51–60 of 89 posts
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Difference is the iPhone has insane margins. You want to pay $35 or $100?
It's not the PCB that's expensive. It's the components on it.
Amortising the tooling / artwork costs into big volumes helps, but even then the PCB is usually one of the more expensive items on the parts list.
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Sounds idyllic; but what are you going to run? The latest Office suite? Photoshop? Whatever you answer, the cost dwarfs the device, and swamps its processing power. So, we're talking about teaching kids to use some special kid-computer with software/tools they will never encounter ever again. What tools are these? A BASIC interpreter?
> Whatever you answer, the cost dwarfs the device, and swamps its processing power. Linux costs 0, and runs on far less capable devices than the RaspberryPi.
"What Linux distros will be supported at launch? Debian, Fedora and ArchLinux will be supported from the start." (Raspberry Pi FAQ)
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Sounds idyllic; but what are you going to run? The latest Office suite? Photoshop? Whatever you answer, the cost dwarfs the device, and swamps its processing power. So, we're talking about teaching kids to use some special kid-computer with software/tools they will never encounter ever again. What tools are these? A BASIC interpreter?
> Whatever you answer, the cost dwarfs the device, and swamps its processing power. Linux costs 0, and runs on far less capable devices than the RaspberryPi.
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uh, you can run other OSs on Apple hardware. It's a little bit trickier because of EFI but it's not hard. What you can't do (Apple say) is run Apple OSs on non-Apple hardware.
I don't want the Apple OS. Remove it completely from the hardware, make the firmware more friendly to non-Apple OS, then I'll buy more Apple hardware. Other than NetBSD, I was not aware it's "easy" to run other OS's on Apple hardware. Knowing Apple, I'm still not sure I believe it. But I will investigate. Thanks for the FYI.
I run linux (arch now, but once ubuntu) on a MacBook5,4. It's somewhat harder to get set up if you want to dual boot (the dual partitioning scheme is finicky, and although linux doesn't need it, OS X forces you to use it if there's a foreign OS, ugh..). See http://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleMacbook and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook .
Only one proprietary driver (for wireless) is needed - the rest Just Works. (And flash plays smoother than on OS X :P )
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> Whatever you answer, the cost dwarfs the device, and swamps its processing power. Linux costs 0, and runs on far less capable devices than the RaspberryPi.
So, Photoshop for linux? Mac dev tools? What apps?
Why don't thes people release their files as they work on them? Why don't they resell the bare SoCs at cost or a slight markup so we can use them for other projects? Something has always struck me as fishy about this whole thing.
We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.
How does selling SoCs at cost or a slight markup serve their aims? My guess, it doesn't.
What is fishy about that?
Cool. Portable. Cheap. Can run Quake II. But what does that get you? Still need to plug into a monitor, keyboard, mouse. So you can only use it where those things are. For real portability, how about an SD system thumb drive I can plug into any computer, and it boots as my computer. That would be portable. Useful for a student lab, at my Mom's house, in a hotel. Just a thought.
Keyboards and mice are pretty cheap these days. Monitors, not as much, but this can work with TVs, which are surprisingly common, even in the developing world.
If they think this PCB is "packed" they haven't looked hard enough at a smartphone teardown. Go look at the iPhone 4S teardown: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone-4S-Teardown/6610/2
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It's not the PCB that's expensive. It's the components on it.
That's often not true; PCBs can be a significant cost on the bill of materials for a gadget. Amortising the tooling / artwork costs into big volumes helps, but even then the PCB is usually one of the more expensive items on the parts list.
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It's not the PCB that's expensive. It's the components on it.
Custom small-time boards get expensive quickly when you shoot for tighter tolerances, which are necessary for truly tight spacing. If Raspberry Pi expects to sell 10 million units, then even a fancy board will cost nothing, but I doubt they are planning on such numbers...
Especially if Apple have every super high-end pick and place robot booked for the next n years!