The ability to say "yes, I know, DJI, the tiny grass strip 1km from my house is an airport, but I'm fully FAA compliant with this flight" requires a multitude of steps, involving both their app and a Web browser and copying and pasting serial numbers from fields that do not permit copying, then the authorization you get only lasts for 72 hours, so you have to do it again. Otherwise you have to pay to be a "big pants" customer, but even then the experience is less-than-ideal, with a lot of pros turning to Russian software that doesn't perform the legal validation checks, etc. You literally cannot obtain this authorization without an Internet connection, because they store your attestations for liability insulation. So if you're in the field, and you forgot to convince DJI that you're legal before you went out, you're driving back to cellular range.
DJI's interaction with regulation, in particular, is a very broad example of protecting themselves from liability by shunting a lot of work to users of the equipment.
They also assume you have an Internet connection by deferring to Google Maps, with no offline ability that I can find. Google Maps does support offline now, but the way they embed it in the controller software, if I'm out of cellular range (which is a lot), my map box is a giant grid that moves around with the drone and nothing else.
I wouldn't remotely consider them for professional work, the way they're going, and I say that having dabbled in cartography, farming applications, and aerial photography. Sure, they can get gear out, which is where you're coming from, but there's a lifecycle of gear ownership that they pretty much entirely ignore.
Which, fair enough - Chinese company. But the fact that such a sentiment could also, from the point of view of the software, be something like "I need to deliver life-saving medicine and the bridge is out" does not factor into their decision-making.
Although on the other hand, it's just a tool. My hobbyist wrench doesn't refuse to work on a bolt that asks it not to. My professional screwdriver doesn't have extra authentication built in.
But, but HN says Chinese companies are inherently incapable of innovation because of culture/socio-politics/other pet peeve./s
DJI beat Lily (not that they were as advanced as they claimed with faked footage) and now GoPro. How is 3DRobotics doing? I haven't heard any news from/about them in a while.
Note drone entrepreneurs - if there's money to be made in drones, DJI will take it to itself.
The thing is that you simply can't compete with the vertical integration of DJI. Taking images and videos is still by far and large the reason to fly drones in the first place, and once you own the vertical stack and can integrate your imagers with the electromechanics (gimbal) you get to a very small and efficienct package.
Think about that: for every gram of camera, you need two grams of stabilizer, then you need four grams of drone and battery to carry that. While DJI just stabilize their optics and sensor, GoPro stabilizes an entire 80g, bulky camera. This is mainly why the Karma is so big and heavy compared to the DJI Mavic (there are some advantages to DJI in propulsion and batteries but those are pretty small; not a lot of proprietary tech in those fields).