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Wow, thank you for the insider perspective. That's truly horrifying that a $2B company (previously $10B) that depends heavily on software outsourced so much of its core competency like that. Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish. I've worked at two ~$10M companies that used all in-sourced development (i.e. me and my coworkers) and, while not without their faults, were significantly higher functioning.

Also, how the fuck do you brick a device by updating it? Wasn't this problem solved decades ago? You upload the new image and then, only once it's completely transferred and verified, do you atomically switch over to it. Are you telling me that they really made it so that the firmware update overwrites the existing firmware, so that any interruption in the process causes it to go poof? Ugh. I know that requires double the internal memory, but c'mon, this is 2016. The cost of that is some very tiny insignificant fraction of what an RMA costs. Never before in my life have I ever irrevocably bricked a device by updating its firmware.




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