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Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

I wish that companies would not release information about their apps until they are ready. Perhaps Microsoft is attempting to head off current Office365 subscribers from putting their workflows in AirTable by telling them that a similar product is on their horizon, but it I just don't know what to do with dates like "Coming this summer" and "later this year." Either I have the need now, in which case I'm probably using AirTable, or I'm going to sort of forget about this software until someone else on my team gets everyone together and asks them to migrate to it.

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> I wish that companies would not release information about their apps until they are ready.

Unfortunately it's part of a successful marketing strategy in which you 1) announce you _will_ release, 2) announce you _are_ releasing, and 3) announce you _did_ release.

For me it's a case of "you only get one chance to make a first impression". I'm interested now. By the time it's released I might not hear about it or I might have lost interest.

At least always provide a "notify me" email option.

One of the biggest criticisms against MS was not releasing sooner.

Now there’s preview and dev versions of every single major product. It’s awesome.

It seems extra strange for a giant company with really broad PR reach to announce they'll be providing a solution for a need you didn't know you had, but not yet, and in the meantime everyone will tell you that over here's a separate company who will already do it for you. Given the lack of MS product, it seems like this announcement would only help airtable.

If you start writing this software now, you would probably release 3rd competitor to this duo faster then some corporation decides to buy airtable if they heard about it now. Quick is very relative term

it takes a lot of time for enterprises to buy software, so if they start that process now after the announcement, by the time they are ready to actually buy, microsoft will have released it. Bonus for microsoft is that can already start competing with airtable for a commercial perspective, even if they don't actually ship the software already.

Microsoft FUD is back!

What does this mean?

Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.

In the days leading up to Microsoft's antitrust case, Microsoft would routinely pre-announce competing products, or announce they would be adding functionality from other competing products into Windows or Office.

Even without releasing anything, just these announcements would create Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt in their competitors and customers considering investing in their products.

It means, why consider using something like Airtable? Microsoft has this new product coming out that will do the same thing, and it's from Microsoft. No one gets fired for buying Microsoft.

OK but where does Fear and Uncertainty fit into this model?

You're planning to start using a system like that. Is going with Airtable (available now) a bad financial / management decision? Is switching later going to be possible?

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