In a perfect world this stuff would all be standardized and modular, with documented replacement parts.
Nearly all random consumer items could be done with about 15 different PCBs, total, with a dollar or two of extra cost from unused features.
A fan and a frother and a keyboard cleaning blower are all just USB chargers with a BLDC driver.
A microwave and a washing machine can share the same controller, people probably won't complain too much about the extra cost if they understand that it means the board will always be replaceable, even 50 years from now.
They could even run some kind of bytecode VM that they just don't change, so the same firmware still works in different CPUs.
Everything could be open, optionally smarthome integrated with a firmware update, and swappable like IBM PC parts.
It doesn't appear to be the kind of things businesses do, but from a technical and consumer perspective it seems totally feasible.
eternityforest•1h ago
Nearly all random consumer items could be done with about 15 different PCBs, total, with a dollar or two of extra cost from unused features.
A fan and a frother and a keyboard cleaning blower are all just USB chargers with a BLDC driver.
A microwave and a washing machine can share the same controller, people probably won't complain too much about the extra cost if they understand that it means the board will always be replaceable, even 50 years from now.
They could even run some kind of bytecode VM that they just don't change, so the same firmware still works in different CPUs.
Everything could be open, optionally smarthome integrated with a firmware update, and swappable like IBM PC parts.
It doesn't appear to be the kind of things businesses do, but from a technical and consumer perspective it seems totally feasible.