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That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

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Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#311

Post by cloverich »

laumars wrote: post #202
sbuk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advice I give to anyone buying any tech is to buy the best that you can afford, then what you prefer (i.e. Android, iOS, Windows, Mac etc.). If someone on a 'tight budget' determines that an iPhone or an S7 is a priority, who are you to judge?

I'm not judging. I'm just saying £20/m is a lot to some people to counter the point made previously that the investment was only small.

To be clear, I never intended to say that 20 Euro a month would be affordable for everyone. I"m only saying its an objectively small sum of money in a first world country, and we could reasonably imagine some otherwise poor people fitting it into their budget (unlike a Rolex, a nice car, etc.). Especially if we believe a person would consider it their most important possession -- they can have the (debatably, I use a Nexus) best version of their most desirable possession without going outside their budget. I've known plenty of hard-working budget conscious poor people who have saved up for possessions they very much wanted -- nobody ever said being poor means you can't have anything nice. It just means you can't have everything nice.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#313

Post by ams6110 »

DickingAround wrote: post #287
skywhopper wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are capable smartphones for much cheaper then an iPhone that could get the job done. That's what GP was likely getting at. True enough. And yet, if you yourself are not actually poor, you may not realize the value that a marginal luxury like an iPhone or Air Jordans or a top brand purse (sorry, I don't know what the hot brand of purses is atm) can bring to someone in that situation. Spending a few hundred dol…

Poor people don't need to 'seem less poor'. They need to be less poor. And admitting you need to save is the first step to doing so. I wonder if this need to seem less poor so often is actually part of how some of them get poor; wasting money/effort trying to influence perception instead of spending it trying to change reality.

You're close, the poor in most cases have self-defeating money habits. Any time they get money, they spend it immediately on things that have a short term feel-good effect, because their life has so little of that otherwise. This might be junk food, cigarettes/booze/drugs, lottery tickets, restaurant meals, gadgets or other "bling" etc.

They rarely have a person in their life who models delayed gratification and saving behavior, let alone strategic investing, so they never see the benefit of doing that.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#314

Post by ivankirigin »

This story is a pretty good measure of whether you get offended by something very small.

A 5 year old PC is low quality. A company that makes high quality products wants people to have better experiences with computers.

At the event, they launched their lowest price phone. I bet that phone in a year is going to be even cheaper.

You can find offense in everything, but you shouldn't.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#315

Post by [deleted] »

JohnBooty wrote: post #275
noxToken wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure if I was suddenly without money, the iPhone would be what I would want to give up. If you have an iPhone and then become poor, sure. You probably won't get ahead much by getting rid of your iPhone. If you're already poor, then an iPhone (not a smartphone) is definitely a luxury. There are capable smartphones for much cheaper then an iPhone that could get the job done. That's what GP was likely getting…

> If you're already poor, then an iPhone (not a smartphone) is definitely a luxury. It's not wrong, nor necessarily economically irresponsible, for "poor" people to have a few nice things. Assuming a lifespan of 3 years, the cost difference between a $600 phone and a $300 phone is barely more than $0.25 per day - and probably even less, considering that iPhones have a higher resale value. Maybe that "poor person" car…

[deleted]

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#316

Post by ams6110 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #283
skywhopper wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reply to pc86, yes, exactly. Do you believe everyone should make purely rational financial decisions, or only the poorest people in our society?

It's funny how people generally only make these criticisms of "poor" peoples' purchases. You never hear people criticizing some middle-class guy for spending $27,000 on a Honda Accord instead of paying for a year of his kid's college education.

You do hear that, if you listen to the right people.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#317

Post by cableshaft »

mrob wrote: post #174
caseysoftware wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schiller wasn't talking about you. He qualified it as people using PCs that are more than 5 years old. They have usage patterns and goals completely different than anyone on HN. They don't use IDEs. They don't need "full Unix power" or anything similar. Their usage probably looks like web browsing, sending/receiving email, and listening to music at most. For them, an iPad is a probably a good functional alternative,…

I use a PC that's about 6 years old. I use IDEs, I need "full Unix power", but I don't play modern games so 6 year old hardware is good enough. I have a quad core CPU and 8GiB ram so I'm rarely waiting for the hardware. I did upgrade to a bigger SSD but it's not subjectively much faster than the original SSD. A good 5 year old PC is much more powerful than any mobile device.

He didn't mean every single person who has a computer 5 years old or more. Just the average person who has an older PC. Specifically the type that only do a few things on the computer.

Anyone who needs to use an IDE is already excluded from the iPad target market club, because its support for programming is pretty abysmal.

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#319

Post by Lawtonfogle »

skywhopper wrote: post #206
zanny wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was going to say this. If you are legitimately poor, you can get a used Moto G 2013 for $35 and activate it on Freedompop for some free data each month and use wifi wherever possible. That would be a phone on a budget. iphones are absolutely just for prestige, the same way Macbooks in universities are.

If you're poor and don't want everyone around you to know it, why would you buy the phone that screams "hey, I'm poor and got the cheapest possible phone!" Everyone has something they do to stand out from the people that surround them. It's cruel to suggest that folks living in poverty can only be deserving of assistance if they embrace their poverty and advertise it to the world. There are real costs to appearing po…

>It's cruel to suggest that folks living in poverty can only be deserving of assistance if they embrace their poverty and advertise it to the world.

When I'm getting buyer on something cheaper than an iPhone, why should I help someone else get a full price iPhone? If they want to put the work in finding a second hand one at a cheap price, good for them. But why should I help them pay for shinier equipment than I even get for myself?

Re: That awkward moment when Apple mocked good hardware and poor people

#320

Post by SonicSoul »

petra wrote: post #231
waspleg wrote: post #41

I completely agree with the author of the article. Apple is the real-world incarnation of the economic premise of Huxley's "A Brave New World". This was just the mask dropping for a second to pander to the faithful. I'd like to add, as someone who works at K12 public high school, that I've seen the reality of the article played out. My building is 100% free lunch, most are extremely poor, and yet there is a sizable n…

One thing most of us here might agree on - beyond everything else - the iPhone is a status symbol - carrying some social value. So one interesting question is - how can this be disrupted(by a phone costing half the price) ? Is it even possible ?

good question. by definition status is achieved by something hard to obtain. Either based on price ore availability? I can't even think of any example of the latter. Growing up all the "cool" things were out of my reach entirely based on cost..
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