6 ms·

I wish I could buy tablets and computers the same way I buy synthesisers and mixers: knowing full well that they'll be just as useful in 20 years, as they are t

by mmjaa 9y ago

I wish I could buy tablets and computers the same way I buy synthesisers and mixers: knowing full well that they'll be just as useful in 20 years, as they are the day I bought them. I look around me in the room I'm in currently and I see a massive collection of much-loved, very respected, well-used hardware: synthesisers. But I'm typing this message on a machine (MacBook) that is inevitably going to end up being replaced by something else, just because after a few years its not going to be as much use as it once could have been. This has happened already - with many a MacBook/tiBook, my iPad1/iPad2 collection, and so on. But yet, the musical instruments still remain, even 30 years after their release, and even long after official support has ended. I chalk this up to completeness: musical instrument manufacturers know that a musical instrument that needs repair/maintenance/upgrades on a regular basis, isn't a musical instrument. (Its more of a toy.) I wonder what could happen that would bridge this gap between these two worlds - on the one hand, effectively 'finished' products that are always very reliable and still work the way they were intended, decades on - versus on the other hand, 'unstable' products that will, basically, still work on a fundamental level 10 years from now, as long as I'm willing to do the work myself to keep them running. I wish the computer manufacturers treated their products more like refined, finished, musical instruments than half-finished/never-finished sort-of tools whose functionality is never, really, set in stone for the ages.

AlphaSite 9y ago
As long as tech keeps marching forwards (whether you agree with the direction or not) things will keep going obselete. Stagnation is the only thing that will stop it.
thanatropism 9y ago
There's a pricing tier problem too. MacBook Pros aren't Pro machines anymore, and netbooks/Chromebooks aren't really that cheap. (This isn't on the same axis as fixability, but capitalism is usually able to deliver many variants and niche products, so fixable, expandable computers should exist at some price point, while Chromebooks/appliances you don't really ~own~ still have a thick piece of the market.
- thanatropism 9y ago
  )
CoolGuySteve 9y ago
I think we're getting there for laptops. At the risk of sounding like 640kb is enough for anyone: - CPU clock rate has leveled off, mobile processors have been 2-4 threads for a while now and focus more on power efficiency - 600MB/sec SSDs are kind of 'fast enough' with regards to app loading and boot times - retina displays are as good as anyone can see - the GPU is fast enough to draw a moderately 3D GUI - battery life is longer than an 8 hour work day - these days the power adapter is heavier than an ultralight I think computers are starting to last longer and longer before going obsolete on a practical level. What we're seeing now is more like planned obsolescence, where new designs and form factors are getting introduced but the computer is more or less the same. There are also some classic designs that last multiple years with minor refreshes much like a calculator: MacBook Air, XPS13, some thinkpads, the 10" and 7" iPad
- domatic 9y ago
  Major video codecs still change every 5 to 10 years. Even Youtube can be largely unusable on otherwise serviceable old hardware because there is no or outdated hardware assist for decoding video. Since CPUs and soon GPUs will level out, then at least crypto and video will be pushed into hardware blocks meant to encode/decode them. Churn in functionality requiring hardware assist will probably keep us buying some new hardware at least once and probably twice a decade.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    > Major video codecs still change every 5 to 10 years. Even Youtube can be largely unusable on otherwise serviceable old hardware because there is no or outdated hardware assist for decoding video. Something that is downright crazy given how long NTSC and PAL stayed in use. But then i live in Norway, where we are in the process of shutting down FM broadcasts in favor of DAB. Except that DAB has already been superseded by DAB+, and if you go a DAB radio early on you will have to toss that one and get a new one.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > 600MB/sec SSDs are kind of 'fast enough' with regards to app loading and boot times Don't worry, Electron apps are working hard on saving us from 60 Hz. Two months ago, there was a text editor benchmark on the front page, wherein Atom and VS Code were multiple magnitudes behind all the other editors, leading to this conversation: Commenter: "Can anyone speak to the difference the underlying hardware makes with Atom or Code? Presumably a top-end desktop processor (~4GHz) and latest-generation NVME storage would offer really good performance, but perhaps not." Me: "A year ago, people made fun about how programs will get proportionally slower once all the developers have switched to SSDs. Now we're already talking about having to upgrade to NVMe disks for a decent code editing experience." Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13935235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13935235
bromuro 9y ago
I believe it is because modern capitalism is supposed to work this way. Technology is a mass product and our economic system requires people to work more to buy more products. Ever changing technology is the way this system can survive.
brunoc 9y ago
Well, you can always find a reason to buy a new synthesizer. That works in the favour of the manufacturer. Computers, not so much. Source: Also collecting synthesizers. :)
sacheendra 9y ago
It is a matter of business. Computers could be built to last 30 years and more. Ex: Control system in nuclear reactors and satellites. But modern electronics are engineered to last a limited time. This is due to 2 reasons. It helps companies sell stuff perpetually thus staying in business. But also because it keeps costs down and gets consumer cheap products. It is due to this engineering to such narrow tolerances that we can buy a laptop for a $1000 instead of $10000. Imagine if computers cost $10000 and I got a core2duo machine years ago. I would be very reluctant to get it originally because of the cost and because I know there would be faster systems on the market in a few years. Engineering devices to have a limited lifetime has supported innovation by helping companies make money and by making things affordable so that normal people can buy the latest gadgets. I know this has been bad for the environment and for those of us who would like things to last forever (I'm one). But, we can't discount the fact that a lot of tech innovation today is due to this very reason.
- falcolas 9y ago
  > I got a core2duo machine years ago Now that the Moore's curve has started to flatten, I would not be nearly as opposed to a 30 year machine (especially a repairable one) today as I would have been even 5 years ago. New processors and RAM are not making the previous generation processors obsolete anymore, which leads me to believe that a 30 year computer is now something which could be realistically considered.
  - PascLeRasc 9y ago
    There are definitely some consumer PC's today that will last 10+ years. Every time a new CPU line comes out the benchmarks aren't vastly different from Intel 2500K/2600K. It seems like Ryzen will be a similar "BIFL" processor.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    I've been using 5+ year old kit at home for a long time. In fact my main PC is about 10 years old right now. I buy from the local college surplus when they life-cycle their desktops. For what I do at home (browsing, email, youtube, ssh for work) they are more than adequate.
tigershark 9y ago
Yes, because of course the evil manufacturers could have built 20-30 years ago a pc that could have worked perfectly today if they treated it like a musical instrument. I think that maybe you are missing the multiple orders of magnitude of computational power increase in the last 2-3 decades..
yoodenvranx 9y ago
> knowing full well that they'll be just as useful in 20 years My Lenovo T61 is almost 10 years old and I still use it daily. I hope it will last another 3-5 years.
xienze 9y ago
Well if you don't expect your iPad or laptop to ever run any software newer than what was around when it came out, it'll certainly last 30 years, barring component failure.
artimaeis 9y ago
How would releasing a refined instrument like you describe work with a device which connects to the internet? A high quality Moog synthesizer has a barrage of technical capabilities and is engineered and manufactured to the highest standards and tightest tolerances. The same can be said for a Macbook Pro. The difference between them is that we expect the Macbook Pro to evolve over time. We expect it to connect to an ever-evolving network of other computers, where new threats and opportunities arise every day. If you take that Macbook Pro and never connect it to the internet, I suspect you'd still have a wonderfully working machine in 10-20 years. If an issue comes up it would almost certainly be the SSD - which, since it's soldered in, can't be replaced. Take my favorite Macbook though, the 2010 Pro - with its user-replaceable RAM, disk drive, and available optical drive. If I take care of it there's no reason I won't be able to get it to boot in 10-20 years.
Kiro 9y ago
Synthesisers and mixers are less dependent on getting faster/more powerful. They are inherently more long-lived.
jayflux 9y ago
I think that's an unfair comparison. (Hardware) Synthesisers are pretty much feature complete, once a good one is made there's not much more you can add to it and therefore the evolution of them over the years hasn't changed much. I doubt the midi spec has even updated much since it was created? The only thing with much scope to improve on the audio side is mainly around software (better daws, synths etc) This is like comparing sound cards to graphics cards. Good quality sound cards will pretty much last forever because we've reached the peak of human hearing and the latency can't get any lower, (I've had the same sound card for production for over 10 years). GPUs however have loads of scope for improvement and so new ones are constantly coming out all the time, making old ones obselete.
rsync 9y ago
"I wish I could buy tablets and computers the same way I buy synthesisers and mixers: knowing full well that they'll be just as useful in 20 years, as they are the day I bought them." I have used my early-2009 octo-core Mac Pro for 8 years now and I am about to do a set of upgrades to it[1] that I believe will make it useful with no caveats or sacrifices for at least another four years. I can't believe this is the case - I would never have imagined that that 2009 computer purchase would last 12+ years. Also, I used my original 13" MBA for almost 7 years before the speakers stopped working. 2GB of RAM was getting a little cramped for my style of 20-tabs-open web browsing, but it wasn't unusable ... Finally, I have, powered on in my office (and used regularly) an SGI Octane2 which is quite a bit older than all of the above and is a wonderful, wonderful computer - one of the best ever made. [1] Max out the ram, PCIe based bootable SSD, USB3 card.
digi_owl 9y ago
Thing is that a synth is a sealed package built to do one thing. With General Purpose Computers, there is a ongoing Jevon's paradox. As hardware improves, software is changed or introduce that gobble up said improvements and then some. Thus software outpaces hardware to a massive degree. We can see this in how as time march forward, what used to be done using dedicated chips are done using a GPC and software that emulates the dedicated chips.
mikeash 9y ago
The reason computers don't stay equally useful for decades is because much of a computer's usefulness comes from communicating with other computers. Go back and buy a computer from the 80s, and it's about as useful now as it was then. Buy one from the 90s, and that's still true for tasks that can be done entirely on that computer, but not so much for getting online. Your iPad 1 is about as useful as it ever was when it comes to doing things that only involve the iPad. It's just that most things it could do want to talk to other computers, and those other computers haven't stayed static. Find a computer that doesn't need to talk to the world, and you'll find a computer that can stay relevant for a long time. Every 20-year-old car on the road has 20-year-old computers in it still going strong, for example. But if you want a computer to both stay useful and derive its usefulness from the world, then you need the world to stop changing, and that won't happen.
- komali2 9y ago
  To add to that, old computers can still run old software just fine. Assuming it wasn't left somewhere moist and that you swap out the motherboard battery (which isn't really even necessary), a two decade old dell could just run windows 98 with office 95 or whatever it was back then just fine. It makes sense that you'd have to upgrade hardware to use new software...
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  Spot on. My Atari ST is just as useful as it was 25 years ago!
iainmerrick 9y ago
musical instrument manufacturers know that a musical instrument that needs repair/maintenance/upgrades on a regular basis, isn't a musical instrument. (Its more of a toy.) Well, hang on now! That may be true of electronic instruments, but if you buy a piano and don't have it regularly tuned and maintained, that's how you end up with a honky-tonky toy piano. :)
robohamburger 9y ago
I wonder how realistic a static computer could be given its full of app-stores and internet. I imagine video game consoles and other forms of electronics, at least up until recently probably were build as you say.
keypress 9y ago
Yeah, bought a Nook (Ereader) in the UK where bookstore was swapped out and then died. So glad I hadn't bought loads of ebooks, because I'd have been fuming.

by mmjaa 9y ago

AlphaSite 9y ago

As long as tech keeps marching forwards (whether you agree with the direction or not) things will keep going obselete. Stagnation is the only thing that will stop it.

thanatropism 9y ago

There's a pricing tier problem too. MacBook Pros aren't Pro machines anymore, and netbooks/Chromebooks aren't really that cheap. (This isn't on the same axis as fixability, but capitalism is usually able to deliver many variants and niche products, so fixable, expandable computers should exist at some price point, while Chromebooks/appliances you don't really ~own~ still have a thick piece of the market.

thanatropism 9y ago
)

CoolGuySteve 9y ago

I think we're getting there for laptops. At the risk of sounding like 640kb is enough for anyone: - CPU clock rate has leveled off, mobile processors have been 2-4 threads for a while now and focus more on power efficiency - 600MB/sec SSDs are kind of 'fast enough' with regards to app loading and boot times - retina displays are as good as anyone can see - the GPU is fast enough to draw a moderately 3D GUI - battery life is longer than an 8 hour work day - these days the power adapter is heavier than an ultralight I think computers are starting to last longer and longer before going obsolete on a practical level. What we're seeing now is more like planned obsolescence, where new designs and form factors are getting introduced but the computer is more or less the same. There are also some classic designs that last multiple years with minor refreshes much like a calculator: MacBook Air, XPS13, some thinkpads, the 10" and 7" iPad

domatic 9y ago
Major video codecs still change every 5 to 10 years. Even Youtube can be largely unusable on otherwise serviceable old hardware because there is no or outdated hardware assist for decoding video. Since CPUs and soon GPUs will level out, then at least crypto and video will be pushed into hardware blocks meant to encode/decode them. Churn in functionality requiring hardware assist will probably keep us buying some new hardware at least once and probably twice a decade.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  > Major video codecs still change every 5 to 10 years. Even Youtube can be largely unusable on otherwise serviceable old hardware because there is no or outdated hardware assist for decoding video. Something that is downright crazy given how long NTSC and PAL stayed in use. But then i live in Norway, where we are in the process of shutting down FM broadcasts in favor of DAB. Except that DAB has already been superseded by DAB+, and if you go a DAB radio early on you will have to toss that one and get a new one.
majewsky 9y ago
> 600MB/sec SSDs are kind of 'fast enough' with regards to app loading and boot times Don't worry, Electron apps are working hard on saving us from 60 Hz. Two months ago, there was a text editor benchmark on the front page, wherein Atom and VS Code were multiple magnitudes behind all the other editors, leading to this conversation: Commenter: "Can anyone speak to the difference the underlying hardware makes with Atom or Code? Presumably a top-end desktop processor (~4GHz) and latest-generation NVME storage would offer really good performance, but perhaps not." Me: "A year ago, people made fun about how programs will get proportionally slower once all the developers have switched to SSDs. Now we're already talking about having to upgrade to NVMe disks for a decent code editing experience." Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13935235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13935235

bromuro 9y ago

I believe it is because modern capitalism is supposed to work this way. Technology is a mass product and our economic system requires people to work more to buy more products. Ever changing technology is the way this system can survive.

brunoc 9y ago

Well, you can always find a reason to buy a new synthesizer. That works in the favour of the manufacturer. Computers, not so much. Source: Also collecting synthesizers. :)

sacheendra 9y ago

It is a matter of business. Computers could be built to last 30 years and more. Ex: Control system in nuclear reactors and satellites. But modern electronics are engineered to last a limited time. This is due to 2 reasons. It helps companies sell stuff perpetually thus staying in business. But also because it keeps costs down and gets consumer cheap products. It is due to this engineering to such narrow tolerances that we can buy a laptop for a $1000 instead of $10000. Imagine if computers cost $10000 and I got a core2duo machine years ago. I would be very reluctant to get it originally because of the cost and because I know there would be faster systems on the market in a few years. Engineering devices to have a limited lifetime has supported innovation by helping companies make money and by making things affordable so that normal people can buy the latest gadgets. I know this has been bad for the environment and for those of us who would like things to last forever (I'm one). But, we can't discount the fact that a lot of tech innovation today is due to this very reason.

falcolas 9y ago
> I got a core2duo machine years ago Now that the Moore's curve has started to flatten, I would not be nearly as opposed to a 30 year machine (especially a repairable one) today as I would have been even 5 years ago. New processors and RAM are not making the previous generation processors obsolete anymore, which leads me to believe that a 30 year computer is now something which could be realistically considered.
- PascLeRasc 9y ago
  There are definitely some consumer PC's today that will last 10+ years. Every time a new CPU line comes out the benchmarks aren't vastly different from Intel 2500K/2600K. It seems like Ryzen will be a similar "BIFL" processor.
- ams6110 9y ago
  I've been using 5+ year old kit at home for a long time. In fact my main PC is about 10 years old right now. I buy from the local college surplus when they life-cycle their desktops. For what I do at home (browsing, email, youtube, ssh for work) they are more than adequate.

tigershark 9y ago

Yes, because of course the evil manufacturers could have built 20-30 years ago a pc that could have worked perfectly today if they treated it like a musical instrument. I think that maybe you are missing the multiple orders of magnitude of computational power increase in the last 2-3 decades..

yoodenvranx 9y ago

> knowing full well that they'll be just as useful in 20 years My Lenovo T61 is almost 10 years old and I still use it daily. I hope it will last another 3-5 years.

xienze 9y ago

Well if you don't expect your iPad or laptop to ever run any software newer than what was around when it came out, it'll certainly last 30 years, barring component failure.

artimaeis 9y ago

How would releasing a refined instrument like you describe work with a device which connects to the internet? A high quality Moog synthesizer has a barrage of technical capabilities and is engineered and manufactured to the highest standards and tightest tolerances. The same can be said for a Macbook Pro. The difference between them is that we expect the Macbook Pro to evolve over time. We expect it to connect to an ever-evolving network of other computers, where new threats and opportunities arise every day. If you take that Macbook Pro and never connect it to the internet, I suspect you'd still have a wonderfully working machine in 10-20 years. If an issue comes up it would almost certainly be the SSD - which, since it's soldered in, can't be replaced. Take my favorite Macbook though, the 2010 Pro - with its user-replaceable RAM, disk drive, and available optical drive. If I take care of it there's no reason I won't be able to get it to boot in 10-20 years.

Kiro 9y ago

Synthesisers and mixers are less dependent on getting faster/more powerful. They are inherently more long-lived.

jayflux 9y ago

I think that's an unfair comparison. (Hardware) Synthesisers are pretty much feature complete, once a good one is made there's not much more you can add to it and therefore the evolution of them over the years hasn't changed much. I doubt the midi spec has even updated much since it was created? The only thing with much scope to improve on the audio side is mainly around software (better daws, synths etc) This is like comparing sound cards to graphics cards. Good quality sound cards will pretty much last forever because we've reached the peak of human hearing and the latency can't get any lower, (I've had the same sound card for production for over 10 years). GPUs however have loads of scope for improvement and so new ones are constantly coming out all the time, making old ones obselete.

rsync 9y ago

"I wish I could buy tablets and computers the same way I buy synthesisers and mixers: knowing full well that they'll be just as useful in 20 years, as they are the day I bought them." I have used my early-2009 octo-core Mac Pro for 8 years now and I am about to do a set of upgrades to it[1] that I believe will make it useful with no caveats or sacrifices for at least another four years. I can't believe this is the case - I would never have imagined that that 2009 computer purchase would last 12+ years. Also, I used my original 13" MBA for almost 7 years before the speakers stopped working. 2GB of RAM was getting a little cramped for my style of 20-tabs-open web browsing, but it wasn't unusable ... Finally, I have, powered on in my office (and used regularly) an SGI Octane2 which is quite a bit older than all of the above and is a wonderful, wonderful computer - one of the best ever made. [1] Max out the ram, PCIe based bootable SSD, USB3 card.

digi_owl 9y ago

Thing is that a synth is a sealed package built to do one thing. With General Purpose Computers, there is a ongoing Jevon's paradox. As hardware improves, software is changed or introduce that gobble up said improvements and then some. Thus software outpaces hardware to a massive degree. We can see this in how as time march forward, what used to be done using dedicated chips are done using a GPC and software that emulates the dedicated chips.

mikeash 9y ago

The reason computers don't stay equally useful for decades is because much of a computer's usefulness comes from communicating with other computers. Go back and buy a computer from the 80s, and it's about as useful now as it was then. Buy one from the 90s, and that's still true for tasks that can be done entirely on that computer, but not so much for getting online. Your iPad 1 is about as useful as it ever was when it comes to doing things that only involve the iPad. It's just that most things it could do want to talk to other computers, and those other computers haven't stayed static. Find a computer that doesn't need to talk to the world, and you'll find a computer that can stay relevant for a long time. Every 20-year-old car on the road has 20-year-old computers in it still going strong, for example. But if you want a computer to both stay useful and derive its usefulness from the world, then you need the world to stop changing, and that won't happen.

komali2 9y ago
To add to that, old computers can still run old software just fine. Assuming it wasn't left somewhere moist and that you swap out the motherboard battery (which isn't really even necessary), a two decade old dell could just run windows 98 with office 95 or whatever it was back then just fine. It makes sense that you'd have to upgrade hardware to use new software...
SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
Spot on. My Atari ST is just as useful as it was 25 years ago!

iainmerrick 9y ago

musical instrument manufacturers know that a musical instrument that needs repair/maintenance/upgrades on a regular basis, isn't a musical instrument. (Its more of a toy.) Well, hang on now! That may be true of electronic instruments, but if you buy a piano and don't have it regularly tuned and maintained, that's how you end up with a honky-tonky toy piano. :)

robohamburger 9y ago

I wonder how realistic a static computer could be given its full of app-stores and internet. I imagine video game consoles and other forms of electronics, at least up until recently probably were build as you say.

keypress 9y ago

Yeah, bought a Nook (Ereader) in the UK where bookstore was swapped out and then died. So glad I hadn't bought loads of ebooks, because I'd have been fuming.