended to charge a Tesla to 100% everyday while it's fine with many other brands.
But Tesla did sell a few cars with different battery capacities and exactly the same hardware. If you got the smaller capacity then you got a buffer. Tesla could unlock the buffer remotely, if you give them more money or if you need to evacuate before an incoming hurricane or similar.
Yeah I think fair to charge the customer more to access more of the total battery capacity because Tesla is now assuming more warranty risk on the battery.
Was gonna give the same example. It’s common industry practice sadly. Tesla and gopro are hardly the only two offenders. It used to be a common tactic among cpu manufacturers also.
What is the problem? You get what you paid for. A lot of costs are R&D. If they wouldn't do this they most likely wouldn't sell at this many price ranges.
It is unclear if anyone has broken through the crypto on the battery pack firmware (at least for newer cars, Model 3 and Model Y). Similar for the motor controller firmware.
Because you extract most money from the market if you have products at a range of price points. If you only have good expensive products you only get money from rich people. If you only poor cheap products you get money from everyone but not a lot. If you have both you get lots of money from rich people and some from poor people. It's called price differentiation.
The reason they make their cheap product by crippling an expensive product, is because it is cheaper to do that than to manufacture an entirely separate product.
> We can surmise that GoPro created this cheaper version of the GoPro HERO5 to reduce component inventory without having to pay pricing reimbursements to their dealers. With very little firmware changes, and a two resistor Bill of Material change, they came up with a very sneaky way to reduce inventory before the launch of the GoPro HERO6+ / GoPro HERO7 Black / GoPro HERO7 White.
Lots of good reasons. In hardware your costs go down and quality control goes up if you can re-use parts. It's better to have one circuit board for everything, and enable or disable features as needed. Sometimes this means an end customer can enable hidden features, but sometimes they are left disabled for good reason (for example, too much heat for a particular mechanical design)
Here's a secret: sometimes generic products are just repackaged name brand products. For example, my friend's business produces a generic Trader Joe brand product, the only difference between his brand and the Trader Joe brand is the packaging and the price (Trader Joes brand sells for much cheaper)
Obviously the current situation is a big factor but I can't help but wonder to what degree things like GoPros and drones are something of a fad outside of a fairly niche market.
I suspect a fair number of people buy GoPros for their association with adventure sports and, after taking video of doing a few runs down some blues at the local ski area, come to the realization that they don't in fact base jump or kayak off waterfalls.
As for drones, I've thought about them from time to time. But after taking some video around my house, I'm honestly not sure what I would do with one. They're sort of obnoxious in wilderness settings and are often banned in any case.
I bought a DJI spark last year and had a lot of fun for a few months flying it in my backyard. it got stale kinda fast though. it basically flies itself, so just flying around in a field gets boring. on the other hand, at $400, it was a little too expensive for me to feel comfortable trying any daring shots with it. I made some cool aerial panoramas, but the camera isn't really good enough to make anything worth sharing. if you want to get decent pictures, you have to spring for one of the $1200 models, which are still only about as good as a high-end smartphone camera.
I did find one killer use-case for it though: cleaning gutters. the house I was living in at the time was designed in a way that made cleaning gutters very dangerous. I used the drone to see which parts actually needed cleaning, then my roommate would clear them using a long pole with a hook while looking at the camera feed. awkward, but much safer.
>as part of the regulations they banned all alcohol sales
For my curiosity, would you mind sharing where this is? It contrasts with my experience in the US, where I know a few states made it easier to sell alcohol.
I can't imagine trying to get through this quarantine without at least some booze, and I rarely drink. How are they handling all the bonafide alcoholics that would go into DTs with this?
Having lived in Africa for 2 years (not SA though), I guarantee that the reason for the ban is for the government to profit off of bribes. Whenever something doesn't make any sense in Africa, the answer is always the same: bribes.
Wow that's crazy. In Seattle liquor stores, breweries (take-away only), beer bottle shops, and marijuana stores are all included under the "essential" exemption. I can't imagine the upheaval we'd have if the government had shut them.
The northern counties of West Virginia have also issued a prohibition order for all non-residents, so that only West Virginians can purchase alcohol because apparently there have been hundreds of cases of Pennsylvanians crossing the border just to buy alcohol.
Some find this order reasonable, but most in WV find this irresponsible of both WV and PA since alcoholics cutting cold turkey can be hospitalized for their withdrawal symptoms.
involves a lot of trust, too. I imagine the customer has to detach the shipment by hand. a drone capable of delivering a fifth of liquor must be worth at least $1-2k. considering the whole operation is likely illegal for several reasons, I doubt the owner would have much recourse if someone just stole it.
The problem I ran into wasn't a lack of things to do with my drone, but a lack of places in which to do them. It's really hard to find places that are worth shooting that also allow drones. that said you can get away with doing it anyway, since most rules are based around not being a dick so if you don't bother people nobody will say anything, but it still sucks you're technically breaking rules/laws.
if you're just worried about actually getting caught, any isolated place will do. if you care about following the law strictly, it can be nontrivial to figure out what's allowed. there are federal, state, and local rules about where drones can be flown, and they are sometimes written in weird ways.
as an example:
> Launching, landing, or operating an unmanned aircraft from or on lands and waters administered by the National Park Service within the boundaries of [insert name of park] is prohibited except as approved in writing by the superintendent.
depending on how you interpret "operating", it might be legal to launch your drone just outside the park limits, stand there with the controller, and then fly it all over the park to your heart's content (provided you land it back outside the park). if an official actually saw you doing this, they might hassle you without regard for the nuance of the law.
NPS rangers tend to be fairly proddy, in my experience. Before all this started, I spent a fair amount of time photographing birds in national parks with a 200-500mm tele, and I've found it rare to encounter a ranger who doesn't remind me that commercial photography is forbidden there, on the assumption - in my case at least, the false assumption - that anyone with kit like mine must be a professional.
My use case for a drone would be to look at the surrounding area when I am doing off trail hiking or on old abandoned trails. Is it worth to go through the thick brush and the trail continues or will it just get worse? I have been thinking about getting a Mavic Mini for this but these things never go on sale.
One time I was traveling along a particular trail which started to get very, very rough. Not 100 feet away was a parallel trail which was well travelled. It would have been impossible to see without the drone.
depending how far ahead you want to look, you might be able to get away with a spark for this use case. you can find good deals on the first generation at this point, and the new one isn't too expensive anyway.
if you care about following all the FAA rules, this may limit the usefulness of a "scouting" drone, as you need to be able to see the aircraft with your own eyes at all times. if you're in a wooded area, this might not be very far.
I wouldn’t mind something that has less image quality and a range of only 1000m but is smaller and weighs less. The Spark is a little big for a long hike.
I misspoke before; there's no new spark. I was thinking about the mavic mini at the same price point (which you mentioned). it weighs about 250g. any lighter than this and you're probably looking at toys that can't fly any appreciable distance.
Spark is already affected by winds and actual usage on a forest plus winds can get you that range of 1000m, anything smaller will not have the endurance for real life usage.
I remember going snowboarding with a go pro. We were so excited to see the footage. The guy in the Chalet even offered to put it on the big screen so everyone could see. What followed was about 30 minutes of embarrassing slow and inordinately dull snowboarding. The jumps that seemed high were barely off the ground. The speed that seemed potentially deadly was a snails pace.
Recording yourself doing sport only makes sense if you are really good!
Making appealing video requires thought, knowledge of lighting and how cameras work, and creativity. "Just strap on a camera and go" is definitely not the way to do it, people make amazing videos with mediocre skill in the thing they're doing.
It's like any other complex tool, garbage in garbage out.
My best clip [0] is fastening the GoPro to a clothes hanger where I removed the middle pin, and added some cardboard on one side to make it not wobble. Then some fishing line and spinning it around my head while skiing. At 0:09 the shadow of the contraption can be seen.
I think a 5 minutes clip of a climb that obviously took several hours proves GP's point. No one would watch raw garbage captured by their GoPros, you need heavy editing and a catchy soundtrack.
If daft punk had been staying in the chalet with us and offered to put their next unreleased album up next to our snowboard footage, I still don’t think anyone would have stayed to watch it.
I bought a GoPro Hero something for a long remote hiking trip. The durability and self-steadying was just amazing. Using the app to take selfies or wide shots of scenery was shockingly flawless.
Then, I started mounting it to my dirt bike helmet, just for video evidence if I were to wreck and die. What I didn't realize was just how painfully slow it feels to watch a video of me (barely an amateur rider) on a track. The silver lining being, watching that video has helped me improve quite a bit.
I think the wide-angle lens contributes a lot to this effect. I found that tree skiing was the best way to get a sense of speed with these cameras.
My problem with GoPro was that it became apparent that they relied on a yearly upgrade cycle. I'm willing to do that for an iPhone that I use daily, but not a camera that I use a few weekends a year. After they released a 1080p camera and the remote that let you operate the camera without constantly removing your helmet, I stopped upgrading. I occasionally watch their product launch videos but I just don't want to spend any more on this product space. I think the image stabilization has potential, but the 3D / 360' camera is a gimmick until there are better ways to consume and edit that content.
Another big problem out on the slopes is that phone batteries drain quickly in the cold and operating phones with gloves on is still a chore. Any app-based improvements that GoPro has introduced feel like a non-starter to me in many of the environments that GoPro is useful.
Reminds me of me learning surfing and taking videos. Finally got to surf a wave without falling, felt like a hero. Then I saw the video and realized the wave was at max 20cm :(
The cyclist/dashcam market is pretty big. I see plenty of cyclists with a helmet-mounted camera, to protect themselves against lawsuits and dangerous drivers, and I see plenty of drivers with dashboard-mounted cameras, to protect themselves against lawsuits and dangerous cyclists.
GoPros make terrible dashmount cameras since they lack important features like automatic saves when a crash occurs. My older GoPros also had really useless implementations of rolling recording (I'm not sure if that's fixed on the current models, but it wouldn't clean up the rolling recording from previous sessions).
They are great for bicyclists and motorcyclists who need a camera that will survive a direct impact with the ground.
Yes. For car/motorcycle, I also want external power (not all gopros have it) and a setting to start recording on powerup, so it's always on when the vehicle is powered. Plus overwrite mode, save current clip if crash, save if "i like this" button is pushed, etc.
I feel like they have all the tech components to offer a dash product with minimal work.
This is exactly their strategy, and it works to some extent. Their aspirational marketing works quite well. The people acquiring their product are aspiring to be outdoorsy, fit, and adventurous.
I bought a GoPro several years back as well, after using it on one of my camping trips and a trip to a water park with the kids, I realized I don't really have the kind of adventurous, outdoorsy life I was aspiring to. The GoPro sits in a drawer.
You actually have to be pursuing activities that you think are worth capturing on a GoPro or a drone, and then you have to have an interest in capturing/editing those pursuits.
Longer term, there is a legitimate niche for their products. It is the intersection of people interested (personally or professionally) in photography/videography who have adventurous/outdoorsy pursuits and hobbies. Whether that niche is large enough to support a company of their size (and their competitors) is still an open question.
For me, the aspiration to own a GoPro was to capture footage in wet / water conditions. With an iP68 rating for the iPhone to makes sense for light use-cases, an iPhone is sufficient for me.
1. I think the underlying problem has been the lack of innovation from GoPro. I find that while the number of cameras in our daily life has increased, the use-case for something like a GoPro is marginal at best. Apple and other vendors have done an excellent job of improving camera technology on the iphone11 that today, I no longer carry a GoPro or even an SLR camera on holidays.
2. Another amazing shenanigan from GoPro was their accessories business. When I got my only go-pro in 2014, it required me to spend another $200-300 on some really basic accessories like an LCD screen. It just felt like the company added barriers that stopped you from actually using the product.
2a. Minor nitpick - Their packaging in 2015 was a piece of work. It took me forever to get it unpacked and even get hold of the device.
3. Mgmt focus - I live in San Mateo and the stink of constant GoPro layoffs made it an undesirable company to even consider working for. The people I knew that worked there all quickly bailed and went to work for Google or Apple. It also didn't help that I only remembered about my GoPro when I saw Mr Woodman show-up on Shark-Tank. I just felt he didn't focus on a struggling company and wanted to find other things to do.
1. They have added some newer models that are interesting, like the 360 one they just released that actually has a screen which I guess is also 2.
They're priced way out of the budget of idle curiosity for me though. Sure 500 dollars isn't a lot for a camera, but it's way out of the range for something I"m going to goof around with.
I bought a GoPro several years back as well, after using it on one of my camping trips and a trip to a water park with the kids, I realized I don't really have the kind of adventurous, outdoorsy life I was aspiring to. The GoPro sits in a drawer.
Hey, I have that adventurous, outdoorsy life life! Wanna send that GoPro over? I'll make sure it's properly utilized ;)
Kind of like those annoying watch commercials showing everyone free climbing when in reality your adventure watch is only going to be telling you how late the 4:18 BART is.
To add to this, even if you enjoy adventure sports, filming them can be a pain. A friend of mine was working on getting sponsored as a rock climber and did a lot of filming with his GoPro. Getting decent shots takes a lot of time and effort, which really cuts down on the actual climbing you get to do each day.
I've taken lots of videos on the racetrack in my car, go-karting, snowboarding, motorcycle riding, scuba diving....
In addition to many of the things noted here (looks slow as hell due to wide-angle lens and the fact that you are, also, slow as hell)... the video editing is just a nightmare.
It's easy to capture a couple hours of footage of your hobby, but unless you ALSO have the hobby of WATCHING a couple hours of something you already did, the value is just not there.
I've watched almost none of the videos I've shot. Also, I'm still able to use my ancient Hero2. I thought of buying a newer model to get the "latest and greatest" as an impulse buy once; I can afford it, that's fine. I looked up a product matrix of the Session, Hero 5, Hero 6, black, silver, whatever products were available at the time. I just stared at the product matrix for awhile, gave up, and closed the browser window.
Honestly, if their product line had less overlap or fewer products or just.. made it easier to decide camera to buy, they'd have another $400 of my money.
shrug
They keep improving their products, but there are no real innovations or killer reasons to buy some new model. And they all basically work good enough.
Yes, after getting one for skiing, I realized that helmet cam footage only looks awesome if you are dropping off a cliff. Even at steep pitches the perspective on the footage looks like you're on almost flat terrain. It takes real time and care to get usable shots out of the things. I've made a short ski edit for a club before and the amount of effort that goes into producing something mildly entertaining to watch is insane.
Drones and helmet cams actually seem like they have pretty niche applications when an iPhone will do great for 95% of people, 95% of the time. The need for that particular lens and shot just isn't usually called for in whatever you're trying to create.
Something about them in my experience makes it feel like you're not going as fast. I ride an electric skateboard and helmet cam footage makes it feel like I'm just walking when I'm approaching 20 mph. I guess that's why they normally use a ton of angles on most of these things.
If gaming has taught me anything, it's that a wide field of view makes it appear that you're moving much faster. I found a simple video showing a person walking the same path with three different fields of view.
The 120 degree FOV makes it seem like they're sprinting while the 40 degree FOV looks like a slow walk in comparison. Also pay attention to the little box the person walks past halfway through the below video. Imagine you're skateboarding and that is a parked car. The difference in speed and perceived danger is huge.
Great theory (and love the reference mp4!) but I suspect it's not fov. GoPros have a fish eye'd lens on them, and a high field of view.
I think you are on to something with the amount of stimulus though. I ride a One Wheel which... has one wheel, and the nearer I get to top speed the less speed it has to balance me.
The sensation is different. The wind is blowing harder on my face, I have to scan and process each ridge and change in the road, my balance is different, is that car opening it's door? is it going to turn, that drain cover is bad need to lean to avoid it, car behind me can't go left, does my front foot have too much force, intersection coming up slow down, speed up no cars, turn signal are they going to cut my lane... etc.
Meanwhile if I'm sitting in a car, well... 20mph is nothing, I'd barely notice it. The wind sensation is gone, I'll go straight if I don't touch anything, people respect my area since I weigh 2000 plus pounds.
The perspective is different, the level of sensation is different. It's similar how a go kart feels a lot different then a car in regards to speed despite the fact both are four wheeled motorized vehicles.
Ugh, yeah that's the other strange effect. There's absolutely no sense of speed captured. Maybe due to lack of nearby reference points and no depth perception even though it's POV? The footage is positively boring.
I suspect part of it that like... contextless footage is boring. I'm going to paraphrase Casey Neistat here:
"No one gives a fuck about my time lapses or drone shots"
Who cares about the random video you took down a mountain, it's fun in the moment and no one can take that away from you. To an external observer though, why should that be interesting?
The lack of speed is one thing, the lack of context is another. They don't know about the ice patch you're watching out for, the sensation you get when you hit the powder just right, or even that you are going 10% faster then normal (sorry I'm a blue square skier and don't really know what goes through the head of people who are actually good).
I literally do kayak off waterfalls and while some in the group will have a GoPro or similar generic camera, they just aren't that good for documenting a trip. Someone bringing their phone in a dry box and getting setup on the side of the river usually provides better footage and a better angle than having the camera on my helmet. I just don't see them that often except for the professionals who post on Instagram all the time.
People told me I was crazy when I said GoPro was going to be killed by cell phones. "No one would risk their iPhone". Except prior gen iPhones are pretty cheap now, cases have become very good, and the abilities far surpass the GoPro. Plus, someone can shoot, edit, and upload all from the same device.
If you scuba dive, there's no option even close to GoPro for the combination of accessories, price, stabilization (the iPhone is still not quite there, and the old ones are totally useless), video quality, and access to the controls under water. It shoots in a flat color profile, which the iPhone still doesn't, so grading color is super easy.
Editing and uploading from a phone is nice, but it stays on the boat when you drop in.
I totally disagree. The Kraken diving case is exceptional. I did 20+ dives with it in Micronesia this year and the photos are about as good as anyone is going to get without a DSLR. In fact, I was more limited by my lighting than by the camera.
It's also huge to have a screen as big as the phone's, and being able to slip the whole rig into my thigh pocket meant I took it on every dive, not just camera specific ones. I can't imagine a better setup for me.
Edit: You mentioned video. The Paralenz is a much better diving camera than a GoPro. It has a tubular form factor, making it easy to attach to a mask strap. It also is natively pressure resistant and can add depth numbers to your video, GoPros require a case. Here's a dive filmed with my Paralenz: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MEynCKlhk
The kraken case costs as much as a GoPro, iPhone stabilization isn't as good as GoPro stabilization, if you want GoPro-like wide angle shots you need to pair that case with a $1000+ phone. You're also limited to the capacity of your phone since essentially no phone has removable storage. Ditto battery, although with USB PD that's less of a problem. iPhones also don't shoot log color profile, so color correction is painful for video.
The paralenz can't shoot high frame rate, so slo-mo looks choppy and requires serious post processing. It's stabilization is a joke compared to the GoPro, it doesn't shoot flat color so color grading is painful, it has no screen for checking your framing, and it costs roughly twice as much.
Edit: the quality of the glass in the paralenz is also pretty painful, the vignetting in that video and dynamic range are pretty unfortunate.
Yes, there are people who do point-and-shoot photography with all kinds of equipment that they don't actually need. The iPhone also ̶c̶a̶n̶n̶i̶b̶a̶l̶i̶z̶e̶d̶ absorbed some of the DSLR market from point-and-shoot photographers who don't actually need DLSRs.
That doesn't mean that niche markets aren't real. It it not going to make any sense to mount an iPhone to my helmet any time soon.
There was a period when there were a lot of people buying DSLRs with the kit zoom lens, putting it on automatic, and snapping away. Maybe there was a period when this made some sense because of sensor size but it really doesn't today.
I've been doing photography semi-seriously for a long time and have a couple different camera systems (DSLR and mirrorless) and, to be honest, if I'm on a trip where I know I'm mostly just shooting casually I'll often just bring my phone.
I think the main thing people underestimate in general is the amount of setup you need to capture something interesting and the amount of editing afterwards you need to turn it into something that actually holds peoples attention.
I enjoyed doing it for a bit with backcountry skiing but kids meant reduced trips and no real energy to sit down and edit.
As another ww kayker, I like the helmet cam view for reviewing my technique/seeing rapids from first person. The video usually isn't sexy, and you need to remember that everything is way bigge irl, buy I've found some videos helpful.
Carnage videos of people swimming can also be fun/terrifying to watch from their pov.
Another component to the disappointment with GoPros is that the camera perspective and flattening reduces the dramatic impact of what may have in fact been a challenging endeavor.
I've seen footage of hard mountain bike trails and class V kayak runs that I have done, and also seen non-first-person footage of the same drops, and it's pretty impressive how much the GoPro footage makes a 25 foot waterfall seem inconsequential relative to a 3rd person perspective (i.e. someone on the bank).
I wonder if having a stereoscopic camera could improve this situation. I pay no attention to VR or whatever so I don't know if this is the venue in which stereoscopic/3D movies would be viewed but it could be cool. Harder to share I suppose, and if your goal is to impress others on social media then it probably wouldn't work unless people start bringing those helmets to look at their phones while they poop.
Drones have a lot of commercial uses and most of them havent even past their formative stages. From inspecting power lines (which most municipalities mandate every year) to mapping properties and utilities to eventual deliveries of goods, if another consumer drone was never sold I would still be bullish on the drone industry.
Kayak fishing is the same. Either you need 3-5 cameras covering all angles or it’s not very dramatic. Most of the time it’s videos of me fumbling with my gear until my battery runs out.
When I did some white water kayaking and rafting my camera would have water spots or a terrible angle.
I bought a GoPro after sticking my old cellphone inside a running CNC machine to get video of the milling process. It was all well and good until the cutter started heating up and we decided we needed to turn on flood coolant after all. Phone's not waterproof, so that was the end of that.
When you start pondering the optical clarity of Tupperware, perhaps it's time to just buy a proper camera. So I did.
Since then, it's been stuck to CNC machines, laser cutters, car bumpers, car wheelwells, car suspensions, toy cars, Power Wheels cars, drones, rockets, and kites. It's been nestled into the sand between the launcher tubes of a fireworks show. It's produced documentation of countless projects, produced a record of machine assembly in case of warranty problems, and taken timelapses of packing and moving several houses and offices. I've used the wifi viewfinder as a "periscope" to keep an eye on the birthday boy's arrival for a surprise party. I'm about to buy my fourth battery for it, because those do wear out.
People who buy a camera and let it gather dust lack imagination.
GoPros are a fad or niche market, only because they market it that way. Even if you're not doing anything "extreme" it's really nice to have a running video of even the most mundane canoeing trip just to get still pictures and laugh at those people who kept flipping their canoe. It's the least interrupting way to record an event.
I'm surprised GoPro hasn't formed partnerships for success in other markets. High school sports, and even younger, are often filming competitions and performing automated or manual analysis to rank players and provide feedback. Schools and Boosters are paying crazy amounts of money for these services, but it could be so much better aggregating videos of ~10 mounted GoPros together to get "on the field" perspectives. Then there's the whole professional sports media market. People LOVE hearing audio from NFL quarterbacks, imagine a first person view.
> Then there's the whole professional sports media market.
GoPro have made some efforts in that area - including employees working on special products for the professional broadcast market, "a partnership to enable GoPro HERO4 cameras with a professional grade, live, HD wireless broadcast solution" [1] and a partnership with the NHL [2] with the players wearing helmet cams.
They laid off the people working on it internally and it's gone from their product pages (although you can still buy a kit... for $7,500 [3]) so I'm guessing they didn't find the market as lucrative as they'd hoped.
Youtubers and other content creators use it, and buy up a lot of the ancillaries equipment (microphone, lights etc).
I've bumped tons of fellow travelers that use them just for raw convenience when making travel videos. I.e. I don't just use it that one time a year I snowboard, it also comes with me to the beach, when I try kayaking, trying to get cool sakura shots, etc.
Then there's bicyclists and motorcyclists (again, me) that use it as a "dash cam."
Thing is I'm all of the above... and I'll probably never buy another gopro. I have a gopro. It works extremely well. Best in class. The only time I'll buy another is if I lose this one or it breaks. Sometimes I buy batteries and the like but those are maybe 30, 40 bucks. And I have no interest in their moonshot cloud whatever bullshit. So I'm not sure how businesses like that continue to make money.
Every year you get millions of new customers who start adventuring for the first time. Things also get lost or break etc so it seems to be a viable long term business.
This is common for durable goods. You get a spike of initial sales and steady stream after that, the difference is microwaves spiked decades ago and GoPros’s peaked more recently.
This is a good point, and the new accessories that make GoPro 8 so much better for content creators just landed at the same time as the coronavirus, so that's unfortunate timing from a business standpoint.
This is probably not what GoPro execs had in mind but I find GoPro is perfect camera for my 2 years old. I know there are cheaper rugged water-proof cameras that would work just as well for kids but I already got GoPro.
I bought GoPro thinking that I'll use it for my "adventures", however, it is mostly unused at home. So we just let our son play with it.
However, on travels, we really love having GoPro with us as it is small enough, and easier to use than phones. With phones, if we are out all day, we are a bit worried about battery life. We also have a bigger camera, X100F, but that is a bit too big to carry all the time on a vacation. So we leave it in the hotel unless we plan to do a photography. So most of our vacation photos and videos are evenly split between GoPro and phone cameras.
Sometimes he pretends like he is taking photos or making videos. He also chases our dog as if he is recording him. He probably learned that from us as that's how we use it. Sometimes, he may use camera as a toy car or a block.
The button is too hard for him to push but that's where voice commands come in. I can say "GoPro take a photo" while he is holding it. We have captured some fun shots like this.
> Obviously the current situation is a big factor but I can't help but wonder to what degree things like GoPros and drones are something of a fad outside of a fairly niche market.
I see these comments a lot here but... what exactly is wrong with companies that cater to highly specialized niche markets? E.g. your Hegels, Ferraris, Tag Heuers, etc.? Companies that specialize to fit some people exactly as opposed to mass appeal companies that make products that try to appeal to everyone but then slightly suck for everyone as well?
I dont think there's anything wrong with companies that cater to highly specialized niche markets.
I think the reason people knock on GoPro is because they raised VC money and went to market. By taking on VC, they signaled (imo) that there was a huge market opportunity ($XXB) for them beyond a highly specialized niche market.
Absolutely nothing. But GoPro obviously had much larger ambitions than being an action camera for people who jump off cliffs even though they used that tie-in to try to pull is a larger audience.
Climbing equipment is relatively niche as well. But manufacturers don't really try to pull in a broader audience. (Though climbing gyms do, in part, aim for casual climbers.)
Many of the companies that are in focus here have simply grown too big to be sustainable in the niche they cater for, either through aggressive funding or by riding a finite hype wave (e.g. Gopro, no idea if they also suffer from overfunding)
These Americans you witness see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires looking for moonshots to catch their big break which will never come.
The drones have always felt like a quixotic adventure for GoPro that seemed like a weird distraction for other product improvements.
I don't even think that GoPro should be classified as part of the adventure usage category anymore, as most of the GoPro usage I have seen has more to do with the fact that it's a compact camera that's relatively durable or sacrificial depending on your application. What I've been seeing over the last few years is that GoPro cameras are less handy than a smartphones whose recording capabilities just keep enhancing from the last few generations of improvements seemingly primarily focused on that, especially as more people have been streaming video directly to viewers from their phone compared to a recording, edit, and then upload workflow. A few years ago I felt like I saw GoPro's being used for most of the content in a particular edited video but nowadays I see them used for one or two shots where the camera was more at risk. If anything I just see them getting pushed from mass appeal to a niche compact camera market because there's just better competition in this space and the middle to high end of the GoPro line competes with some of the entry level/second hand Canon and Nikon cameras for recording video and unless you have those space and durability requirements in the niche where GoPro shines.
I think they can have their place in vlogging and doing small scale productions as well, where ruggedness>flexibility. though that's obviously a very small market.
I see drones and gopros following the same adoption arc as DSLRs. The DSLR market size definitely peaked a long time ago but there's enough professionals and enthusiasts who use them that it's a healthy market that's not going anywhere and they are going to be a tool in the toolbox of anyone who creates visual media for the foreseeable future. Drones and gopros seem to fit the same mold because they enable people who want to create visual media (and other people who need the equivalent capability) to do things that you formerly needed a helicopter to do. I don't see those people giving up that capability anytime soon so while the market may shrink, especially for consumer oriented devices, it will be around for the foreseeable future.
My two cents: I own one and bring it to family gatherings to record family. It’s small and non threatening and people don’t react defensively the same way they do with iPhones. I also take iPhone pictures and video but I like the video I get from the GoPro also.
I’ve also carried it with me when documenting something like going for a walk in my daily spot and going to mundane places. I usually do this before I move to a new place to capture those simple things I want to remember about the old one.
Again no one reacts the same way as if you’re walking towards them holding a phone in the record position and I like the video I get from it.
But I also used it on a hiking trip to big bend and it was nice to capture the hike passively and enjoy it without feeling the need to constantly stop and take pictures.
As a full-time skydiver & coach, I would say that's exactly who needs a GoPro the most. When we jump everybody wears at least one camera and often someone jumps outside to get a better angle. The video is not taken to capture an epic moment, it's to review and improve. After every jump the group breaks down every part of the skydive and tries to take a lesson from it.
I have to wade through thousands of videos before I find something interesting enough to post online, but each of those videos has value. The worse the performance the higher the value.
On of the appeal of a GoPro is the simplicity and ruggedness.
When planning to go on vacation for instance, a GoPro is ideal for kids to shoot whatever they want without having to borrow parent's phone/camera or some expensive point and shoot.
Same for people playing Pokemon GO, a super small side camera that is completely point and shoot, can take some rough handling and is mostly weather proof is ideal.
One place they haven’t expanded that I know of which may be a nice potential market is vehicle insurance fraud cams (dash cams).
This fraud isn’t big enough in the US, but maybe if they market it the right way or get the OEMs to install at the factory even better.
Otherwise the will end up like the Cisco flip cameras... a nice niche that can live on if managed well but not going to grow big and should be private.
The main buyers of such products are bored people "without a life" and with a sizeable discretionary income. It's a way to relieve boredom in the short term - capture a few videos, spend a few hours editing them, share them, get bored again and forget the thing in some drawer. Call it unsustainable techno consumerism if you like.
1. On the face of it, their main products in 2020 (i.e. action cameras) are barely innovative, and seem to have nothing to attract and lock customers in other than brand recognition built on expensive marketing campaigns. Essentially, they're selling commodity equipment at a large mark-up. Why haven't they been totally displaced by a manufacturer with a cheaper clone, also offering a good enough brand and ecosystem to compete?
2. Where they have innovated, they've hugely missed the target. In particular, their drone release was just an awful, awful misjudgement. Not just because it fell out of the sky. Not just because it came out at the same time as a superior competitor from DJI. But because it totally missed that GoPro is/was seen as a provider of action cameras - things that can be started and then forgotten about as they record your activities. They released a fairly generic drone, which required constant operator interaction. Had they released a drone with a tether, which could be started and then forgotten about as you ride your MTB, or your snowboard, they'd have likely had a hit, aligned with their brand identity (assuming it didn't drop out of the sky).
> 1. On the face of it, their main products in 2020 (i.e. action cameras) are barely innovative, and seem to have nothing to attract and lock customers in other than brand recognition built on expensive marketing campaigns. Essentially, they're selling commodity equipment at a large mark-up. Why haven't they been totally displaced by a manufacturer with a cheaper clone, also offering a good enough brand and ecosystem to compete?
I think they were selling shovels during a gold rush.
With the popularity of YouTube growing, the demand from everyday people for better cameras and so-called "action cameras" increased significantly. It should have been pretty easy to see what would be profitable.
They were also taking advantage of the fact that most cameras are complicated, that most established camera manufacturers are slow to change and have a hard time valuing simplicity, and that the idea of an "action camera" was a new concept to average people. Having a relatively small product line also made it clear to people what they were about; it also made their products easily identifiable with their brand. Why buy an action camera from a company that makes a bunch of different things, when the action camera is what GoPro does?
To sum that up, I think they appeared on the scene at the right time and existing camera brands were too slow(at least for a while) and had poor marketing.
> 2. Where they have innovated, they've hugely missed the target. In particular, their drone release was just an awful, awful misjudgement.
>camera manufacturers are slow to change and have a hard time valuing simplicity
I would never use simplicity and GoPro in the same sentence. At last the model I played with a while back had an absolutely terrible user interface which made it really hard to sure it was on if it was mounted on a helmet.
Funny you should say that because, compared to every other digital camera I've used, GoPros were pretty easy to use. But it's been many years since I've used one.
I'm disappointed with the Hero 8 Black. I prefer my old Garmin Virb XE.
I guess this isn't all "ease of use" stuff, but I do think it's all more generally usability:
- The Virb XE has a much easier to find and actuate record switch (physical moving switch); the position of the switch will tell you if you're recording or not if you can't see the camera.
- The Virb XE waterproofing isn't compromized by connecting it to power; the GoPro battery door has to be removed/opened to connect to power.
- The GoPro won't let you connect a bluetooth headset/microphone, so you can't connect a mic and keep waterproofing.
> Why haven't they been totally displaced by a manufacturer with a cheaper clone, also offering a good enough brand and ecosystem to compete?
I looked into this recently because I wanted a handlebar cam for bike touring. The answer is that the competition is, by and large, not good enough. It fails on the obvious stuff: resolution, battery life, ruggedness, UI, software support. There are plenty of action cams that do one or two of those well, but no one except GoPro ticks all the boxes.
I honestly wasn't expecting to buy a GoPro when I started researching - especially because my main interest is timelapse rather than video. But after days looking into it, that's the conclusion I came to.
And the image stabilization, which is head and shoulders above anything else not mounted to a gimble. You can make mountain bike videos that look like the camera was mounted on a slider.
> On the face of it, their main products in 2020 (i.e. action cameras) are barely innovative
The built-in software image stabilization on the Hero 7 Black is absolutely incredible. There simply isn't a competitor in the space that even comes close.
I've owned a HeroHD, a Hero4, and now a Hero7 Black. I have recorded countless dirt bike rides, mountain biking, downhill mountain biking ie. stuff that is incredibly bumpy, and with the onboard stabilization it looks like a walk through the park with the 7 Black. I thought it had peaked when I got the Hero4, but the 7 Black is just insane.
Prior to the 7 Black I would have agreed with your original comment. For a few years, each iteration was essentially "we can record bigger and with higher fps. Also the battery life is a little bit better". 7 Black changed my mind.
It sounds like you're not very familiar with their core offerings (action cameras). They're much more than just a rebranded and marked up generic.
I fly racing/freestyle drones, and in this space action cams get broken a lot. Yet everyone is still strapping GoPros onto them anyway. This is because if you care about image quality in the action cam form factor there is no substitute. The image quality coming from a GoPro is leagues above anything else in the space. They have no real competitors that even remotely touch their quality/size ratio. About once a year a competitor comes along and everyone rejoices 'yay finally a GoPro alternative' and then its a major flop because it just isn't comparable. Their new cameras have excellent stabilization built in as well, setting them even further away from the pack.
They ran out of money, blew too much on marketing/brand trying to emulate GoPro’s model. There were other business issues, but that’s the gist of it.
At the time, their hardware was only 6 mos. behind GoPro and the software was much better. But I’m biased because, full disclosure, I used to work there.
The latest GoPro's have incredible image stabilisation, I mean incredible. Enough so that vloggers and extreme sports people don't need to use separate gimbals anymore. The imagine stabilization is absolutely innovative and crushes the rest of the market.
regarding 2), I'm pretty sure that's not legal unless you can make an extremely light drone. FAA rules require line-of-sight for the operator at all times.
yes, I have the original spark. the follow-me works surprisingly well, but not to the point where I would be comfortable not paying close attention to the drone.
IANAL either, but the rules are quite clear that the operator must maintain line-of-sight at all times. I don't think this is satisfied by having the drone in your peripheral vision (or behind you) while you pay attention to something else. lots of consumer drones have capabilities that could not be legally used by a hobbyist in most jurisdictions. even a spark can be controlled over greater distances than you could conceivably maintain LOS over.
to be clear, I mean legal for the operator. I don't think it is (yet) illegal to sell drones that hobbyists can do illegal things with. I suspect that a lot of the demand for hobbyist-level drones comes from people who don't intend to follow the rules. I've stopped flying mine because I can't think of anything fun to do that doesn't break the rules.
I don't think fashion headphones meant to be worn frequently compare well with an action camera that has limited branding on it which is meant to be used when you're already doing something cool
There's a lot of negative comments here, so let me add my positive experience. I love my GoPro. I started with a "Hero3+" and have upgraded twice. I now have a Hero7 that I use a few times a week. I took five different GoPros on a rafting trip down the grand canyon and came out with some great footage.
The advantage of GoPros from the beginning is that they're a small durable camera that takes good footage. With the image stabilization that they have now, you can get smooth footage even when you're mountain biking down a rough trail.
The downsides are: they take a while to get used to using (although the newer ones have a much better interface), and you have to spend time editing the videos before sharing them. Also, it turns out a lot of what we do is pretty boring.
As to why no other camera manufacturer has taken the market from GoPro, it turns out it's hard to build a compact camera that's durable and produces good footage. The $150 knockoffs just don't have the same quality or durability. I still see a bunch of them on the slopes though (particularly on kids, which makes sense).
Still, it's a limited market, and phones have gotten better (and waterproof), so people don't feel like they need a dedicated camera, so it's going to suffer the same that most of the camera industry does.
Second that. I've taken excellent videos freediving with a GoPro HERO7. It is color corrected for underwater lighting and waterproof down to 10 meters/33 feet.
GoPro has been struggling for a while but like a lot of companies they will likely use the present situation as cover to make some changes.
It’s a lot easier for executives to say “there was this terrible Coronavirus thing that forced us to downsize” vs “the business strategy I was in charge of wasn’t performing well and we have to downsize.” That’s happening a lot at the moment.
This! Exactly this was done already in 2008 crisis and it is just so weak and simple for management to blame anything else than themselves.
For me I think we moved toward of a more connected society in feedback we give on companies. A company that would let me go with such a ridiculous argument I would not join or give a very bad review online... and more and more I will join companies that treat their employees good. After corona - people will jump and consider companies that treated their employees right in crisis time...
I'm an owner of a GoPro and also of a nice digital camera (Sony Alpha 6000) and have done a decent deal of photography, so maybe I can comment on the appeal of GoPro: the interface and software on their device is excellent (far better than my Sony), and their app to interact with the camera is also excellent (far better than the barely functional one for my Sony), the form factor and built in smoothing makes it great for documenting outdoors stuff, AND their app has an excellent do-most-of-the-work for you video editor. For doing videos of hikes, vacations, etc (see eg this example https://drive.google.com/open?id=1E7a5-yH01JCxJcf1-35YiRAcOH...) it's really a game changer, so I quite like it. But of course it's only really useful for people who like making videos in the first place.
I'm not 100% sure, but in this context I think he means direct to consumer sales. Woodman might be trying to pitch it as a way to keep customers happy, but I have a hard time believing that anyone had an issue buying a GoPro at BestBuy or REI. It's pretty clear that this is just a way for GoPro to make bigger profits by taking profits from the full retail price, rather than only taking profits from the wholesale price.
He might also be alluding to their subscription services, which make money for GoPro after a cameara sale, but that wasn't mentioned in the article. And honestly, they are doomed if they rely on their subscription services at all, because they suck. Anyone that wants to edit and share their videos is better served by other tools, and I don't think they make much money from subscriptions.
"My head has been stuck up our company monoculture so long that I can no longer communicate effectively with normal people outside their group of yes-men."
I would guess their risk is similar to travel & sports industry's, they are mostly dependent on people being outdoors and recording things, you would probably use your phone or camera to record in doors.
I bought a GoPro Hero 8 a month ago, and for what it is, it works well enough. But I've been really disappointed in GoPro's attitude towards openness. They've locked down the USB port, WiFi and the OS pretty much completely.
I think this is the type of company that would really benefit from an excited and engaged hacker community. The GoPro could be a camera-centric IoT device, used for a ton of things from webcams to 3D imaging to a bunch more. But there's no support at all for developers.
It seems like they were going in that direction early on, then changed their strategy and killed their SDK and dev program. It's too bad. This will definitely be my last GoPro as a result.
Before buying Hero 7, I watched a lot of reviews and tried to decide between older but still powerful Sony action camera. The quality was great, but sometimes GoPro decided to freeze. It is very annoying to find that your camera stopped recording 20 minutes ago. I thought that my model might be just a bit faulty.
Then comes the GoPro 8, and the improvement noted by few tech reviewers was that it no longer freezes. Totally destroyed any trust in reviewers I had left. No one told a thing about freezes in Hero 7.
Back when gopro first introduced 4k video on their cameras, it was an impressive feat for the price compared with the many thousand+ dollar cameras available at the time.
Most midrange+ phones these days can do 4k video. Sure they don't have a wide angle lense, but that is something like a $30 purchase on your favorite eretailer.
The problem is that gopro is still selling the same midrange sony sensors, and expecting a premium. If they were doing 8k@60 FPS, then they would have something that could command the price premium vs the dozens of competitors that have discovered sony sensor+cheap SOC+battery = action cam.
Or for that matter, they could move into the mirrorless camera market, but they are only releasing gimicky UI upgrades and drones to attach your camera while wondering why a lot of people are just buying cellphone mounts for their bikes/etc.
They've always made it hard to use their devices as webcams. If they had that feature, they would be selling like gangbusters now. Wyze did a firmware update and bam, you have a webcam. It hurts you in the long term to always upsell and partition your features into different levels. That complexity in your business, translates into your code and processes and makes it harder to pivot.
They are so close to being a premium product but they're having trouble getting there. I prefer to drop premium dollars on equipment that "just works" but my experience with their products is that every one of them has some kind of annoying issue.
They need to figure out what kind of company they are. Are they producing cheap consumer toys, or are they making reliable prosumer equipment?
Exactly, I was expecting an Apple-like experience so I was very disappointed in that sense. The hardware was great (for me at least), but the UX was just too annoying that it soured the overall experience.
I wish now that Apple would build an action camera.
I feel like their days are somewhat numbered anyway. At least as a hardware company - Chinese GoPro style cameras are getting really good now, as in you can get an action camera that is "good enough" (TM) for anything you are going to shoot for $100 at most these days.
There's definitely a market for overpriced cameras that just work but they might have to widen their horizons to grow.
GoPro is lacking innovation, each camera sounds identical to the previous one with only very small changes. They were still the market leader in action cams so for a while it was the only real viable option.
Nowadays there are a lot more companies that innovate in this field. DJI released the Osmo Action with dual screen and fantastic stabilization, Xoami has the Mi Action Camera for cheap, and just recently Insta360 released the modular "One R" that allows to quickly swap the camera module for 360, 1" or 4k action. I was in the market for a action cam and went for the Insta360.
GoPro created the market but nowadays I just don't see a reason to get a GoPro when there are arguably better options with more innovation out there.
well in fairness the hyperlapse feature they released a few years back was fairly innovative. and the stablisation was/is better than your find in some phones.
but yea apart from that, most models seem pretty much the same to me
I heard that GoPro hasn't been doing well in the past couple years [1]. Did they ever transition out of their "badge re-engineering" approach to products ?
> GoPro Inc. said it will cut more than 200 jobs
> The operational changes, staff reductions of more than 20% and cuts to office space will save $100 million in 2020
That must be a very high average salary considering the office space is probably the cheaper part of that.
if they can just cut off office space like that they must be renting flex space ... which is expensive. but yeah, 200 * 300,000 still only comes to $60MM.
I would love insider knowledge on their innovation tract. I'm sure they are licking wounds after the karma fiasco but it's like they went back to vanilla action cams, and that market is seeming nascent. What's happening?
It comes with a basic set of features. 1080p video and some simple time lapse options. Pretty barebones.
Anyway it occasionally freezes when disconnected from the charger so I went and checked if there was a firmware update and it turns out that the Hero 2018 is the previous year's high end Hero 5 Black crippled by software. Someone put together a tool to load that camera's firmware onto it and now I have a 4K camera with GPS, a wide range of time-lapse and high frame rate features, stabilisation, wind noise reduction...
https://gethypoxic.com/blogs/technical/latest-gopro-hero-is-...