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Cost of iPhone X in 1957

bradford-delong.com

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Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#51

Post by microcolonel »

grkvlt wrote: post #49
JoshMnem wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely for worse in many cases. Every time I buy a new phone with better specs, I expect that things will be that much better, but they never are. Instead, the power is wasted on useless things like animation, apps that I can't shut off running in the background, etc.

People often claim this, but I've never really found it to be the case. Faster processors and more memory let me run the same software much faster, or better software the same speed as the old, in general. So, perhaps you are seeing the second factor happening more, but don't want or need the improvements?

I think he's lamenting that the new hardware tends to come with (or mandate) the newer software, which is generally slower, but trades this slowness for nothing of value. That is, there is no legitimate reason that the same tasks should take longer on faster hardware; but (usually) the exact same software will tend to run faster.

I don't have this problem on my workstations (generally) except when I browse the web, though recently I've had to make the practical tradeoff of owning a smartphone, where this problem is rampant.

Worse than things not getting faster, the same product tends to get slower because the software designed for the new hardware is the only maintained branch, and the versions for older hardware are just backports from future hardware.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#52

Post by microcolonel »

userbinator wrote: post #6

...and yet, even with all this computing power, simple tasks like loading a webpage full of text still take ridiculously long times. Maybe not with a '57 vacuum tube (transistors actually existed at the time already) computer, but then there's this: https://hubpages.com/technology/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualC... The massive increase in computing power has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in complexity. Fo…

I think this is related in part due to a focus on throughput metrics rather than latency metrics. Throughput is easy to measure and easy to market, latency is unfortunately less intuitive, so less important for selling consumer goods.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#53

Post by csours »

desertrider wrote: post #50
csours wrote: post #13

Things that haven't improved exponentially since 1957: Batteries Cars Houses People Dishwashers TVs Things that have improved exponentially since 1957: Disk drives Integrated Circuits RAM

I would say TVs have. Color, size, brightness, efficiency and resolution are all orders of magnitude higher.

They're better, but only in a linear way, not exponentially.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#54

Post by abtinf »

Offtopic: The second of the three pictures at the bottom of the post, the one with the big yellow circle monitor looking thing, is a radar monitoring station. It was meant for long shifts, requiring dedicated attention from a soldier. In support of that purpose, it has a built in cigarette lighter and ash tray.

The picture is from the Computer History Museum. Well worth a visit.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SAGE_Weapons_Directo...

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#55

Post by abecedarius »

If I'm reading http://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm right, core memory in 1960 cost about $0.60/bit (with ~10 microsecond cycle time). It does list an only slightly faster transistor memory for 1957, maybe for use in the CPU?

I'm guessing these are historical prices, not inflation-adjusted.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#56

Post by nopinsight »

Having a billion transistors is not 10 times as useful as 100 million transistors. The diminishing return kicked in even before that. Unless a killer application needs a billion transistors, the value created over a previous iPhone is incremental.

I think a better way to measure value is

   invention's cost effectiveness = price / (time * improvement to well-being)
The denominator is how much the invention makes our life better as measured by (the amount of time * the extent it helps).

By this measure, smartphones are not bad but probably lose out to the Internet, washing machines, and air conditioners/heaters in hot/cold climate. Google is a pretty big improvement over older search engines and is worth quite a lot although the price we pay as privacy is not obvious.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#57

Post by oliveshell »

Houshalter wrote: post #22
duhast wrote: post #17

Comparisons like that always assume the that price is constant with increased demand even when world GDP is spent on something. What would likely happen is first the price would go up and later down as the world manufacturing would shift to vacuum tubes production.

Yes if a government started buying trillions of vacuum tubes, companies would quickly get much more efficient at producing then and there would be a huge investment into researching alternatives. But that brings up the question, what tech could we be subsidizing today so we can get it faster?

Nuclear fusion.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#58

Post by TheGRS »

ro_sharp wrote: post #41
oceanswave wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to saving.org, 111.42. According to http://www.earlytelevision.org/color.html a 21" color tv in 1955 was $755 1955 dollars... or more than 6 iPhones. This site seems to have more prices of goods http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/prices-1957/ A cheap ford car was $1879 or 17 iPhones. Kinda holds as a cheap ford today is around 14k

It's probably important to also consider these prices against the wages at the time.

It lists average income: $4,494

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#59

Post by TheGRS »

Houshalter wrote: post #22
duhast wrote: post #17

Comparisons like that always assume the that price is constant with increased demand even when world GDP is spent on something. What would likely happen is first the price would go up and later down as the world manufacturing would shift to vacuum tubes production.

Yes if a government started buying trillions of vacuum tubes, companies would quickly get much more efficient at producing then and there would be a huge investment into researching alternatives. But that brings up the question, what tech could we be subsidizing today so we can get it faster?

Energy comes to my mind: mass battery storage, solar, wind and various other renewable fuel sources. I have a buddy who was working for the Dept of Energy until just recently and was saying that the funding for renewable energy is being wound down very quickly right now, many in that sector (working for DoE that is) will be without a job soon, probably to be scooped up by the private sector. He said it was also a huge shame because those guys were working on some amazing tech that would be hugely beneficial.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#60

Post by feelin_googley »

outericky wrote: post #9
userbinator wrote: post #6

...and yet, even with all this computing power, simple tasks like loading a webpage full of text still take ridiculously long times. Maybe not with a '57 vacuum tube (transistors actually existed at the time already) computer, but then there's this: https://hubpages.com/technology/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualC... The massive increase in computing power has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in complexity. Fo…

Fault of the the webpage or the phone? multiple milliseconds or seconds? Ridiculous! Those of old enough to remember 9600 baud know the disappointment (in our lifetimes) waiting many minutes to download a jpg just to find it wasn't what we wanted. Or that mp3 track from some obscure FTP server....

"Fault of the webpage or the phone."

Webpage.

But this problem applies equally to local software.

I believe there was a name for it but I cannot recall the term. The idea is that as hardware gets faster, software developers add bloat^W features so that the user always experiences the same speed. "Speed" mean something like the time taken to perform some routine user task.

Microsoft has been usurping user resources like this since at least the 1990's. They always had the new hardware before it hit the market. New software was tested on new hardware that no consumer yet had.

By the time the user purchased a new computer, the company had a new software version that already uses up whatever resource gains the new hardware provided. Pre-installed. The end result is the user experiences the same speed.

If the user ran the old version on new hardware, they might see a speed increase.

But the company makes it very difficult to do this and/or wages a relentless marketing campaign to convince users to try the new version and ditch the old one.

The new software version did the same basic tasks the older version did, but because of the bloat^W features the speed was not any faster for the user. Not to mention how the new version would usurp gains in storage space and RAM as well.

Incidentally, regarding downloading images over dialup, didnt you abort unwanted images before they completed?

I recall images rendered slowly line by line across the screen.

And I remember bandwidth being too slow even on a corporate network to blindly batch download images and then delete the unwanted ones.

It was more efficient to view each one as it was downloading and abort if unwanted.

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