Modular Products Suck (2025)

Google's project Ara was a marketing gimmick. All phones are modular, because it's much cheaper and easier to manufacture that way than putting everything on one monolithic circuit board. (or really, one monolithic semiconductor, if yo want the true antithesis of modularity)

The camera modules and display modules are even semi-standardized, with no widely adopted standard for the form factors, but standards like MIPI CSI and DSI allowing any phone processor to connect to any phone camera or display. The eMMC interface is equally standardized; while phones generally have it soldered in, some SBCs do have it socketed.

That modularity is similar to the modularity in software libraries and APIs. It significantly reduces engineering complexity by allowing a single design to be reused until it is outdated, instead of needing to design everything from scratch every time.

That is a grand statement That must be specific to some specific product that the author has used and can not be a general statement.

What is modular? parts that have been separated to allow for exchange or modification . Lamp that can be detached from the the light fixture. For music speaker, amplifier, tuner, receiver.. etc; Battery that be changed. For furniture, modular allow for flexible configuration. For cell phones, not allowing the battery to be changed is a crime that has not gone unpunished. Even reactors are going modular where components are plugged in to increase the output or whatever.

> Electronic musicians get excited about modular synths, but hardly anyone uses them to make good music in practice. The opinionated microKORG (right) has beaten Eurorack chassis sales (left) by an estimated 100x.

Quotes like this really beg the question of whether or not the author knows what a microKORG sounds like, and why musicians refuse to discuss it today. I expected more from a competitive philosopher.