Thu Jul 10, 2014 10:44 pm
Now let's see about that being stupid part...
- Apple produce new products with extended functionality but with old one too. And the same form factor.
Apple does not produce 14 year old models anymore. Not to speak about form factors... There is a big difference between a G350 and an iMac. They even use different processor families (PPC vs. Intel) and a totally different architecture.
- Why motherboards have the standard form factor, ports placing and other features
Because they are standardized so they can fit in any ATX case, use the same operating systems and sell them in millions of pieces. And the port placement is not standard. That's why you get your little shiny metal sheet with holes for each type of motherboard (btw, computers usually don't come with COM ports anymore...).
- Why 386 processor was under mass production and supporting (for example in Linux) til 2014 year?
Because (a) someone had a big order going on, talking about millions of pieces/year and (b) the 386 instruction set works an almost all modern processors, so it is easier to write code for it.
FYI: Intel stopped producing the 386 in 2007.
- Why Intel makes the embedded Wi-Fi and Bluetooth models in only 2 wide known form factors for about 12 years?
Again because there is a consortium which standardized that forms, to be able to sell them to millions of customers per year for a lot of devices.
- Why Freescale company made a strong ARM IMX.6 processor and decide to produce it til 2024?
That's the architecture only. Like Intel x86 and PowerPC. But anyway, they sell them many millions of pieces/year.
And the i.MX 6 series was launched in 2011. 5 years is a normal life span for an embedded processor. Try buying today an i.MX1 from Freescale and see if you can get one...
And now the other side of the game and the MILLIONS part:
If you could absorb at least a couple of tens of thousands, not millions, of 411s a year, be rest assured Mikrotik would still produce them specially for you.
A production line is expensive to set up and to use and produces in the order of maybe 1000 devices/day, so the production goes in batches. If the demand is less than a certain number, you better use that line for something else and don't set it up at all, because you will block your production resources and build up stocks instead of making money. Keep in mind that it is sometimes cheaper to throw products away than to store them...
So since the demand was low and other products selled better, they just stopped it. It brings more money NOT to produce them. A few hundred devices a year are worthless to produce unless you get a fantastic price for them.
Even if it sounds harsh, it is economics: unless one can make a decent profit, no one gives a damn about a small company in a foreign country which is insignificant as a customer.