Until now Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades. That's one human generation, and it is also the span of time between when something first hits and when it sees its first retro revival. That isn't a coincidence.
I'm starting to get a little excited! This is going to be quite a decade.
> What a wild take. I guess that explains the massive and growing popularity of iOS over that same time period.
Wild take, indeed.
I seem to recall something about Apple releasing a sub-$600 laptop so popular that weeks after it was announced it's backordered for more than 30 days.
> Until now Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades.
Going back to 2008:
> But the most fun on the conference call came when he parried analysts’ questions about new product areas that Apple might or might not enter. A recurring question among Apple watchers for decades has been, “When is Apple going to introduce a low-cost computer?
> Mr. Jobs answered that decades-old complaint by stating, “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.” He argued instead that the company’s mission was to add more value for customers at current price points.
There is more to it than just accounting for inflation. Apple has done a number of other things in the meantime, including designing and manufacturing their own chips, that have changed the economies of this. Until the very recent RAM price explosion, a sub $500 computer in 2008 was probably more like a sub $350 computer today.
Inflation goes up - someone who could buy a $500 computer in 2008 should be able to buy a $766 or so computer today (cite: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com)
But today, if you can finagle the EDU discount, you can get a MacBook Neo for $499 ($600 without) which apparently isn't really compromised in any major way.
> Inflation goes up - someone who could buy a $500 computer in 2008 should be able to buy a $766 or so computer today
It should also be noted that technological advances tend to be deflationary in general: regardless of real or nominal dollars, the chips/storage/etc you can buy today were sometimes not even available in the past at any price.
True, a high-end 386 would have cost upwards of $10k when it first came out, but a MacBook Neo probably beats the pants off a supercomputer from the same era.
Yes, I'm aware how inflation works, you missed my point.
Many technology things have effectively gotten cheaper over time, when you account for overall performance/specs/capabilities/etc.
The "we don't know how to make a $500 computer that doesn't suck" statement of today would be more like "we don't know how to make a $350 computer that doesn't suck".
People want another "iphone"-level impact. I would bet there never will be. A device that does everything that we carry with us will also be like an evolution of the smart phone.
The only possibility I can imagine is a home robot that takes off.
The iPhone was basically the apotheosis of the Internet. I don’t think we will ever see another consumer product able to have an impact like that unless there is some other kind of “substructure” technology with a vast amount of untapped potential lying around.
Even other transformational technological advancements, like home robotics, I don’t think will be encompassed by a single device the way smartphones could. Home robots will be scattered across a bunch of different robotic devices doing independent activities. You’ll have purpose-built laundry robots, vacuum robots, cooking robots, driving robots, etc. but not a single company doing a single thing.
If I could do it all over again I would jump at the chance to live in that $5000 roach pit instead of wasting my life in the middle of bumfuckstan. It is one of my biggest regrets in life. Its insane how such a tiny fraction of land produces so much of the culture the world consumes.
"HR" does not set your professional obligations. If you need to be drunk to talk this honestly, you are not a "senior" nor a mentor, but an incipient alcoholic and a coward.
Then again, this person is obviously also lying to claim the engineer title - sit down, "data science!" You're only even here because Product prefers being lied to - so that really sets an ironically honest baseline on how seriously anyone should be taking any of this farrago.
Yes, Freenet is my project, in fact I've spent the last few years building a sequel to it[1].
I've enjoyed building things for as long as I can remember, particularly if it solves a hard problem in an interesting way - and at least has the potential to make a difference to people.
You will live to regret your moral cowardice. Specifically, you'll regret the wrong choices it leads you to make. The guilt you feel now is a warning. Don't stay lazy, or that guilt will eventually be augmented by shame.
All we can do is aim to be better, to aim to be perfect is putting obstacles in your own path for your own smug sense of satisfaction, while the world still burns the same.
Unless you can change the many, including those most intransigent, you have to respect that just changing yourself, is something you only do for yourself. I don't see how its "moral cowardice" for me to own a car so I can ferry around my 84 year old father, so he doesn't have to drive, or to flush my toilet after every time I piss.
I mean I don't use that car for any other purpose. My carbon footprint is probably around or below average for someone in Europe. I eat meat maybe with half of my meals and rarely eat beef or pork. The last time I got on a plane was in 2018 for work. Last holiday via a flight was I think in 2012 and was about 3 hours each way.
I think the average American or even maybe Chinese citizen has a much higher footprint than me these days. I could do better, but to do so would impact my life negatively, win me nothing but smug self-indulgence and change nothing in terms of the long term outcomes of this planet.
So yea, what guilt, what "moral cowardice"? I wouldn't sneer at someone with a higher footprint than me (outside of maybe SUV owners because srsly wtf is that shit) because its collectively where we're culpable, not individually.
Its 2026 and like 30% or more of the citizens of the global super power don't believe in global warming. We're fucked and nothing I do or you do is going to stop that outcome. We probably should start seriously thinking about geo-engineering instead of worrying about moral cowardice.
Moral odium inheres, if nowhere else, in that you insist upon the seductive counsel of despair. The more convincing you make that, the less our fellows will feel themselves able in any meaningful way to act at all. What should I call such encouragement to cowardice, if not culpable?
its not a council of despair, its a council of perspective and a critique of those who offer ineffective solutions that are framed as morality. Those solutions only exist to make their practitioners feel good about themselves but change none of the outcomes.
You are responsible for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your own actions.
I'm not going to point to a TV show about alcoholism to substantiate that. You don't need me to. It is also why manslaughter, though a lesser crime than murder, remains a crime.
You seem to have reduced the very thesis of what I was saying to the point where you excised it entirely.
“Don’t get shitty drunk and then drive” fits just fine.
“Be a technology person who doesn’t use technology because our power isn’t green.” potentially falls on the far side of that line of personal responsibility.
I hear a whole lot of "what I can't" and next to none of "what I can." Not where I'd want to be, but it's no skin off my nose, either. Good luck holding on to your soul - good luck, and I hope you end up not needing it.
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