Reflections on the hardware industry

Reflections on the hardware industry

From the response:

A more professional and long term approach would be wise.

In other words: don't rock the boat! Meanwhile, and I'm not sure the author of the response really understood what kind of software was being discussed, the end-user ends up with unreliable device behaviour thanks to the pervasive "it works for us, ship it!" mentality at various levels in the hardware production chain, which is at the very least hinted at in the original article. The result is that once the precise combination of binaries keeping a device running can no longer be sustained, the end-user is supposed to throw the device away and buy a new one.

It has been claimed that even the top-tier customers of the semiconductor industry can't get decent specifications under reasonable terms, where companies purchasing millions of units are too cowardly to make demands while presumably putting up substantial amounts of money. Some of these companies also urge a "don't rock the boat!" attitude as if their customers, dissatisfied with bad software, will somehow awaken a sleeping but bad-tempered giant who will take all the toys away. It's about time parts of the hardware business woke up and realised who is paying whose salaries, although I'm sure all the patent cross-licensing and other anti-competitive tricks will be used to squeeze out more forward-thinking competition (moves towards some openness from AMD and Intel notwithstanding) and push that day as far into the future as possible.