"... I think the collective angst is more about the history of delays and prehaps managements ability to colour slightly outside the lines whilst staying compliant with the rules. ..."
"colour slightly outside the lines" is a very good aphorism. I like it. It very much sums up what the announcements actually do whether or not that can be said to be their precise aim. They seem reassuring until you dissect them patiently with a very sharp scalpel over several months. This way of communicating the desired nuances of the situation is one of the constants with AKP. I wish it was different.
What I really wish is that they came out and told us directly things like "... we've hit a brick wall with the physics and we are trying to find a solution to it. What we thought would work has not done so reliably. There is no information on this available because nobody has ever tried to do this before. This could take us at least a few more months to solve, maybe 3 or even 4, and we have had to buy a new software tool to do so. Early results are promising, and should lead to a practicable solution to the X problem within a 5-6 month time frame. ..." followed by "... we now have a good handle on the causes of problem X and have started trials of a new approach. If that works we will have new wafers coming through to us for testing in another 6 weeks because that's how long the build cycle takes. We'll let you know as soon as we have representative data. If there are delays we'll tell you as soon as we know that. Sorry about the delays. We had no idea we would encounter them but we are trying really, really hard. Please hang on a bit longer. ..."
What we seem to always get is carefully massaged publication quality info: "... We've now solved a problem we did not tell you we'd had. We are hopeful this will lead to finished products imminently, and we hope to have them in our hands by YY/YY/YY. We will tell you more 2, 3, 4, or 5 months afterwards when we are confident that what we tell you is long after the next AGM. ..."
The point is I am not unhappy to wait out the resolution of 'technical developments' because I know very well that they are the norm, and necessary to the task. The team behind the work seem to be just the sort of people who solve these kinds of problems, and I'm reasonably confident that they will do so. So that is not the problem. But I do feel like the proverbial mushroom, kept in the dark and fed that brown stuff.
I don't mean to be too cynical but like many others here I've been hanging on by my teeth and wish to hell that they would deliver what they keep promising they have already done. I'm still hanging on, but I'm old, and my teeth are pretty tired. Yet I have no intention of letting go without my well deserved mouthful. Tonight could be the night! GLTAH!
(20min delay)