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Cost of iPhone X in 1957

bradford-delong.com

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Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#81

Post by quuquuquu »

code_duck wrote: post #77

This comparison seems fairly fantastical and irrelevant. Something from within the history of consumer electronics would be more useful to consider, in my opinion. For example, in 1982, the wildly popular low-end home entertainment computer, the Commodore 64, was released at $595, or about $1500 after inflation adjustment. On release in 1977, the Apple II was $1298, or over $5000 in today's terms. You could pay $400…

What I think is also important to consider is median income and net worth of US citizens at that time.

In the early 50s, much pf Europe and Asia was still rebuilding from war, and the US held an effective monopoly on multiple industries.

From the data I could find for 1952 in the US, a house was 5 years of income and a new car was half a year's income.

For many people in the US today, a new car (post tax dollars) is either completely unattainable (multiple years of income) or a complete joke (one month's income).

The numbers are different for 1982, but still closer to the 1952 US situation than today's 2017 situation.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that $1,000 for a phone is still fabulously expensive for 99.3% of the world today who aren't millionares.

EDIT :

Thank you for your insight :)

I am thinking that maybe I am just very different from most consumers, or that our definition of "afford" is very hazy.

I am writing to you either from my $50 cracked screen wifi only iphone 5c, or my $40 2009 lenovo thinkpad running lubuntu.

What is strange to me is that I'm not buying this because I am price sensitive, but rather because "it is enough for what I want to do".

I have a hard time believing that a large percentage of the US market will buy an iphone X. Or if they are buying it, then they don't fit my definition of "affording it". Here's why:

Just 36.8% of US adults have a networth of over 100k.

That means 63% of US adults would be spending more than 1% on a mobile computer (phone) that is not very much different from a $300 phone. How many of these users will Apple capture?

Additionally, many people's net worth in the USA is tied up in real estate or retirement accounts. So these funds are not available to be spent, and it manifests itself in the following stat:

In 2016, 63% of Americans said they could not come up with $500 to cover an emergency purchase.

So, tons of americans can't even afford basic expenses, let alone luxury phones.

That is why I feel this is a millionaire's phone only.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#82

Post by imtringued »

oliveshell wrote: post #57
Houshalter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If we had that then the governments would build supermassive flying submarine aircraft carriers with massive railguns and lasers and armor that is almost impervious to anything perhaps even nuclear weapons.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#83

Post by DamonHD »

deepnotderp wrote: post #28

It's unfair to point to one exponentially increasing technology and use that as an index for general technology. On the other hand, it's interesting they choose to use the semiconductor industry as their example because progress is slowing in the semi industry due to the laws of physics with respect to standard CMOS and innovative rescues in either architectural form or through novel device physics are very unlikely…

The fact that I can just within the last year buy a $200 256GB SD memory card to plug into my RPi in lieu of any need for other non-volatile storage, and that I can move all my primary servers and repos onto it, or indeed that the RPi exists and appears with significant speed bumps for essential constant size and price and mean power consumption, shows that lots of innovation is still happening and at a pace.

I've been in electronics and computing ~40Y, and worked with some moderately big iron on the way, eg in banking.

That iPhone has more oomph by orders of magnitude than an oil company's exploration division had not so many years ago. I worked there and looked after the machines.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#84

Post by 2bitencryption »

sowbug wrote: post #74
Houshalter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

OT: thank you for not saying "But that begs the question." Two reasons: (1) it would have been incorrect, and (2) the correct use of the expression "beg the question" is doomed, and we should put it out of its misery.

I prefer the "improper" usage. It makes more sense and is more commonly understood. It begs the question: why doesn't everyone just use it that way?

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#85

Post by DamonHD »

feelin_googley wrote: post #60
outericky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

Essentially Parkinson's Law: any system will bloat to consume the resources available to it and then some.

But some of us enjoy NOT indulging in that, and having a Web page served in milliseconds from low-powered hardware, or having MIPS-speed IoT hardware run on microwatts and do a decent job using modern compiler smarts to help get there...

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#86

Post by eecc »

Cyph0n wrote: post #14
outericky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

> 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. It was also pretty bad with a 56k modem as far as I remember -- definitely not minutes though! The wait becomes worse when the JPEG is of a... critical nature, if you know what I mean.

Those days Goatse trolling was much more satisfying... shame that progressive jpeg rendering ruined the party

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#87

Post by code_duck »

quuquuquu wrote: post #81
code_duck wrote: post #77

This comparison seems fairly fantastical and irrelevant. Something from within the history of consumer electronics would be more useful to consider, in my opinion. For example, in 1982, the wildly popular low-end home entertainment computer, the Commodore 64, was released at $595, or about $1500 after inflation adjustment. On release in 1977, the Apple II was $1298, or over $5000 in today's terms. You could pay $400…

What I think is also important to consider is median income and net worth of US citizens at that time. In the early 50s, much pf Europe and Asia was still rebuilding from war, and the US held an effective monopoly on multiple industries. From the data I could find for 1952 in the US, a house was 5 years of income and a new car was half a year's income. For many people in the US today, a new car (post tax dollars) is…

My family were not nearly millionaires when we bought a $1500 equivalent computer in 1982, but this phone costs less than that. And a iPhone X isn't a phone, it's a computer. I agree you do need to be in an upper tier economically to afford one, but only speaking globally. People bought plenty of laptops when they averaged well over $1000.

The way phones are financed makes them much more attainable, also. The way people will get that $1000 phone today is paying $2-400, and then $35 a month, folded into their phone bill, for 2 years. That's reasonable for anyone with decent enough credit to get standard wireless service. Not most of the US population, perhaps, but definitely the same demographic as the people already buying $800 Samsungs or previous iPhones, which is tens of millions of people.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#88

Post by t0mek »

abtinf wrote: post #54

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/Fil…

Other quite interesting item in this museum is a former ballistic missile [1] that after its retirement started an academia career as an university, general-purpose computer [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman [2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/108786967@N03/29376655486

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#89

Post by pasta »

code_duck wrote: post #87
quuquuquu wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think is also important to consider is median income and net worth of US citizens at that time. In the early 50s, much pf Europe and Asia was still rebuilding from war, and the US held an effective monopoly on multiple industries. From the data I could find for 1952 in the US, a house was 5 years of income and a new car was half a year's income. For many people in the US today, a new car (post tax dollars) is…

My family were not nearly millionaires when we bought a $1500 equivalent computer in 1982, but this phone costs less than that. And a iPhone X isn't a phone, it's a computer. I agree you do need to be in an upper tier economically to afford one, but only speaking globally. People bought plenty of laptops when they averaged well over $1000. The way phones are financed makes them much more attainable, also. The way peo…

I like to note that a smartphone is indeed a computer with one huge difference: the phone does break more often.

It's no fun dropping a $1000 phone in the toilet or down the stairs.

A lot of people forget this.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#90

Post by code_duck »

pasta wrote: post #89
code_duck wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family were not nearly millionaires when we bought a $1500 equivalent computer in 1982, but this phone costs less than that. And a iPhone X isn't a phone, it's a computer. I agree you do need to be in an upper tier economically to afford one, but only speaking globally. People bought plenty of laptops when they averaged well over $1000. The way phones are financed makes them much more attainable, also. The way peo…

I like to note that a smartphone is indeed a computer with one huge difference: the phone does break more often. It's no fun dropping a $1000 phone in the toilet or down the stairs. A lot of people forget this.

I If I tried to carry a desktop computer and monitor around with me all day, it would probably get broken. Thankfully mobile device are... mobile. I'm glad it ever fits in my pocket! You can mitigate the issues you detail with a heavy duty case, waterproof phone, and/or insurance.
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