| I think his point is that they're all clones, or running American OS, or selling excellent quality commodities (in the sense that as a designer or engineer I don't care much about the part past its specs) Lenovo -> IBM Samsung + Huawei -> Google SSD, screens, ram -> commodity You might balk at SSDs being mere commodities (or screens for that matter). Surely Samsung SSDs and screens are better! Sure, and as a designer I might care. But I probably wouldn't, past the promised MTBF, viewing angle and contrast ratio. Put the SSD+display+CPU together and you get, for better or worse[1] , a largely American computing device. You don't get a BBC micro or an Acorn. Or a Setun. Nintendo is the only one who obviously stands out as different, making a unique computing device (albeit with an American CPU). Although even the N64 was largely an American design (SGI) [1] I think worse, in the sense that everything is a Unix monoculture. |
Components like the CPU and OS might be designed in America, but it's the higher level software development and hardware design that takes these largely off the shelf parts and assembles them into an actual product, and in the case of Nintendo that happens in Kyoto, not Silicon Valley. Is that really any different from say, assembling a piece of furniture out of materials and components sourced from around the world? Without the product design and assembly all you'll have is a collection of wood and nails lying about.
Same with the N64 - it might have been an SGI designed system at it's core, but through the guidance of Nintendo which developed the higher level industrial design of the console, the controller, the concept of using carts over discs, some of the more lower level OS functions, and of course the user facing software like Mario 64, etc. All the things that actually make the N64 the N64. SGI didn't decide to make a games console all on their own.