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Cost of iPhone X in 1957

bradford-delong.com

61–70 of 173 posts

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#61
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?

We already subsidize renewables, and that is encouraging research into them. The current projection of price per watt for solar is set to plummet in the next decade and a half. It's possible that further subsidies would encourage higher levels of production and economies of scale would reduce the price quicker.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#62

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 lif…

> Having a billion transistors is not 10 times as useful as 100 million transistors. The diminishing return kicked in even before that.

I think this is far more difficult to evaluate than your comment admits.

More transistors -> more software that can do more things, written by developers with a wider range of skills, in a society with increased tech permeation, and so on...

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#63
post #49

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?

Software changes for newer hardware, often unnecessarily.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#64
post #61

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?

We already subsidize renewables, and that is encouraging research into them. The current projection of price per watt for solar is set to plummet in the next decade and a half. It's possible that further subsidies would encourage higher levels of production and economies of scale would reduce the price quicker.

The USA also subsidizes fossil fuel industries pretty heavily, so those renewables subsidies are (at least in part) just leveling the field.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#65
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.

What's your unit of measurement?

How about data bitrate? Total number of available channels?

Even goosing those, you're not looking at exponential rates of increase.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#66

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 lif…

Agreed. Discussing trends (speed of progress) with just two data points doesn't work.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#67
The factor that many seem to have overlooked with the $1000 price of the iPhone X is that, if it proves successful, it sets a precedence for future smartphones.

The spec improvements of the iPhone X do not line up with the accompanying price increase. Even by iPhone standards it's an expensive device. If you justify the price increases you're just telling Apple you're prepared to be short changed when the iPhone X's successor comes out.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#68

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?

> But that brings up the question, what tech could we be subsidizing today so we can get it faster? As an American, I’d say internet deployment and infrastructure upgrades, but multiple government entities have tried that and the ISPs end up doing nothing.

It's worth investigating what Utah did, they have some nice internet. http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=3062258&itype=CMSID (their internet has improved since that article, too). Those lucky people have multiple high speed providers.

It seems to be something that's easier to do at a local level.

Re: Cost of iPhone X in 1957

#69

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 lif…

I would take hot water and refrigeration/AC any day over a smartphone.
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