There's semiconductor fab companies that manufacture the wafers in the USA, but still ship them to Asia for packaging and testing, which requires less labor skill and investment. See this Micron video for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvf29R7nXlM

Obviously power consumption is important but performance is also very important. An Atom is an extremely cheap CPU that doesn't deserve to go in a $1000 laptop, like I said. Otherwise you can take the argument to silliness by asking why Apple didn't go with ARM or something.

I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price, considering that the Air comes with an SSD and a Sandy Bridge CPU.

Honestly, who cares? You're mischaracterizing the DRM feature as something that is a backdoor into your computer that can what, spy on you? Remotely disable your computer? I haven't seen a single source demonstrate that their DRM feature does this.

Atoms are friggin slow compared to a regular CPU and should only be used for sub-$400 netbooks, not $1000 laptops. One of the great things about the Air is that it doesn't use some dumbed down CPU, it's just a regular Sandy Bridge clocked down.

A lot more information here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5077/arms-malit658-gpu-in-2013-up-to-10x-faster-than-mali400

Skip the middleman

http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Amazon-Sells-Kindle-Fire-at-Low-Profit-Margin-to-Promote-Online-Merchandize-Sales.aspx

Processors nowadays are limited by the thermal dissipation limits, instead of how many transistors they can fit on a chip. Transistor scaling was supposed to keep power usage the same while increasing density, but supply voltages have stopped decreasing, so the power efficiency gains are very low. Thus it is now important to think about power efficiency: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/13/2148202/whither-moores-law-introducing-koomeys-law

Seriously? Less surface area on an already huge connector is going to magically attenuate the signal? I really don't think you know what you're talking about... We're talking about milliohms of resistance here. Nothing your ears can detect.

Now if there were intermittent contact rubbing issues, then sure, you'd hear scratching as it makes and breaks connection. But if there's enough constant contact then it's negligible.

Are you seriously advocating that companies like Apple stop innovating in making their products smaller than ever? A one-third reduction in thickness would be great. If you don't want something so thin, then you can purchase larger MP3 players which become lower in price once the new fancy thin ones come out.

Foxconn's factories are a mini-city. I'm sure if you compare US city suicide rates to Foxconn mini-city suicide rates, they'd be comparable. It's only really an outrage if their suicide rate was 3x or more higher than US suicide rates.

I dislike Apple software but as an electrical engineer, I'm a huge fan of their hardware.

You do realize that all computer companies outsource their manufacturing work to the likes of Foxconn, not just Apple right?

On the suicide note from your other troll post: the suicide rate at the Foxconn factories are less than the suicide rate at US universities.

It'd be pretty useful for augmented reality, or position indoors.

I wonder if they know that FPGA's are typically only half the online price listed if you talk to a distributor. I'm not sure what kind of minimum order quantity you need though.

No comment about that. I was just pointing out that profitability should theoretically be the same as time goes on. Of course, whether it does will have a huge effect on the long-time viability of bitcoin mining for profit. Even if it only lasts a few more years, you can still make 100% returns on investment in only a year which is pretty good.

Sorry, a few typos: 500 watts -> $438 per year in energy costs, which makes for a total profit of $1,228.