Although my main gig is software, I've also been manufacturing electronic music gadgets for 15 years. The most significant difference in thinking for me was, for hardware, always keeping in mind "this item is being shipped across the world, must work perfectly upon arrival and for hopefully a long time after that, and is almost impossible to update without the customer incurring hassle or the company incurring expenses". Contrast that to software where problems are generally easily able to be fixed and - most importantly - can be updated almost instantly.

Especially after some recently problems with my hardware business that necessitated the return of some units for repair, and the hold-up of manufacturing while we worked out what was wrong, I've come to realise that the easily-updateable nature of modern day software really gives us such power and flexibility, it should never be taken for granted.