I agree with everything you're saying, but if you consider that this is a single-person company, the "hardware is as hard as you make it" statement makes sense. He saw a need, found out that it would be feasible to make a product to fill that need with very simple hardware, and chose to make the product. If solving the problem would've required hardware outside beyond their budget or skill level to make then presumably they wouldn't have pursued the whole project. Which I guess is sort of the point, but of course the title of the blog post doesn't really convey that.