I wonder if this is going to be manual only for the same reason Kipon isn't making their EF to MFT electronic adapter… Apparently 43rumors.com is saying patent issues are getting in the way.

http://www.43rumors.com/kipon-ef-to-mft-mount-alectronic-adapter-will-not-be-produced/

Mitakon alternative speed booster is rumored:

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sr3-mitakon-to-launch-a-metabones-speed-booster-alternative-in-july/

SpeedBooster for m4/3 launch happened to be delayed, but you can see them in June. Sorry it's not coming in April. 마이크로포서드용 스피드부스터 출시가 4월에 출시될 예정이었으나 좀 지연되어 6월에 출시됩니다. 아쉽네요.

I emailed Metabones three times about ETA of their m43 SpeedBooster and got no response. I literally told them I wanted to give them money as soon as possible for their product, but three emails went unanswered.

Fourth time was the charm. I got this in reply: "under process".

Two words, all lower case, not even a period. This is how a company responds to a potential customer in a tiny niche pool? As unicorny as SpeedBooster seems on paper, fuck these guys. I took the money I'd set aside for the SpeedBooster and bought a Canon FD 24mm f2 instead, a lens I've wanted for awhile now and it's as good as I hoped it would be.

Email isn't hard. If you can spam every blogger with sneak preview peeks and samples and PR, you can thumb out more than a macro reply to people who swim upstream and ask permission to fling themselves into your boat.

I know, I know. The indie glass scene is a kickstartin' wild wild west with a dash of blade runner and a soupçon of mad max. It's mad scientists in big-ass parkas cloning optics for punk looking replicants who shoot spec rap videos and "festival circuit" "shorts" featuring "actresses" with "acne". Just like Cassavetes.

Me, I don't have to think twice about giving $600 to a company that takes 4 emails to get back to me with two words that may as well be fuck off. "Ohh, but Metabones is HUGE in the film industry!" Yep, that's why they're polishing knobs all over Am-Cam Blogistan.

@RRRR I don't know, I use Google Translate every day to communicate with a Slovakian colleague and it's scary good. To me, Metabones's reply seemed more amateur hour than lost in translation. There's just no excuse for this kind of nonsense. I don't care what franca's your lingua. Not if you're selling $600 gewgaws over the Net and you don't disclose a physical location or even a tel#. I don't care if SpeedBooster turns my pinhole lens cap into a Zeiss. If I'm shelling out real money, I look down the road to when things may go awry and I need support. 4 emails to get "under process" doesn't cut it, especially when the company's lap dancing am-cam blogs all over the place.

Last year I bought my wife a Jawbone Jambox. You've probably seen this little POS: $130 Bluetooth speaker, looks like a dimpled rubber brick, supposed to sound better and louder than the best high-end stereo. Mac hero and professional self-deprecator Lonely Sandwich produced promo video so you know it's GOT to be solid. Eye-popping reviews from army of tech bloggers standing in the parking lot at Home Depot wearing sandwich boards that say "Will Eye-Poppingly Review For Free Shit".

I unbox this thing and turn it on. Seems okay. Not great and definitely not loud, maybe even a ripoff at $130. I follow the manual and update the firmware. FUBAR. No audio, just loud static. Hit the web, tons of people have the same issue, no fix has been found. Email tech support, nothing. CALL tech support, nothing. Call tech support again, get minwage call center genericist reading off a response tree screen. "So um you want to poke the paper clip into um the hole till you see um the blue LED (pronounced "led" as in um Zeppelin)." Call tech support again and get a different minwager who tells me the previous minwager had it all wrong, gives me different set of reset steps which also fail to fix the FUBAR.

So I send it back to Amazon for a refund, and leave a long review (only Amazon review I've ever written) detailing the saga as a warning to others who might have followed me down the outhouse hole. Many replies from similarly burned Jawbone buyers. And then a reply from Jawbone customer support that expresses regret at my bad experience and invites me to look for help by providing a link to its site's users forum, which of course is a 404.

I know what this smells like. I've smelled it before. I'm smelling it now on Metabones. No sale.

@griplimited I sincerely doubt Metabones got more than a hundred emails per day at the height of the post-announcement buzz. The pool of people even vaguely aware of the SpeedBooster much less proactively interested enough to comb through the site to find the lone email address is much, much smaller than we'd all like to think it is.

As a counter example, SLR Magic is for all intents and purposes one guy, Andrew Chan, and he answered every single one of my emails before and after I bought the 12mm HyperPrime. He even hopped on Google Chat one time to answer questions. I will buy from SLR Magic again.

I hear what you're saying about the person answering emails may be a busy principal and to give them time, etc. but this is 2013 and they're ostensibly grown ups and this is business. Go professional or go home. Don't have the resources to answer lots of email? Bounce everything back with a polite auto-response like everyone else does. But don't simply ignore email enquiries from the very people you put effort into ginning up by sending PR and swag to the am-cam blogs. And don't insult me by replying on the 4th try with "under process". That says, "go away and stop bothering me", which is what I will definitely do. I'd rather have gotten no reply.

Back in the horse and buggy days, when merchants had to deal with consumers face to face, people who behaved like this went under fast because nobody wants to patronize an unresponsive asshole. When the SpeedBooster news hit, I couldn't wait to buy a few. Now I'm rooting for the Chinese to knock them off as cheaply as possible, preferably before Metabones can even get theirs out the door. They deserve to eat it this round and hopefully learn from their mistake. When companies like Metabones and Jawbone treat me like this, they not only lose my business, they make me root for their failure because there are finite slots and they deserve to go to the good guys.

@B3Guy Question: if Leslie announced a new spinny speaker cab that was only 3 lbs. but had the same sound as a 147, spread preview swag all over the Hammond geek sites and drummed up a white paper explaning how they managed to pull it off, but when you emailed them about availability they blew you off repeatedly, would you still throw money their way?

I remember when I started working on Wall Street back when the fastest thing we had was a Telex machine. I remember the days before the Fax, Copy machines were new, the 1st Calculators and Digital Watches were so expensive. We didn't have ATM's so if you ran out of cash you'd be stuck. I remember none of my Synths had Midi until I got a Yamaha DX7.

I remember how news of a niche product like the Metabones was a small blurb in a trade magazine and there was no Website or Email address. You'd be lucky if you had a phone number to contact them. Usually just a mailing address. I remember sending a letter and a check to a small company making editing software for my Ensoniq Sampling Synth in order to get the software by mail. Sometimes we lose perspective due to the now instantaneous nature of our communications. PATIENCE is a virtue.

I don't pre-buy new things. I try them out first whenever possible, or at the very least wait until they're widely available and well reviewed. But to each his own, I guess.

My guess is they don't know the availability. I'm sure they could ballpark, but they might not want to. When they want us to know, we will know. I'd rather they were silent, actually. Just look at the "Digital Bolex" situation. Plenty of talk, but I still can't go out and buy one.

I just got a response from Metabones and they said "I think M4/3 speed booster will launch at next half-year."

All I can say is, boo.

Ha, ha, ha +1 for VK and Aria.

I am expecting this adaptor/booster without haste and looking forward for it- very exciting!

@RRRR Can't argue with anything you've said. But it sort of makes my original point that it all comes down to customer service, right down to each individual encounter. I got great customer service from SLR Magic. And by great i literally mean the guy emailed me back in full sentences. You didn't get this from SLRM, so we have opposite feelings about the brand. I wouldn't hesitate to PayPal Andrew another half kilo buck for another lens sight unseen, and I'm guessing you would hesitate.

I've followed tech companies professionally for a long time. When I see certain patterns, I call it like I see it. Heretofore never-done miracle cure + free lunch + Chinese factory + no physical address or tel# + anti-social PR = burned customers. Every time. I don't care how tantalizing the product seems in your head. These ingredients always spell trouble. Worst case it's a total scam. Best case it's a well-meaning entrepreneur in way over his head who couldn't get the Chinese factory to color inside the lines. But either way customers get left holding the bag. I sincerely hope that doesn't happen to those of you still holding out hope and $600 for a SpeedBooster. But I'm sitting this one out.