Why can't they make technology that just works?
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Solved by smcoakley,
QuoteWhy can't they make technology that just works?
As someone who works in tech, in general, there are typically three reasons:
- People won't pay for technology that works. The longer the development process for a product, the more we have to charge for it to compensate for that development cost that was spent up front. For many decades, there has been a constant effort to shorten time-to-market and lower costs for consumers to undercut competitors, because it has been shown time and time again that people will buy the crappier product instead of the refined one, if it costs 50% less. So the companies that spend a long time in development and testing to create something that is super reliable either die and go out of business, or they exclusively operate in the business-to-business world where other businesses are willing to spend big bucks for something reliable.
- Technology moves too fast in a lot of areas to make it worth spending a ton of effort on one specific iteration to make it better. Again, because companies need to keep iterating and moving to the latest and greatest thing. Why? Because that's what most buyers vote for with their wallets.
- Technology has become exponentially more complex over the decades. Such that everyday products like Bluetooth headphones requires expertise in design and manufacturing from people around the world just to make one. DSP chips have to be sourced from a company with that expertise, who has them manufactured by an IC manufacturer with that expertise, and then programmed by embedded developers with their expertise. Then the same for wireless chips, USB chips, etc. Literally no one company in the world could make a whole product themselves from scratch. And with that comes with disconnect between companies; none of these components are purpose-built to build the specific end-user product, and with that can come bugs, inconsistencies, etc. Issues that may not arise if the same company made purpose-built parts designed for the exact product being built.
To be sure, I lament this approach and wish we did things differently, but I understand how it is hard for a company to exist by pushing alternative thinking that most mainstream customers are not interested in.
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