Sometimes internet forums have a lot in common with day-time television. I'll admit some are sad stories, but many are also... well... drama of people not taking time to think through their situation, train themselves properly, etc. My Spark isn't perfect, and I've only had it a few days but I do have 1:54 filing time on it already and I'm having a great time. I did have a loss of connection once, but I didn't panic and was able to cancel the current action, reestablish connectivity, and kept it in flight just fine. I think a lot of the problems I see people have is that they panic when it doesn't work the way they expected, and they end up with bad results.
I know some people like to point out that the Spark is a "consumer toy", but in reality it's a $500 flying camera and takes personal training to use successfully. On the other hand, I did tonight watch my 12 year old daughter launch, control, selfie, and hand catch the Spark with little more training than me talking her through the process.
Yeah there are glitches with this new tech, and some people are bound to have bad experiences with it. But there are also popping up many very impressive videos and photos taken with the Spark successfully (my favorite one so far is linked below, I am not the creator, just happened to see it on YT today and was impressed) which tell me that in the right hands it can be a pretty powerful tool.
