Joining Apple 40 years ago • Hacker News Board

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#71

Post by howlgarnish » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

johannes1234321 wrote: post #57

coldtea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Sounds orthogonal to the population, as the city could just expand vertically (more highrises/scyscrapers) or horizontally (more land).

Na issue is that with expansion distances increase. Thus you lose the benefit of being in the city (close to work, close to friends, close to cultural offerings, close to shops, close to ...) While Japan did a few things to help, like reliably working high speed railway, which allows commute over wide distance, while central places are crowded during rush hour and can't take much more.

Shinkansen (bullet train) commuting is a marginal phenomenon, with a few thousands doing it in a metropolis of 20M+. Highly reliable commuter railways with cheap express services are the backbone (and genesis) of Tokyo's sprawl.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#72

Post by barry-cotter » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

johannes1234321 wrote: post #57

coldtea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Sounds orthogonal to the population, as the city could just expand vertically (more highrises/scyscrapers) or horizontally (more land).

Na issue is that with expansion distances increase. Thus you lose the benefit of being in the city (close to work, close to friends, close to cultural offerings, close to shops, close to ...) While Japan did a few things to help, like reliably working high speed railway, which allows commute over wide distance, while central places are crowded during rush hour and can't take much more.

> Thus you lose the benefit of being in the city (close to work, close to friends, close to cultural offerings, close to shops, close to ...)

This is the “Brooklyn is boring” problem. It’s temporary. The old city centre (Manhattan) is unlikely to decline rapidly in relative importance but cultural and economic life will happily extend itself from central areas to less central ones given the population and the money to make it worthwhile. Good transport links help enormously too.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#73

Post by kkylin » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #4

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B? It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or…

My extended family moved to the Bay Area in the early to mid 80s (some a little earlier). No one ever thought it cheap, and what they said then about cost of living is not that different from what everyone says now.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#74

Post by neogodless » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

ascagnel_ wrote: post #63

victor106 wrote: post #53

> Microsoft will be designing its own processors for its Surface laptop line and its cloud servers. I love Satya’s Microsoft. But every time Microsoft tries to copy Apple they have failed miserably. I wish they don’t and instead focus on their strengths. But you never know, Satya’s proven us wrong on several occasions. So maybe this time is different?

While I generally agree, I think MS has to copy Apple here, but not because they need to make the same products. The M1 chip was Apple planting the flag for consumer-level ARM performance, and every indication is that they'll be able to scale that performance up to more demanding use-cases. MS's fortunes are tied to Intel and Qualcomm for the time being, both of whom are falling behind on performance and performance/…

I wish there was a third entity in addition to Intel and Qualcomm that produced computer processing units that Windows would run on. Some kind of advanced micro devices that outperformed both Intel and Qualcomm would be really interesting to watch.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#75

Post by thanatosmin » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #67

bluntfang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The US is a stable and functioning democracy. Our current president and almost half of the country explicitly doesn't think so.

This is hogwash, and a lie mostly propagated by blue check journo twitter. Remember, twitter is not representative of anything even close to consensus political opinion. It's mostly an echo chamber for elites patting themselves on the back for their "correct" opinions https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/twitt...

GP said nothing about Twitter.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#76

Post by ramphastidae » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

twelvechairs wrote: post #44

supernova87a wrote: post #4

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B? It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or…

Maybe you should just be thankful for the benefits you have. Most of the world is not lucky enough to be capable of working in tech in the Bay area.

Telling someone to always accept and be thankful for injustice and exploitation because someone somewhere else is experiencing worse injustice and exploitation is not as noble as you may think.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#77

Post by 52-6F-62 » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #52

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made the post from my iPad. I suspect it did the quotes. Let's "try" it from my computer... Nowadays, people sneer at me for "working for The Man." Being an Apple programmer has meant many years of being sneered at. No way to win...

I think you can toggle the smart quotes. I don't like them either. And if they happen to end up in code, it's insanely irritating.

I work with high-profile editorial and art staff. They need those quotes! They're often great at knowing how to insert them themselves, but others need that short cut. As it is, the quotes are hidden at `Opt + [` and `Opt + Shift + [` on my machine (Canadian English layout). [Oh, the war stories I have trying to sanitize text for moving from platform to platform...]

We're not the only ones using keyboards anymore, and we're in the minority of those who do!

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#78

Post by bloqs » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #30

supernova87a wrote: post #4

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B? It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or…

> It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or reform Prop 13 and free up some affordable place to raise a new family. Yeah, you would then be the "rich [person] who others curse for refusing to die or reform Prop 13 and free up some affordable place to raise a new family"

Thats the joke

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#79

Post by bcrosby95 » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

mikerg87 wrote: post #50

supernova87a wrote: post #4

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B? It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or…

California in the early 80s wasn’t fun. We left SF in ‘83. Interest rates around 15%. Minimum wage around $2.50/hr. Gas rationing. you could only buy gas on certain days based on your license plate. There was an apartment above a garage in SF that sold for $200,000 that was fixup and the garage wasn’t part of the deal. My parents moved us to they east coast where they did finally purchase their own home.

My parents almost had to leave in the late 70s. They moved to San Jose to work in tech. Bought a house in 72 or so. Their home value tripled in around 6 years and so did their property taxes.

Re: Joining Apple 40 years ago

#80

Post by tasty_freeze » Mon, Dec 21, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #4

Can you imagine moving to the Bay Area in the 80s? To grow up when land was still cheap, before college competition was cutthroat and unaffordable, when relatively simple competence could get you a solid job and VC/PE firms weren't plundering and incentivizing the latest 30-second attention-span app to reach $1B? It would be me living in Los Altos now, instead of the old rich people who I curse for refusing to die or…

You have a distorted picture. I moved to the bay area in 85, stayed 20 years, then left. If you moved there and were already well established, sure, real estate would have been more affordable then than now. But as a young engineer, things were still pretty expensive.

My starting salary as a BSEE working for a minicomputer company was $30,000. Two weeks after arriving they had layoffs. They were nice to the new hires and said we'll keep you on for a bit, but you should start looking for new jobs, plus there is a 10% pay cut, so $27K/year ($65.3K in 2020 dollars).

My shared apartment was off Maude and Mathilda was nothing special. It was 700 sq ft and was $750/month, which works out to $1800/month in 2020 dollars. Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, and Atherton were all expensive addresses, even then.