[DrScientist]

> And a major reason to get off old generations of hardware is that they become unavailable relatively quickly.

That's not in the customers interests per se- in fact it's a pain. Having control of their own stuff could mean they could offer a much longer effective operational life.

> The way to run into undiscovered issues is to choose a completely custom firmware/hardware/software stack that almost no one else in the world is running.

What breaks stuff is change - sure when they are starting up it's higher risk - but again if they can manage the lifecycle better, not have change for changes sake, then they could be much more reliable.

> Not sure where you're getting this from.

I was talking about not taking the flagship stuff - which is typically a few months ahead of the best price/performance stuff.