If you’re making very low end HW maybe this is true. Because HW is something that you put into the real world there are other constraints such as power, cooling, space, security of supply, ability to ramp, cost, reliability, etc. The calculus for HW selection is much more involved than simply SW. Good SW/FW can be performant on much less capable HW but it does mean that SW engineers need to understand more about the HW. This is a very rare skill in 2025. Most SW engineers I’ve encountered cannot explain stack vs heap. Furthermore even fewer understand how to use malloc correctly.

> Good SW/FW can be performant on much less capable HW but it does mean that SW engineers need to understand more about the HW.

It also takes much more time and requires a different set of talents. Often just using a bigger chip is better than investing the R&D.

The best analogy I can make is trying to make your own custom rendering engine and then code the UI in it or just use a browser and writing JS. Even if you do make it, your own custom rendering engine will probably cut a lot of features like fancy animations.

Blaming hardware people rubs me the wrong way.

People just use android and javascript front-end.

It's not crappy hardware by miles, crappy hardware as a category doesn't even exist these days.

It's hardware that can run everything necessary hundreds of times over, but shitty bloatland sloppy javascript it + android bloat it can not.