Software and hardware

The word “tech” has become a magic word that all kinds of businesses want to associate themselves with this word. To be a “tech”, many companies try to add more features to their products. Moreover, some companies also want their customers and investors to see them more innovative than their competitors, so they try to achieve higher frequencies of upgrading their products than their competitors. There are two approaches of upgrade, one is hardware upgrade, the other is software upgrade.
Both types of upgrade have their constraints. Hardware upgrade faces constraints from nature of materials. Hardware developers and researchers are not god’s, they cannot adjust the properties of materials given by the nature; therefore, after reaching some certain level, developers and researchers have to look for new materials to achieve better performance, and such process is cost and time consuming. On the other hand, software faces constraints from hardware. There is always an upper boundary created by hardware for what software is capable of. However, different industries may find one approach may be easier than the other. For example, how does Tesla makes itself distinguished from other  automakers? The answer is its software. Cars from other brands also have radars and cameras, but Tesla cars use their radars and cameras to enable the autopilot capability.
The importance of software is becoming more significant, especially when the development of hardware is slowing down. Software determines how we experience a product. Hardware determines the limit of a product; however, this limit may not be as limited as we including its maker believe due to our imagination. Better software can dig more potentials out of the hardware. For example, iPhone does not have the largest battery among smartphones, but it uses its operating system to achieve a longer battery life than many other smartphones with larger batteries.
Overall, when the development of hardware is slowing, it does not mean the rate of exploring what we can achieve by technology is slowing. The development in software is pushing hardware and exploring the hardware's capability that we never thought of.