Suggestions for AM7

[Shannon]

I find it really amusing that I said it would almost certainly be AT LEAST $1,000 and the assumption is that it'll be $1,000. It's like this.

I don't know what it's gonna cost, but I do know it'll most likely be between $1,000 and $3,000 US unless the dollar collapses before this happens. They're pushing hard to kill the dollar with the current stupidity of the Federal Reserve, and the government, so we'll see what happens.

My first instinct is to say $1,200 a copy, but then calculations sometimes bring it as high as $1,800. Since there might be something I'm not considering right now, it might be lower and it might be higher. I don't know. But it is almost certainly going to be over $1,000 for the entire set.

At this price point, yes, it will be released in stages. But if you think it's steep, then you are welcome to spend 10 years developing a competing product. Otherwise, you have this as your option, and you can accept the price I decide on. I understand that it's a lot of money for most of the world, and I also understand that people have forgotten what it is to save up for something they want, but can't afford. That's the stupidity that results in piracy. For the work I do on this - and so far JUST the 6G component has been in development since about May of 2014 - and the time and frustration and education, and skill and expertise and everything else, you will pay. That's all there is to it. This is the flagship product and the best of it's kind in the world. You just can't make something at that level and make it cheap.

As a professional photographer, when I would buy a DSLR camera body, did I pay a couple hundred dollars for it, as a consumer would? Hell no. I paid $3,000 and up. Pro level camera bodies - without any lens - can range well past $25,000 EACH.

And when I would buy a lens for that body, did I pay tens or hundreds of dollars, as a consumer would do? Hell no. The least I ever paid for a pro level lens was $1,350, and that was a steal! To upgrade that lens to it's Mark II version would cost me $2,300. And that's just the mid-range focal length lens. My telephoto was $2,500, and my wide angle was $1,900, the upgrade on which is also well over $2,000. And because camera sensors are all being improved so much, going from 22 megapixels as I have now, to 50+, the flaws and weaknesses of these lenses are being revealed, and so if I want to keep up, I'm going to shell out even more for upgrades. On average, it appears that it will be an almost doubling in price per lens. Part of why I haven't been active as a pro photographer recently.

That is how it goes when you're dealing with the best in class of anything. It takes extraordinary effort to build, and it takes extraordinary time, knowledge, skill, resources, etc. All that is money. And all that has to be paid for, and then a profit must be made.

Now I know you guys are spoiled, and you like to complain about everything no matter how good it is because you are so spoiled, but let's look at this for a bit.

AM6 is currently out of date by the standards of most of you, or you wouldn't be dragging me to the building lab by setting up suggestions list like this. (Which I don't mind, but can't work on it just yet.) AM6 was finished in 2013, is the result of work culminating from 2005? 2006? Each version was built on the back of the one before it, and even just upgrading AM5 to AM6 took me 2 months of 10+ hour days, almost 7 days a week.

Now we have a new version being planned, and JUST the generation upgrade has been in development for over a year and a half. I'm not even finished developing that, and don't know yet how to make a multi-stage version of it. It's so complex that I don't know all of how I did what I did, so I have to go back through it, over 300,000 words of it (a standard novel is typically 80,000 words, btw), and so I have to go through it line by line and document everything that was done and then create a step by step how-to. Figuring out those alone is very likely to take another 4-6 months.

Now we have 2 YEARS of R&D into this one program. And there's what, 35 other steps to go after that? And you don't think this is going to be a significant upgrade in capability and price? I can't stay in business if the product doesn't deliver at the price we charge. I wouldn't spend that kind of time, effort, research and development and all the rest on this if I didn't think I could make t worth that price.

And speaking of being worth the price, you are getting a life changing program that you can use over and over again, for the rest of your life, and keep benefiting from forever.

You don't suppose there's a reason cars cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, do you? Maybe a quality car that will last you 10 or 15 years costs $30,000 to $75,000. Let's say the average for such a good quality vehicle is $45,000. If it lasts you 15 years, which is a reasonable expectation for a quality vehicle that you don't trash from negligence, that's $45,000/15 = $3,000 per year of ownership. Even broken down, it's not cheap. But then, look at the average vehicle. It dies in 7 to 10 years. You're getting more bang for your buck. More quality means better life of usefulness. But that comes at a price: better engineers, better management, better materials, better workers. It might be cheaper to buy say a Kia, but it's a sure bet that that Toyota or Honda will live longer and cost less for maintenance and repairs in the long run.

In other words... you get what you pay for. You wanted better, and I am producing better. It's going to cost you. That's common sense. So we will make it available as single or double stages at a time, and as a complete set, so that you can easier handle the price increase. But don't think that you can armchair quarterback the price, because you have no idea what the word load to make it was. Or what it is capable of.

Whatever price I choose, it'll be chosen because it is the most reasonable for what you're getting.