[Arm-netbook] why are notebook devices not usb?

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 10:02 PM,  <ronwirring at safe-mail.net> wrote:

>> > Money. It's cheaper to do it that way..
>>
>>  yyep.  this s pretty much.. errr... on the money
>
>
> An unforeseen answer. I thought it would be lower
> priced to make an usb device one time and several notebook
> manufacturers would buy the device for their notebook.
> The going for thinner argument sounds relevant.
> I thought making proprietary devices would make it more difficult
> and expensive for other manufacturers to make the same devices.

 exactly.  thus raising the barrier for the other manufacturers and,
thus, the logic goes, making sure that they get more market share.

> Remarkable that it is lower priced for a manufacturer to make
> a device by themselves.

 there are only a handful of actual mechanical keyboard
design/manufacturing companies, the main one i know about is chicony,
so they do at least use the same suppliers.  so why don't they
collaborate and cooperate??

 i phoned one of them up one day, just to see what happened.  i wanted
to use one of their "no-brand" keyboard designs, i explained what i
was doing, and why.

 the reason i asked for "no-brand" is so as not to step on the
COPYRIGHTED NATURE OF THE DESIGN PROCESS THAT THEY DO FOR THEIR
BILLION-DOLLAR CUSTOMERS.

 a manager higher up the chain still said "no", but that's not the point.

 the point is: *despite* using the same suppliers they only do so
because it is more cost-competitivee to do so.  if they could possibly
make damn sure that their quotes competitive edge quotes is maintained
through total secrecy and total incompatibility by not using shared
parts that would result in a chance of competitors making more money
than them they would do so.

 basically you're forgetting that these companies are scrambling and
squabbling for tiny profit margins, ron, the consequences of that
being that they do *not* want to collaborate.  on anything.

 what they do with chicony is, if they do have to share the same
mechanical frame and key layout (3rd-party "no-brand" designs like
Benq) they *totally* redesign the flexible PCB, including a total new
layout, total new connector positioning and so on.

 as the position of the keyboard connector is an absolutely critical
part of the design which is influenced by far more factors than can be
listed here the only way to "fix" that is to LITERALLY order a
complete new flexible PCB for the keyboard.

 l.