"The original Adept had six buttons. However, ever since we released the original Adept, the PCBs have contained two unpopulated lands for additional switches. Our intention was always to eventually move to eight buttons. The A+ finally lives up to the ambition that we set for ourselves back in 2023."
So they designed it to have 8 switches from the start - but then hid 2 of them so they'd have a "new version" once the sales of the old one slowed down. I don't know if that's genius or sad capitalism...
This kind of BOM variant stuff happens all the time so you can buy a bunch of bare boards and sit on them. You don't need to do another expensive board run if firmware development catches up or if you decide you want to depopulate some stuff for a cheaper model or populate more stuff for a more expensive model.
It's difficult to see greed being a motivator from a group that literally releases the source code for everything.
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This paragraph is wild to me:
"The original Adept had six buttons. However, ever since we released the original Adept, the PCBs have contained two unpopulated lands for additional switches. Our intention was always to eventually move to eight buttons. The A+ finally lives up to the ambition that we set for ourselves back in 2023."
So they designed it to have 8 switches from the start - but then hid 2 of them so they'd have a "new version" once the sales of the old one slowed down. I don't know if that's genius or sad capitalism...
This kind of BOM variant stuff happens all the time so you can buy a bunch of bare boards and sit on them. You don't need to do another expensive board run if firmware development catches up or if you decide you want to depopulate some stuff for a cheaper model or populate more stuff for a more expensive model.
It's difficult to see greed being a motivator from a group that literally releases the source code for everything.