an SOC all in one design will be more reliable the vast majority of the time. Who knows what long term will mean, but it's a very very solid base using proven tech that puts it at a good price point. For ops, it could become cost effective to just have spare main boards for field fast replacement, easy interconnect cabling, fewer components.. it's really easy to see how it's a very well thought out design.

When did being an 'it guy' make people experts in embedded systems? There are so many advantages to the SOC design it's hard to even seriously compare that vs a full on PC for mission critical applications. The standard issue way that most smart devices are joined to home networks is very simple and easily implemented across platforms. Not sure how you'd do it with an iBeacon but you certainly could via BLE. Somehow golden tee manages to get online safely

I think everyone over time will understand what stern's really done here with an embedded platform but it will take time for the 'IT guys' to accept it. They've managed to build everything necessary to do a game just as complex as woz with a fraction of the hardware. Something that should ring very loudly with the IT guy crowd is the whole concept of not repairing a faulty desktop computer because it's vastly more cost effective to just replace it if it's out of warranty. Stern's on the right track with that for operators. When the entire system can be replaced in minutes that's where you get value. Sure, a stick of ram is cheap, what's expensive is the time and labor it took a field tech or home user to finally FIND that is the problem in an overly complex design. If 3 hours of labor costs more than just replacing the board that's a savings, with Woz it's very easy to spend 3 hours trying to source an issue.