[ChuckNorris89]

>I wonder how many €0.01 per unit they saved by not having enough storage to keep the old firmware version while they loaded the new one?

You're maybe joking, but when I worked in automotive, they really worked hard to save 2mm in length of a thicker copper wiring inside the ECU to save maybe a cent. No joke.

Unless you're in the high margins league of Nvidia, Apple, etc, the rest of the HW industry is insanely price sensitive, so all these jokes on how cheap manufacturers are, are the reality on how the industry is staying afloat.

[teraku]

Reminds me of the documentary of how the wah-wah pedal was invented. Apparently Warwick Electronics told one engineer to swap out an On/Off switch with a turn knob because these cost 0.25$ per piece instead of 1$. Which was huge savings in the 60s.

While experimenting, the engineer, who was also a guitarist, found that it sounds really cool to play while you turn the knob.

The director wanted to sell these knobs to jazz orchestras and big bands for the trumpeters, but the engineer was like "Hold on a second, I think we can put this in a pedal and make it a guitar thing".

[kuroguro]

They would have saved a lot of cents if the device wasn't internet connected tho.

[ChuckNorris89]

You're underestimating the amount of consumers who value the "Wi-Fi enabled" feature sticker plastered on the box and marketing spec sheet of a product on display at Walmart.

Manufacturers go with whatever marketing tells them will sell and what consumers are buying.

Personal anecdote time: I was part of a team developing a HW product a few years back and one day our boss comes in fumigating:

Boss: "RGB! Management wants us to put damn RGB LEDs in our up-coming products."

Us: "But why, what for? Do they know it has zero usage in our products?"

Boss: "Doesn't matter to them. Sales guys said our competitors have RGB now and customers will not buy our products anymore since they see that the competition has one extra feature we don't have, so we gotta put that RGB in ASAP somehow."

Us: "Ok, and what shall our firmware do with the new RGB LEDs?"

Boss: "Don't know <shrugs>. Marketing is still trying to figure that one out, so we'll code the firmware before the product launch."

I rest my case. This whole consumer industry is absolutely mental.

And so, today everything needs to be internet connected, because it's another feature on a spec sheet that marketing/sales demands.