Reminds me of a trade-show where we exhibited a new product about ten years ago. The product in question was designed from the ground-up for the real-time processing of very high resolution images. This entailed custom FPGA boards with gobs of custom and innovative Verilog code to make it all go. We also took pride in designing a very nice lightweight aluminum enclosure for the product. Price was about US $8,000. All up, about a year and a half of development time and a non-trivial financial investment.
The product was introduced at this trade-show and it was a success. However, of the hundreds of people I spoke to at the booth only one made a lasting impression that I remember ten years later. This Italian buyer comes over to get a demo. After a 20 minute presentation he asks for the price. Then he picks-up the unit and says: "8000 dollars! Why so light!".
He actually thought we were charging too much based on how light the thing was. Never mind that there was a year and a half of heavy-duty development behind it. He had a mental image of what an $8,000 product was supposed to weigh and that was the end of it.
We switched to heavier steel enclosures (cheaper too!). I couldn't count the number of times I heard people make comments about the weight corresponding in some way to the price of the product.
I've noticed the same thing with audio amplifiers. I just moved into a relatively small apartment, and have been shopping around for a compact stereo amplifier that apparently doesn't exist—good-sounding audio seems to exist in this weird market niche where the hugeness of the black metal box that used to house vacuum tubes and now is just ICs and empty space is a feature, not a bug.
I think there is still a need for higher quality audio hardware to be larger. My amplifier isn't that old (certainly not old enough for vacuum tubes) and I can assure you, there is not a lot of empty space. Power necessitates large transformers and capacitors, and produces more heat, all of which would be challenging in reducing size.
That said, while there aren't many high quality amplifiers with a smaller footprint, there are a few on the market much reduced in height that are still good quality.
The same goes for speakers. Generally quality requires size (although a lot of that is due to the increased volume that is expected to come with expense), but there are a few neat tricks to make small ones that buck the trend.
Sounds like this probably works in software too. I can imagine if someone pays for a software product online, that if the file is only 2MB big, he'd think he was ripped off.
Meanwhile, if the file is 100MB big, and takes a while to download, he'd feel satisfied that he got his money's worth.
The product was introduced at this trade-show and it was a success. However, of the hundreds of people I spoke to at the booth only one made a lasting impression that I remember ten years later. This Italian buyer comes over to get a demo. After a 20 minute presentation he asks for the price. Then he picks-up the unit and says: "8000 dollars! Why so light!".
He actually thought we were charging too much based on how light the thing was. Never mind that there was a year and a half of heavy-duty development behind it. He had a mental image of what an $8,000 product was supposed to weigh and that was the end of it.
We switched to heavier steel enclosures (cheaper too!). I couldn't count the number of times I heard people make comments about the weight corresponding in some way to the price of the product.