FYI, in case you haven't seen this, Todd Rogers sits with Ben Heck, using Ben's hacked 2600 to precisely control the game to try to recreate Roger's time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With limited field experience, design of a first generation device is overbuilt to ensure meeting "expected life" requirements. As field experience builds, engineers/designers learn where they can substitute cheaper parts where they have less impact on "expected life". Fortunately, in many circumstances, the high cost of first generation technology coincides with the smaller field of competition. As price pressure builds, either through competition or by striving to maximize profit margins, future designs get closer to the expected life requirements which are usually shorter than the actual lifetime of the initial incarnations. In highly competitive arenas, there is pressure to reduce the expected life requirement in order to attain cheaper build costs. The result is that the maturation of a product does not necessarily lead to a better product (counter to everything we are advertised to believe).
Slashdot Mirror
FYI, in case you haven't seen this, Todd Rogers sits with Ben Heck, using Ben's hacked 2600 to precisely control the game to try to recreate Roger's time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
With limited field experience, design of a first generation device is overbuilt to ensure meeting "expected life" requirements. As field experience builds, engineers/designers learn where they can substitute cheaper parts where they have less impact on "expected life". Fortunately, in many circumstances, the high cost of first generation technology coincides with the smaller field of competition. As price pressure builds, either through competition or by striving to maximize profit margins, future designs get closer to the expected life requirements which are usually shorter than the actual lifetime of the initial incarnations. In highly competitive arenas, there is pressure to reduce the expected life requirement in order to attain cheaper build costs. The result is that the maturation of a product does not necessarily lead to a better product (counter to everything we are advertised to believe).