| ▲ | biosboiii 5 days ago | |
The most interesting takeaway from this project and the Mac touchpad actually measuring it's pressure in grams[1] is how Apple seems to prioritise it's ability to deliver new features in later software releases rather than their BOM. I work in the automotive industry, and for volume products the price-cutting is really brutal. If you can save a cent somewhere you will, because that cent multiplied by 8 million cars a year is a sizeable amount of money. This seems to be generally true for most OEMs of hardware products, but not for Apple. Apple could have cut costs by just using a magnet and a reed switch/hall effect sensor, because it is not using the exact angle of the screen anyway (afaik?), but they chose not to. They could have implemented their "3d Touch" by using a simpler circuit which just indicates if the press was really hard or soft. But again they chose not too. And they sell over 20 million Macs per year, so they really sacrifice a sizeable amount of profit | ||