Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

I called that shot the first time I read about it. There are zero successful modular consumer electronics products. The near-trivial analog connectivity between stereo components is as close as modularity has ever come in that business, and that's really an example of how, at best, modularity attracts customers that resemble audiophiles (and wannabes), which may not be an ideal target market.

View on HN

Desktop computers are still pretty popular. Especially among PC gamers. That is the only example I can think of to refute your comment.

Edit: but it only works because of the space in a PC tower. It doesn't work for laptops, and I was sort of in the same boat as you. I couldn't imagine it would work for phones. Specifically that they are so space constrained.

Yes, they are modular. But the reason laptops took over the mainstream PC market is that modularity had an incremental cost, and was VERY seldom used, and when it was used, it caused problems that are relatively expensive compared to the cost of the PC. It was easier to make a range of non-modular products to cover any variability in needs.

Now modularity in PCs is the domain of gaming PCs, plus a few speciality niches. Gamers as a market could be seen as analogous to audiophiles: a bit cranky and hard to please.

And in the case of stereos, bigger and heavier components wasn't really a bug. In fact, to many it was seen as something of a feature.

What about DSLRs? Modular lens, modular flash etc?

Well, the modular part is not really the electronic part. Interchangeable lenses go back to before the days of Ansel Adams.

DSLR bodies go through a release cycle that is not much longer than major phone models, these days.

You can download firmware updates for lenses as well as camera bodies, and with MFT there's even an open standard for interchangeable lenses/bodies across manufacturers.

That modularity is a pain in the ass that only photo snobs (like me) will put up with. For example: the RAW quality on my Sony a6000 was crap until I checked the firmware version, and it was several versions behind. Doing the update appeared to brick the camera, and the updating software is a nightmare. Solving the bricking problem took a non-trivial effort. Replace "camera" with "GPU card" and you get a typical story about modular PC problems.

One reason to put up with this crap is that you can save thousands of dollars buying nice old glass for your nice new camera. But even though the glass lasts forever, once you get 50MP sensors in cameras, old glass that was designed for the best resolution of 35mm film will limit the performance of a 50MP+ image sensor. Soon, photography will be mostly computational, and big old lenses will all be museum pieces.

I don't even want to think about whether I've kept the firmware on my Sony E-mount lenses up to date.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com