The first thing that comes to mind for me is that I feel that all the surface-mount Arduino-like things that have come out (like Arduino pro, etc.) defeat the purpose a little. Once you have a micro soldered to a board (especially sm) then you lose the capability to easily slip the chip out and put it into a dedicated circuit you've grown in your own garden. In my mind, a dev board is what it says - for developing a project. Then when you're done you put the programmed chip into your finished product and slip a blank one back in.
So, for me I'd say that maybe what they could do is to install a socket on the dev board for the micro so it can be exchanged. Maybe sistered to that idea they could make something like a proto board with a few components attached to power it and break the legs out for soldering your circuit up (like a powered proto shield, or like the dev board minus the programming circuitry). That board would have their shmart board traces for easily soldering the micro in once it's programmed (the programming wouldn't be necessary anymore, but of course you could tweak it via ISP if desired). That would at least allow us to use the smaller form factor for developing and using in a project, while still providing some of the nice things a dev board is supposed to have.
Arduino-capable may mean you're limited to the few chips "sanctioned" by the Arduino court, or maybe they could pick whatever chip they want and make it compatible with a plugin - like the teensy, but with a non-proprietary bootloader of course. To me, any firmware or the like that's not open-source defeats the purpose of Arduino too, so that is just a no-no, unless they want to reduce sales. Anyway, just having a dev-board you have the pleasure of soldering your own smd chip in from a choice of three is just silly. To fit the shmart board niche, I'd say it ought to be a two-piece item - the dev board with a socket, and the "project boards" that contain the micro, power circuitry, and proto-board area for attaching your project components - maybe rather than perf-board style it could be more smd tracesand pads, maybe bridged from top to bottom, to enable a really small board for tidy projects.
And if it was cheaper than the other shmart board products for what it is, then they might even sell some. Shmart board stuff is kinda cool for an idea, but wow is it pricey for what it is. To me anyway.
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