Hardware BOM Costs
Commenters debate the true cost of hardware products, emphasizing that bill of materials (BOM) and raw components represent only a small fraction of total expenses including development, engineering, supply chain, low-volume production, and manufacturing. They justify high prices, simplified designs, or missing features like knobs by highlighting these hidden costs over retail part prices.
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You're not paying for the raw components... given the incredibly niche audience for this product and the development effort involved it's really cheap (and it looks like they are even hand soldered).
You don't know how much they are paying for components. (Hint: It's not retail)
Probably to keep hardware costs low.
I don't know for this particular case but usually expensive stuff has expensive components too, especially in low quantity
Agree completely that it is a deal breaker. But don’t be too hard on the hardware engineers, sometimes the BOM can not afford the extra 17 cents.
Hardware is cheap. The engineers are more expensive.
> Are knobs and plastic moldings that expensive though?If you consider the entire cost, yes. Every BOM item has a huge cost associated with it, and it's price only a small fraction.Consider that for every item you need to:* secure supply for the next 10 years or so* organize purchasing and put it into the supply chain* design assembly instructions, teach workers how to assemble it* design and implement testing procedures* design and implement diagnostics to figure ou
Not sure. Patent? Hardware cost? Complexity?
Cheaper components, maybe? (If it lets them get by with less memory for example.)
Apple probably doesn't care about the 1c saving by cutting component to bare requirements to be safe. Also you need to include the engineer's time.