gunrunnerjohn posted:Ray Lombardo posted:gunrunnerjohn posted:MTH may avoid making an investment in the remote, but they are also making an investment in Lionel locomotives for me. Yes, I have a smart phone, a tablet, and even a couple of older smart phones in boxes. It's not the availability of the WiFi hardware that's the impediment, at least in my case. I think the MTH WiFi application interface is decent, but I still by far prefer the hand held remote. I'll buy stuff that I still have a remote to run.
That is a fair point and your decision to spend as you wish. Mike is betting that more consumers will appreciate and use the app. It's a business judgment on his part and I think given where the market is, it is a reasonable one. If he loses customers due to it, that is his loss but I suspect most of the people on this thread expressing a view tend to skew more towards Legacy/ high end operation anyways, so perhaps that is not a loss as far as he is concerned because perhaps he is already ceding the extreme high end to Lionel. I have no idea what his thinking is but in the year 2018 there are few businesses that want to be wed to 15 year old hardware.
You're missing an even more basic point. They have a choice now, remove one of the choices and you remove some of the customers! It's not like the people that want to use the app are left out.
Unless I read Mike way wrong, he's not ceding anything to Lionel!
I reached out and received a response from Andy at MTH. I asked his permission to paste his response. If and when he gives the OK I will post. Don't want to violate the boilerplate at the bottom of the email. Hopefully soon, and we can understand there vision. I think their purchasing audience is our demographic. They envision young people and their like for apps and phones. I think you need to get them to the trains first. I don't see someone perusing the app store and saying with this app I will get into the train hobby. In other words, you can't go to the fireplace and say "give me heat and then I will give you logs". I agree with Gunrunner John. It's good to have choices. Not yes or no.
