well... yes, hobbyists have more choices about what to use - a 555 or a PIC or a laptop - and there's more bang for the $ with the new arm cortex chips. But whe

well... yes, hobbyists have more choices about what to use - a 555 or a PIC or a laptop - and there's more bang for the $ with the new arm cortex chips. But when it comes to products, there are some very serious constraints with pricing and power usage. you can run a 555 on a single AAA battery and draw microamps, costs pennies, have multiple suppliers and have less complexity too. there are plenty of times you'd want that over a microprocessor. Interestingly, from discussions with toy designers (barbies and such, with talking or moving parts) they all use the same 4-bit processor core that has a crummy audio playback module, some i/o and sensors. 4 bit! but its dirt cheap and well understood.