Ha ha. When I first made it (sans the yellow lettering as that’s dynamic and changes on every refresh via a php scipt) I asked my wife what she thought the image meant and after she looked at it for a while she said, *I have no idea, Joe.* I said, *Look at it. What do you see?* She finally said, *AMX Stones?* I said, *AMX Stones? That doesn’t make any sense.* And she said, *You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. * So then I said, *It’s AMX Rocks!* And then she said, * Oh okay that’s cool but I don’t know , Joe. Those look like stones to me not rocks. I don't know if anybody is going to understand it* And so it goes…kind of me in a nutshell.
ha! this goes back a ways but forgive me, i'm old...
Way back in the day when I first saw Joe's tag pic, I immediately got it. But, I thought then that there were problably going to be people who might confuse the rocks for stones. The only reason I thought this is I do a lot of travelling to different areas of the coutry and am always facinated by the subltle shifts in speech. (you know the usual "Bag vs. Sack" or "Pop vs. Soda" thing...)
I think most folks visualize rocks as being the lumby, rough things that are smaller than a bolder but larger than a stone or pebble. (a rock is bigger than a soft ball but smaller than a VW Bug) Stones are smaller (golf-ball to soft ball sized) Where I grew up "stone" and "rock" were synonymous.
but, allt his was a stupid discussion inside my head. I never really thought it would actually be a subject of a thread. I find it totally facinating.
However, I will never get used to the people around here calling a "Shopping Cart" a "Buggy"
It goes with out saying that AMX can always find a place in high end resi just like anything else geared towards commercial and similarly most things geared towards residential can be used in commercial, that's never been in question. The question is AMX's commitment to resi and to resi dealers. As stated in other threads their presence at CEDIA was almost non-existent, I wasn't there so can't testify to that directly but why would other attendees lie. I can't think of one product released in the last five years that you could say was directly intended for the resi market. Then you had the BullsEye program which seemed to target resi dealer and penalize them in a slowing market where TP sales were nearly impossible because of the emergence of iThing control and the cost disparity between those two options. We did get TPC but at an extremely prohibitive cost which made their sales difficult. Those costs are better now but a little to late for most resi dealers. So as the number of products a dealer could actually sell in the resi market decreased, TP sales being the majority or dealer sales, their sales numbers went down so to add salt to our wounds AMX increased our costs because we were now selling less. A really intelligent move on AMX's part.
So yes we are attending a wake so to speak, just take a look and this forum, it's dead compared to a few years ago and then count the number of primarily resi dealers that are still selling AMX that just gave up or have been pushed away. Folks on the commercial side can't see it and the folks who only program can't feel it but the dealers who run their business, do sales and program do. I know they're too insignificant for AMX but a lot of us guys had the passion and the loyalty until AMX beat it out of us. Even medium sized companies just couldn't take the lack of support or commitment to the resi market.
So yeas AMX can always find a home in the high end resi market but those are few and far between. Here in CT most new homes built that I work on are over 4-8m and they still shop and compare cuz they didn't get rich by being stupid and when all the competition tells them that AMX is commercial and they abandoned the resi market, as does every ex AMXer who moved to the dark side, that's a hard image to erase from their decision process.
Now resi dealers are getting letters telling them they're no longer going to be dealer, maybe there are conflicts of interest or something but I doubt it and then they get contradictory word from their reps.
Yes the market is mainly to blame for the poor resi AMX sales but AMX hasn't help resi dealer in any manner via support, pricing or viable products to sell. The distribution amp should have come out shortly after they bought matrix audio, that would have been a great product, if reasonably priced, for resi dealers to sell. Replacement for the R4, Met-Ecom sucks and since we can't bank on TP sales re-structure the dealer pricing so it's realistic to what is currently possible, figuring TP sales won't be 85% of total resi dealer's sales number meeting the current minimums is unrealistic for small committed dealers.
It is interesting read this thread. I have been programming since the Axlinx days but like many had to move to other platforms. I basically support dealers on all the products but still love AMX because what I could do with it. I have diversified into design, app development, desktop development and etc. People who program AMX systems have the knowledge to jump into these areas. I saw the end of resi AMX programming about 5 years ago when I was designing systems for a company. I told my non-AMX programmer to plan a different future - he does not have the skills in coding. Eventually the AV world will not AV programmers - it is matter of time. They will be replaced by technicians who have no clue how things work. I would encourage you guys to continue looking and moving forward. There are brighter futures ahead with the skills you have - the world is desperate for people with vision, skills, and knowledge. There are so no areas we can get into that is bursting with possibilities.
Comments
ha! this goes back a ways but forgive me, i'm old...
Way back in the day when I first saw Joe's tag pic, I immediately got it. But, I thought then that there were problably going to be people who might confuse the rocks for stones. The only reason I thought this is I do a lot of travelling to different areas of the coutry and am always facinated by the subltle shifts in speech. (you know the usual "Bag vs. Sack" or "Pop vs. Soda" thing...)
I think most folks visualize rocks as being the lumby, rough things that are smaller than a bolder but larger than a stone or pebble. (a rock is bigger than a soft ball but smaller than a VW Bug) Stones are smaller (golf-ball to soft ball sized) Where I grew up "stone" and "rock" were synonymous.
but, allt his was a stupid discussion inside my head. I never really thought it would actually be a subject of a thread. I find it totally facinating.
However, I will never get used to the people around here calling a "Shopping Cart" a "Buggy"
So yes we are attending a wake so to speak, just take a look and this forum, it's dead compared to a few years ago and then count the number of primarily resi dealers that are still selling AMX that just gave up or have been pushed away. Folks on the commercial side can't see it and the folks who only program can't feel it but the dealers who run their business, do sales and program do. I know they're too insignificant for AMX but a lot of us guys had the passion and the loyalty until AMX beat it out of us. Even medium sized companies just couldn't take the lack of support or commitment to the resi market.
So yeas AMX can always find a home in the high end resi market but those are few and far between. Here in CT most new homes built that I work on are over 4-8m and they still shop and compare cuz they didn't get rich by being stupid and when all the competition tells them that AMX is commercial and they abandoned the resi market, as does every ex AMXer who moved to the dark side, that's a hard image to erase from their decision process.
Now resi dealers are getting letters telling them they're no longer going to be dealer, maybe there are conflicts of interest or something but I doubt it and then they get contradictory word from their reps.
Yes the market is mainly to blame for the poor resi AMX sales but AMX hasn't help resi dealer in any manner via support, pricing or viable products to sell. The distribution amp should have come out shortly after they bought matrix audio, that would have been a great product, if reasonably priced, for resi dealers to sell. Replacement for the R4, Met-Ecom sucks and since we can't bank on TP sales re-structure the dealer pricing so it's realistic to what is currently possible, figuring TP sales won't be 85% of total resi dealer's sales number meeting the current minimums is unrealistic for small committed dealers.