I've had the good fortune of witnessing the Swiss development process a few times. It's kind of interesting because they make elementary usability mistakes, and do not factor user practice, user error or abuse into the product, so you tend to have some early product breakage when the rubber hits the road. The assumption is that not only will the buyer read the instructions, but he will follow them however contorted.
I still remember with affection the strange tiny connectors and exposed circuitry on a $2000 tabletop robot made by a company founded by some people I worked with. One needed a loupe to manipulate it. The next model was finally scaled up and had a plastic shell, after they figured out that students, do, yes, break things.
After a while, if one can make them admit the problems, they will fix them, slowly, and make the product work. Once it works it tends to be rock solid, because they are wonderfully good at keeping production in tolerance and they tend to use older, well established technology that does not break.
There is another problem that often occurs with the Swiss stuff - a tendency to use bespoke connectors, accessories, batteries etc in sizes which cannot be easily sourced. And a fanatical desire to conserve paper which translates into tiny, microscopic, print on the instruction manuals.
On the other hand, east-bloc technology (and Jenoptik was Zeiss Jena) has a tendency to be capable of withstanding terminal user abuse and bad environments, being designed for repair rather than replacement, and of being designed to be field-stripped.
I guess I like watching this process because I like pointing out mistakes
In fact, as a consultant I invoice for pointing out mistakes
When one only has lemons, I guess one should sell lemonade
Edmund
First there was a Hy6 with no 45 degree prism and no revolving connection to the back. Then independently from each other Sinar thought of making a revolving connection to their backs and F&H thought of adapting the old prism to work with the Hy6. In a way both developments could be seen as third party additions as they are not a result of centrally coordinated R&D, but rather stem from individual design teams in different companies. (Note that Leaf -the first one to adopt the 45 degree prism- does not have a revolving connection yet.) The poor interactivity is a pity of course, but on the other hand we would probably not have had any of the two options when they should have been developed through the Jenoptik Central Approval Commitee. So now we have a new accessory category for the Hy6: rookie products.
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