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[quote=
Manufacturing products is all about 1 upping the competition, only thing that needs to be said is if it's gonna put people out of work than that company needs to do something to get their part of the market back. Like lower prices.[/quote]
I would say they need to innovate, lowering prices is usually only effective for a short while, bringing something new / better/ to the market is a better way of success. Anyway, nuff about non train related stuff, back to my layout :-)
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Wow . Didnt think I would get a responce like this .I understand about pricing and better products ,But how can a manufacturer compete with a company that isnt even in their market. Apple seems to have apps for everything and now one for modelrailroading . If you can run your layout with an iphone than what happens to the modelrailroading companies. If you dont buy from them there is no reason for them to be in the market. I know prices are high . Pricing is built on supply and demand. If the market demand it the price to supply it goes up . All my DCC systems are NCE. Priced high but you get what you pay for .Without decoders I have about 4,000.00 $ worth . Works everytime ,User friendly and it does what it says it will do . My point is , If you run your layout with your phone pretty soon these guys will be gone . No more NCE,Digitraxx,MRC .Who will need them you will just look to see what app you need to run it . If you want better products your gonna pay for them. Its the way of the market. Just look at the companies that are gone or have been bought up by there competitors. Best way to get rid of your competition is to buy them take their share of the market. Pretty soon if you want something you can contact the only company left and if you think prices are high now you aint seen nothing yet. So there you have it . You can run your layout with an iphone or you can support companies like NCE, Digitraxx ,MRC and the rest and still have them around to deal with . Wow I really unzipped my fly with this one . MartyG
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That's like that with everything, prices keep going up, not everyone can afford a $50 hopper, nor would buy 100 of them. $22 for a pair of coal loads? $240 locomotive that's still not prototypically accurate? I could go on but you should get the point by now 
Small electronic devices are cheap now, why do we need to pay 1970's high technology prices for them?
The prices have gotten so high not many people buy things, then the company only sees less product bought and does not lower price but makes pre-ordering and limited runs.
The prices of things in this hobby has gotten crazy, we are pay the 'made in america price' for really cheap 'made overseas products, so owners can save the buck on to themselves, not us. Things like RTR, for double the price? retarded. take Bowser for example, American made company, I can buy one of their 100 ton hopper kits for $10, but if it was RTR it's $21, wheres the sense in that, it takes me 5 minutes to build one of there kits at home. How long does it take them to build it at the plant, probably even less but still they can hire on a guy at $7-10/hr to make 12 RTR's in an hour to double the price. They think it's great, but at the bottom it doesn't sell as much as the kits and therefore the RTR's collect dust on shelves at hobby stores. Now I'm not saying this is how they do it but it's the average way companies try to make more money (I've worked in manufacturing my whole life) with RTR items. Now hobby shop owners are starting to dislike Boswer cause parts are being made overseas, they are holding back products, no one knows what's going on with them. They are following the path of other companies years ago.
Price needs to drop
Tom
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The people it puts out of work all work in China, India, or Taiwan anyway! When was the last time we built anything in the North America, excepting Mexico?
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Russ Bellinis Wrote:The people it puts out of work all work in China, India, or Taiwan anyway! When was the last time we built anything in the North America, excepting Mexico? Reminds of how 'made in america' was replaced with 'made in north America from golbal products'
Tom
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Yeh i agree . Prices are to high. RTR started because there was a market for it .It seems that way with alot of things . Nobody wants to spend the time building kits they want to see it run . I used to like the old Athern BB rollingstock. You could bring it home and do whatever you wanted to it . If it didnt work out you put away and waited for another Idea and at 5.00 to 8.00$ a kit it didnt matter .Now you pay from 20.00 up to 100.00 $ for RTR that you have to bring home and 9 times out of 10 you have to fix anyway . Its even worse you know the manufacturer got a volume discount from where ever and only paid 4 bucks a unit if that . But as all those that contacted the company and wanted RTR this is what we got . Here in Canada prices are about 30% higher than in the US which is a real pain in the wallet . But thats the market I guess . Now if I want to build cars I have to pay more and really think twice before cutting into it to build what I wanted in the first place. Its alot harder to cut into a 30.00 $ car than it was an old BB Athern for 4 bucks. But we do it for the love of railways and the love of modeling . Prices will come down one day but will it be to late when they do. I think it is already to late . I think were getting off topic here . I just figure if you want a phone then use it for a phone , Same as with music use an ipod if you want ,But keep you modelrailrod just that and even though it hurts support the manufacturers or one day thats all we may have to use is an iphone. MartyG
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I've been off list for awhile and see that my thread has really taken off in a direction that I didn't expect!
MartyG Wrote:Apple seems to have apps for everything and now one for modelrailroading . If you can run your layout with an iphone than what happens to the modelrailroading companies.
The model railroading companies (NCE, in your (and my) case) are still required; the Wi-Throttle app cannot not work without a command station.
What is really cool about these devices (to circle back to the thread) is that they are a platform for some really bright ideas to be expressed. The vast, VAST majority of the apps that you can run on them are created by your average computer nerd, not Apple. Anybody with a good idea and the know-how can "manufacture" an application and distribute it. Entrepreneurial spirit in action!
In this case, the app was designed by a guy who also had an interest in model railroading - his interest now benefits the rest of us. This "tech" side of things is another way to get new folks interested in the hobby.
Last, the thing that has me most excited about this application is that now any visitor to my house who owns an iTouch or iPhone can, after downloading the app, run trains. This does two things:
- Turns spectators into particpants - participation is a much better way to get someone interested in something that just plain watching!
- That same person will leave with a DCC throttle. Everytime they see that app on their phone, it'll remind them of the great time they had running trains at my house!
Between the two, a new model railroader may be born, one that may buy an NCE command station that otherwise wouldn't have been sold. Great stuff.
Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio
Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio
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Hi Matt,
Aside from the WiThrottle for iPhone and iPad, there is also an Android version for other "Smart-Phones"...
http://jmri.org/help/en/package/jmri/jmr...ttle.shtml
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tomustang Wrote:nachoman Wrote:than figure out what I can do with my I-phone (not that I even would consider having such a complicated phone in the first place!) The iphone is really easy to use, thus the popularity. however running it with PC based hardware/software is nothing but fail.\
Say WHAT? I wouldn't in a million years buy a Mac, I've used them in the past. I am strictly Windows (and a little Linux). But I do have an iPhone, and I have no problem at all with using it with my Windows computers. I've even built a new computer and transferred everything over since I first got the iPhone. WiThrottle worked the very first time I tried it, with no hassles at all, and so it became only the second app in 2 years of iPhone ownership that I purchased.
I DO consider it a nearly free solution. JMRI is free. I'd have the computer interface for my DCC system anyway (in fact I did, since before even the first iPhone was released). I'd have the iPhone anyway, it's my primary phone for both work and home and I also use it for such things as work email and reading books. I've been using smartphones for a long time now, because I hate carrying around multiple devices in my daily life, and so far the iPhone is the best of the bunch. So the only 'expense' I had was the cost of the WiThrottle app. For a visitor who doesn't want to pay for it, the free Lite version is sufficient to run a train.
--Randy
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rrinker Wrote: Say WHAT? I wouldn't in a million years buy a Mac, I've used them in the past. I am strictly Windows (and a little Linux). But I do have an iPhone, and I have no problem at all with using it with my Windows computers. I've even built a new computer and transferred everything over since I first got the iPhone. WiThrottle worked the very first time I tried it, with no hassles at all, and so it became only the second app in 2 years of iPhone ownership that I purchased.--Randy
Let me make it clear since you Cap'd what, I hate Mac too. 
Considering the fact that if you have all windows based files, the conversions and transfers are time consuming. 3 hours to upload/transfer 7 gigs of mp3 formatted music (30min with windows to windows based systems, and no reformatting) . It would be fine if you started off buying your music from itunes. Personalizing mp3 music for ringtones? I found a way around it but it was time consuming. MS Office files, on the iphone 4 are terrible, very time consuming. Updates every month, Syncing, there's too many things steve jobs wont bend on to make the both work together efficiently, that's why I'm not a fan of the mac. I've already had a crash on it and lost 70+ photos and vids and the phone locked, apple's answer was to erase ALL of my saved itunes which I lost everything else. Everything is apples way or the highway which sucks compared to windows and windows based products get left behind when running the iphone with windows based pc's. If AT&T offered a good droid smart phone I would've went that route, but still the iphone is better than anything else out there.
BTW: Welcome to the forum, Randy 
Tom
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Two quickies - first, don't let iTunes manage your music, of course this is not really possible if you buy your music that way, but I don't. My media of all types is stored on my media server with redudant disk so I don;t worry about it. Transferring my apps from one computer to the other was fairly painless. I just now updated my phone to iOS 4.1 (it's a 3G model, not 3GS or 4) and it fixed all the horrible performacne problems.
Second thing - I don't even remember LOL Oh well, back to playing trains. I'm tired of just running my traisn back and forth on the two completed staging yard tracks.
--Randy
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