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I had clients who were going to bargain for less than a penny

For ten million units, a penny is $100,000. You could give an engineer an entire quarter to come up with a software debounce for less than that.

That shit adds up. BOM costs are everything for consumer goods.

I've always wondered why the same logic doesn't apply to using a commercial BIOS. Doesn't the per-unit cost for someone like Compal add up to more than the value in using a customized Phoenix firmware? Even with UEFI the branded option is generally used.

And if you make $10 on each of those that's .1%. Or even if it's only $1 that's 1%. So be it!

I don't want to encourage shitty design for pennies at any level.

Stop making shitty shit.

There aren’t that many 1% in 100% or even that many 0.1% in 100%.

Saving a penny on the keyboard will be one of hundreds of places where a penny was saved. Good engineering and product design is about trade offs and compromise, not taking absolute positions about what’s shitty or not.

Exactly. Opportunity cost. Maybe saving a penny on this portion of the keyboard let’s them spend a penny on some other part of the design that might have even more positive customer impact.

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