4 ms·

Again, if your reference point is the "normalized" market, that's the only way obsolescence really works as a model. This requires little effort to understand.

Again, if your reference point is the "normalized" market, that's the only way obsolescence really works as a model. This requires little effort to understand. What I'm saying is, think about the long tail and the extraction of value from this technology. It's far from incapable. I don't know about you, but I could plan a global economic takeover on an 800; still can. I can also teach someone else to do so. In fact, it's easier to stay focused. There's no malware and comparatively little practical need for encryption. We waste a lot of qualitative profit as we march forward in search of breadth. Here we are robbed blind by the obsolescence model, which imparts heavy bias to our thinking.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
It's obsolete in the way a horse is obsolete. If you have a specific job - getting to the next town, or maybe crossing the continental USA - it will do that job, or at least attempt to. But it will be painfully slow, unreliable, and potentially expensive compared to more modern alternatives. No one is really being robbed here - because there's a point where incremental changes in technology mean that a product becomes qualitatively different. Not just faster, but able to do things that an older product can't. In this example the qualitative differences are obvious. You can't make calls, watch videos, browse the web, develop modern software, play modern games, write modern documents, or print them with a modern printer. You can still do some very simple programming on it, but you can't share the code without hard-to-find extras. So - obsolete. It's capable of some extremely limited applications, none of which are particularly useful. And it's quite useless for anything else.
- MisterTea 8y ago
  > ... unreliable ... I'm sure that machine will still power on after in 20 years. Try that with today's flimsy throwaway junk.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    Why design for 20 years when it’ll be unusable in 5? If anything we need more biodegradable parts, and bottles that last 10 years not 500 years.
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      > Why design for 20 years when it’ll be unusable in 5? I can't think of any modern machines that will be unusable in 5 years. Even my smartphone is 7 years old and still perfectly fine. Until a few years back, I regularly used an old Cromemco System III computer that was built in 1979 (it has since been donated to a computer museum).
      - japanoise 8y ago
        >Until a few years back, I regularly used an old Cromemco System III computer that was built in 1979 Please don't take this as sneering -because I'm genuinely interested in late 70s micros!- but what did you use the system 3 for? Can you tell me about it as a computer? It's not a computer I know much about and I'm interested in what you would've used it for, especially recently.
        JohnFen 8y ago
        It was a z80-based CP/M machine. I got it as payment for a software project I did for someone. I used it for recreational/hobby activities. I forget the system clock speed, but I think it was around 2 MHz. The thing was made of steel, weighed over 100lbs, and contained 4 8-inch floppy drives (combined capacity for all four was about 2.5 megs, I think, but it may have been 5). The one I had contained an insane 512 megs of RAM. If I remember correctly, the one I had was purchased new for somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 (1979, which is about $35,000 today). This was, at the time, serious hardware. It even did high-resolution graphics that would (barely) still be considered high-resolution today. Turning it on literally made my lights dim momentarily and sounded like a jet engine spooling up. It was glorious. Nothing about it is practical in today's terms, of course. I had fun doing things like writing compilers and software to use it as the coordinator for a crazy project I was engaging in at the time: I had networked 10 Kaypro IIs together with it and was using the entire combined system as a single multi-CPU computing machine. What I mostly did with it, though, was to experiment with hardware. The System III was an S-100 bus machine, and did not even have a motherboard as we think of them these days. It had a backplane that you installed cards into to provide all functionality. This made it really fun and easy to experiment with changes that would, in a modern machine, have required altering the motherboard.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

It's obsolete in the way a horse is obsolete. If you have a specific job - getting to the next town, or maybe crossing the continental USA - it will do that job, or at least attempt to. But it will be painfully slow, unreliable, and potentially expensive compared to more modern alternatives. No one is really being robbed here - because there's a point where incremental changes in technology mean that a product becomes qualitatively different. Not just faster, but able to do things that an older product can't. In this example the qualitative differences are obvious. You can't make calls, watch videos, browse the web, develop modern software, play modern games, write modern documents, or print them with a modern printer. You can still do some very simple programming on it, but you can't share the code without hard-to-find extras. So - obsolete. It's capable of some extremely limited applications, none of which are particularly useful. And it's quite useless for anything else.

MisterTea 8y ago
> ... unreliable ... I'm sure that machine will still power on after in 20 years. Try that with today's flimsy throwaway junk.
- chillacy 8y ago
  Why design for 20 years when it’ll be unusable in 5? If anything we need more biodegradable parts, and bottles that last 10 years not 500 years.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    > Why design for 20 years when it’ll be unusable in 5? I can't think of any modern machines that will be unusable in 5 years. Even my smartphone is 7 years old and still perfectly fine. Until a few years back, I regularly used an old Cromemco System III computer that was built in 1979 (it has since been donated to a computer museum).
    - japanoise 8y ago
      >Until a few years back, I regularly used an old Cromemco System III computer that was built in 1979 Please don't take this as sneering -because I'm genuinely interested in late 70s micros!- but what did you use the system 3 for? Can you tell me about it as a computer? It's not a computer I know much about and I'm interested in what you would've used it for, especially recently.
      - JohnFen 8y ago
        It was a z80-based CP/M machine. I got it as payment for a software project I did for someone. I used it for recreational/hobby activities. I forget the system clock speed, but I think it was around 2 MHz. The thing was made of steel, weighed over 100lbs, and contained 4 8-inch floppy drives (combined capacity for all four was about 2.5 megs, I think, but it may have been 5). The one I had contained an insane 512 megs of RAM. If I remember correctly, the one I had was purchased new for somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 (1979, which is about $35,000 today). This was, at the time, serious hardware. It even did high-resolution graphics that would (barely) still be considered high-resolution today. Turning it on literally made my lights dim momentarily and sounded like a jet engine spooling up. It was glorious. Nothing about it is practical in today's terms, of course. I had fun doing things like writing compilers and software to use it as the coordinator for a crazy project I was engaging in at the time: I had networked 10 Kaypro IIs together with it and was using the entire combined system as a single multi-CPU computing machine. What I mostly did with it, though, was to experiment with hardware. The System III was an S-100 bus machine, and did not even have a motherboard as we think of them these days. It had a backplane that you installed cards into to provide all functionality. This made it really fun and easy to experiment with changes that would, in a modern machine, have required altering the motherboard.