FadedFrontiers I'm not informed enough about internals of the machine to say, but if they promised a Dec 2023 delivery, then slipped it into now with very few machines shipped, something is very wrong with their engineering process (giving them the benefit of the doubt is that they are not just blatantly scamming). If they anticipated maybe 1000 backers then they should have had production plan for 1000 units by the end of 2023, maybe a few months late is acceptable. They have very little to no excuse because there was no pandemic nor war break out in 2023 that interrupted the supply chain. The only explanation would be a poor design that need redesigned, a poor engineering process that need redesigned etc. Their promise was a simple, brilliant design which should be simple enough to produce, the software can be updated OTA. but well.
If it was something like Decent then yes, they have some excuse for complexity, this bug, that bug for some delay. But Meticulous was supposed to be simple, to start with.
So either very poor design/engineering, or a biggest scam in coffee world. Your pick :)