No, Microsoft's domination is down to pure luck.

If Compaq hadn't cloned the PC BIOS, or the IBM PC been a flop, Microsoft would have been just a page in history now along with Lotus, Ashton-Tate and various other software houses that got borged by IBM and other large companies. With no IBM PC, MS-DOS would never have sold much, and would never have been the "Microsoft tax" that bankrolled the first versions Windows and Microsoft Office. Even Intel might be a secondary player today, it may have been Zilog who became Chipzilla as they became the preferred supplier for CP/M machines and their 16 bit (and later 32 bit) follow ons, with companies like NEC or SGS or possibly Mostek being where AMD is now as they were Zilog second sources. And Digital Research (CP/M vendor) would be the big bad monopolist instead of Microsoft.

The size and construction of the head probably makes quite a lot of difference. I have an old Dallas D banjo ukulele (a George Formby branded one, no less) and the head had an inner hoop in it which makes the effective area of the head a bit smaller than the entire diameter. As such the overtones are softer and it sounds less "banjoey" (but still very different from a standard ukulele). The other consequence of the banjo uke head is that if you play a chord like F# where one string is not strummed, you need to mute the string that's not played otherwise the head will cause the string to vibrate and make the chord sound awful.

You can buy hardware from a factory a la carte. I've done it. There are quite a few companies doing prototyping services where you can do this for easily affordable sums of money.

I've had a small run (100 units) of an ethernet board I designed made in a factory. The board was a 100mm x 60mm 4 layer PCB. I supplied the gerbers and a BOM and a month later I had 100 boards back (I did put on the through hole parts myself). It cost me a couple of grand to do, they could do it cheaper than I could if I had ordered the parts off Farnell and soldered them onto the boards myself. Hardware is much easier to do today on a shoestring budget than it was even 5 years ago.

Now it's different if you're needing an ASIC - then you're looking into spending a couple of million. But off the shelf BTLE SoCs already exist.

The thing I find implausible about this Kickstarter is that they are attempting to break the laws of physics, not that you can't make a pretty decent sized prototype run on the funding they had.

They say their device requires an average of 36 microamps. Even if the chip they use only runs on 1 volt, that would be 36 microwatts (it's going to be more than that, I expect their chip is more like 1.8v). They claim the tag will just run on the typical ambient signal from things like WiFi access points. Their antenna at most is going to be half an inch on each side, and the most they can possibly harvest will be less than 1 microwatt even with 100% efficiency.

The antenna won't be much use for getting power off broadcast radio signals. It's far too tiny. Don't forget a crystal set requires not only a very long antenna suitable for the AM radio band, but a good connection to ground, too, so that it can make enough current to run the crystal radio. This thing doesn't have a ground connection.

They plan to power a dogtag sized Bluetooth device by harvesting typical WiFi signal power.

The antenna will be at most about half an inch on each side (0.0125 meters, for a total area of 0.00015625 square meters.
Near a wireless network station used in homes and offices, the field intensity is typically below 0.5 mW per square meter.
Further upthread, someone posted the power required by a modern, low power Bluetooth chip, in its lowest powered sleep mode it requires a current of 900nA and 1mA when idle. Let's say it operates on 1 volt (it's probably 1.2v) so we will actually underestimate its power requirements by saying in its lowest powered sleep mode it requires only 900nW (that's 0.0000009 watts).
At 0.5mW (or 0.005 watts) per sq. m, the maximum energy a dogtag sized device, assuming 100% efficiency (not possible) will be able to harvest is 0.005 * 0.00015625 watts of power. This will work out to about 780nW.
780nW is less than 900nW. QED.

And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt (100% power efficiency, and a lower working voltage for the Bluetooth chip that it probably uses, and only considering the chip being in sleep mode, its lowest possible power mode, and not considering at all any other circuits the device will need - it will need more than just a bluetooth module, it'll need at least a minimal microcontroller of some sort).

How little stuff has actually changed.

The image of the very first Computerworld, the first page has a story about a patent lawsuit.

It's a Hardley Rideable, not a bike!

You'd not want a hub motor because it increases unsprung weight which has an adverse effect on handling. Same with electric cars - Tesla for instance doesn't use hub motors but the traction motor for the Model S is attached to the structure of the body.

Then again, we are talking about a Hardly Rideable rather than a motorcycle...

Well, if anything organized enough to convey information implies that an intelligence was behind it, who created God? Who created the creator of God? Who created the creator of the creator of God? And the creator of the creator of the creator?

Other humans and living creatures have given me far more comfort after losing a loved one than a mythical being ever can.

Sure, if you're getting an off-the-shelf board or a board designed by someone else.

However, I will note that the Xilinx Spartan 6 user manual has about half a dozen pages devoted to how to lay out the PCB *for the configuration clock signal alone*.

At least it wasn't irrational.

The world is analogue. Someone's going to have to design the analogue front end to your digital system. Even if you have a ready made analogue front end, you still have to understand the analogue world if you ever hope to design high speed digital systems. When it comes to the actual voltage levels on your PCB and signal integrity, the nice clean world of software where you can just expect the hardware to be predictable and just work with no effort goes away, you have to have a little bit of a clue about the analogue side if you want your high speed digital signals to reach their destinations intact. Another example is your (A)DSL line, it might be called "Digital subscriber line" but it required analogue design to get the signal from your modem (and it is a modem - it modulates and demodulates the signal) to the DSLAM in your phone exchange.

You might not need as many analogue engineers as you may have (say) in the 90s, but they'll never go away because the world is analogue, and the analogue world constantly impinges on your digital signals especially once you pass single digit MHz speeds.

I picked up a used Tektronix 100MHz 1Gsample/sec digital storage scope for around $300. It's an older one with a CRT but it's a *GOOD* scope and has a good analogue front end. I recently upgraded to an LCD version of the same scope (since I wanted enough portability such that it would fit in an airline carry-on) for about the equivalent of $600 (again Tektronix 100MHz 1GSample/sec). The newer LCD based one also has much better firmware. But not withstanding, the old CRT one is still a good instrument and not horrifically expensive. There are always dozens of them on ebay.