9 ms·

The Joys of Being a Late Tech Adopter

69 points by sneeze-slayer 7y ago

karmakaze 7y ago
Funny how it uses the original iPhone as it's example. I also got the original when released (though I used the buy from store and don't activate workaround). In my case, it didn't bother me at all when the next model came out, I just kept using my just as useful as when purchased it. Less true today as OS updates accelerate obsolescence. Where I agree is with product updates. Version 1 can be significant as it was when I got my first iPod (Apple's first killer product). I got subsequent generations but not every one, mainly to increase storage, and never regretted any purchase. The difference between having an iPad or no iPad around the house is greater than having the prev gens iPad or the current.
- fmajid 7y ago
  The question is whether the extra year of having the first usable smartphone was worth the price, and the answer in my case was an unequivocal yes. Nowadays smartphones have reached a point of good-enough sufficiency, and that's why upgrade cycles have risen to one every three years.
rienbdj 7y ago
Does this argument hold up when the next generation is significantly different? I would take an iPhone 6 over a 5S any day.
- fmajid 7y ago
  The non-S are usually a much bigger improvement over their predecessors than the S. Almost as if Apple have an A-team working on the non-S and a B-team refining them into S with minor iterations.
  - afthonos 7y ago
    However, the S is almost always the version I prefer; your so-called “B-Team” are the ones who polish the designs, and the results are clearly superior. As the saying goes, a trifle makes perfection, but perfection is no trifle.
    - kingkongjaffa 7y ago
      This rings true for me, I got a iphone 6plus at launch and hated the large form factor. it broke and I bought a used 6s (non-plus) and it was so much more refined. Not to mention the smaller size was way more practical. The only time I wished for a larger screen was to watch movies on flights and an iPad is way better for that anyway.
- ralusek 7y ago
  Obviously this argument is entirely contingent on how valuable the changes in the newer model are to you. If you take a lot of photos, maybe a 2 megapixel jump is worth the upgrade. If you use your phone as a display of affluence, maybe the latest number is worth it to you. I think the point is that we should honestly evaluate the difference and honestly determine the value to ourselves, because for many people the compulsion to upgrade is basically rooted in a strange sense of obligation, rather than any measured utility delta.
EliRivers 7y ago
“We’re in the golden age of smartphones,” he said. “Your smartphone from two years ago still works great and will continue to work for a while.” If this is where smartphones peak - usable for two and a bit years - we need to take ourselves out to the car park for a strong conversation.
- jotm 7y ago
  I still have a HTC One M8, which is almost 5 years old. The processor is fine, storage seems fine, battery is almost dead which is normal... But 2GB of RAM is now not enough for the same apps I've used for years. Open a few tabs in Firefox and it slows down a lot. Before quad core processors, I found the CPU was a serious bottleneck, as well. And fwiw, Windows Mobile phones had full fledged browsers and 3G long before the iPhone.
  - pentaxy 7y ago
    I would put all hardware in the same bag - can be good as new after 5+ years - but whatever electronics you want to buy today (be it a phone, "smart" TV, even a car), if you have any experience you know that vendors are now mostly in the business of providing a service, not just a physical product. And that's what you'll want to look up and pay most for. If the stuff becomes incompatible or not secure for everyday use because the vendor stopped (or didn't even intend) to release updates, what's the good?
    - jotm 7y ago
      Thankfully, it's still possible to update software yourself. If that's impossible, well, good bye from me. I'm not going to be forced to buy new stuff because the perfectly good old one is not going to be updated.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        I can’t wait for people to start JTAGing their smart TVs.
  - 7y ago
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
I always wanted a MacBook (the 2015+ Retina one), but they always seemed too expensive once the storage was upgraded, and sadly this year Apple discontinued it. But last month I happened to look on the right Amazon site and hey, they have unsold brand-new stock for the latest model with the upgraded storage in the colour I want, discounted several hundred euros. Finally a good price :D
- eisa01 7y ago
  Note that the 2015 MBPs are a great buy - you can upgrade the SSD yourself using a $10 adapter: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-macbook-pro-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-mac... Grabbed a used 13" model with 16 GB RAM, and put in a 1 TB drive myself. Couldn't be happier upgrading from a 2010 edition If they release new models with fixed keyboards next year, I might upgrade and shell out for the SSD and RAM upgrades.
ZoomStop 7y ago
Most of the authors examples involve buying a generation or two older and buying used. I would certainly expect previously owned gadgets to cost substantially less. While there is a lot less early adopter risk in this, most of the savings are realized from buying second hand.
mojuba 7y ago
I think Apple knows this perfectly. I'm not even sure whether the "I'll wait for the S upgrade" people (myself included) outsmart Apple or it's Apple who created the market for those who want to feel smarter than the rest. At the end of the day, the economics of major upgrades vs. incrementals is very straightforward: major upgrades do bring significant new convenience features (e.g. once you are used to Face ID you don't want to go back) and if you want to own them today, you pay more. There's nothing smart about not benefiting from the new features today for the sake of saving a few hundred dollars.
- esotericn 7y ago
  > There's nothing smart about not benefiting from the new features today for the sake of saving a few hundred dollars. I suppose you mean that it's obvious (i.e. doesn't require some masterstroke), not that it's a bad idea? Sounds great to me. I don't upgrade my computing hardware until it's no longer fit for purpose for the most part, it would be stupidly wasteful to buy a new thing every 6 months regardless of whether I can afford it.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  > There's nothing smart about not benefiting from the new features today for the sake of saving a few hundred dollars. Sure there is. For every life-changing new feature, there are a dozen that end up not going anywhere. For the ones that are, their true advantages and disadvantages only become clear after they’ve been in the world for a while. I’m thankful for all of the early adopters out there that hapily deal with the churn and find out what’s actually good so that I don’t have to— I can spend that time focusing on what’s important to me and still get most of the benefits, if only a year or two later.
  - mgkimsal 7y ago
    "For every life-changing new feature, there are a dozen that end up not going anywhere" "3D Touch" (IIRC?) would seem to fall in to that camp, no? I've never had a device that offered it, and the folks I know that do didn't realize they had it.
esotericn 7y ago
I just wish that smartphones had a more standardised OS. Old laptops are fully usable in exactly the same way as a modern machine. They might be slightly slower. Well, I mean, it's getting more difficult to deal with 32bit hardware, but that's about 10-15 years old now. My 32bit atom netbook is still usable; still gets security patches; runs the latest everything (it's just very slow, and e.g. some distros dropped 32bit support). I think that the phone manufacturers, Google, etc, should address the fact that they are creating mountains of e-waste for no good reason. The last new phone I bought was partly because old software stopped running on my version of Android. That's really a shame. I'm keeping an eye on the progress of the Librem but that's a tiny niche market for nerds like me and doesn't address the wider problem.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  > I think that the phone manufacturers, Google, etc, should address the fact that they are creating mountains of e-waste for no good reason. The last new phone I bought was partly because old software stopped running on my version of Android. That's really a shame. this might be naive, but I do suspect we are getting close to an inflection point with the two year phone lifetime. up until the last few years, phone hardware was advancing rapidly and major features were being added to the mobile OSes every year. no one who could afford to wanted to keep a phone more than two or three years. now that mobile tech is more mature, they will start having to cater to people who want to buy a quality device and keep it for longer. arguably apple is already doing this; iOS 13 will still support a phone from 2015.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    I'm not so sure. We need an "IBM PC" of the smartphone world. It's not a matter of the hardware manufacturers "supporting an OS". It's about the lack of standardization, hardware drivers, fragmentation etc. Samsung don't support my 15 year old laptop, but it works and works fine, because it's a PC. If the kernel drivers for my phone were mainlined that would be a huge step.
    - ianai 7y ago
spodek 7y ago
Besides phones, other applications: - Wait for movie hype to end to avoid crap movies with great marketing. I usually wait to borrow them from the library. - I buy all my computers used from Craig's List. I'm typing on one I paid $500 for that would have been $2,000 new. - Latest news about "superfoods" or nutrition. I heard about someone who waited 5 years to act on food trends. None lasted that long before more latest nutrition news superseded it. - Reading daily news. Doesn't improve my life nor make me better informed. I still check my email too much.
- bigmanwalter 7y ago
  Lots of Craigslist computers are bought with stolen credit cards
  - iamnotacrook 7y ago
    Are you implying OP is a thief?
    - ianai 7y ago
      How would that statistic be accurately calculated?
- ianai 7y ago
  Computers definitely peaked in performance almost a decade ago, but this might change with more parallel software and core counts - but emphasis on parallel algorithms. Superfood is also marketing hype. But I’d say there is an underlying truth: fresh, whole foods are more nutritious than spliced up or fried options and a diet lacking nutritious food can easily be deficient. Herbs are pretty crazy packed with (sometimes unique) beneficial compounds though. edit-possibly it’s that plants pack nutritional compounds into their fruits, leaves, and bodies and the smaller the whole component of a plant is the more densely packed it will be.
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    > Computers definitely peaked in performance almost a decade ago haha no way. I was lent a octoccore server from ~2009 recently, and I'd describe it as a hairdryer with a modicum of compute tacked on. My personal dev machine is ~4 years old is a boatload faster core for core, and matched the octocore overall performance (DB benchmark on real world task, not disk-bound).
davnicwil 7y ago
I think particularly with phones, 5-10 years ago it was necessary to get a flagship model to get something that at least wasn't awful, and you wanted to upgrade that flagship as often as possible to get to 'good' as soon as possible. The last 5 years we reached 'good' for all flagship models, and so you bought one to get that but could then just keep it until it broke. Now, and going forwards, I think we're in the phase where non flagships are reaching 'good' too, so it's really compelling to just get something that's cheaper and more of a commodity device. As the article points out, it'll be fantastic when we reach the point of having good phones that are perfectly nice to use day to day, but if we occasionally lose or break them the reaction is 'ah well, I'll just go buy another one tomorrow' because they cost $50 brand new.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- drcross 7y ago
  I agree that we've reached "peak phone". The newer models don't have any features you particularly need so keep using your existing one as a commodity until it breaks. The sales cycle is now looking like it's supposed to skip a generation of users. Unless you are getting it for free that 1000 or 1200 dollars you spend on a flagship could be used to enhance your life, either through having more disposable income, a holiday or investment. Enjoy your life and don't be a slave to devices.
  - koonsolo 7y ago
    The foldable ones look to bring 2x the screen size. It's like having a tablet in your pocket. But I'm a late adopter too, so I'll wait until that tech is robust enough.
- ryl00 7y ago
  > Now, and going forwards, I think we're in the phase where non flagships are reaching 'good' too This will obviously vary from person to person, but I felt we already reached this point 4-5 years ago. After getting an unlocked Moto G2 in 2014 for roughly $200 new, I no longer felt like I was sacrificing so terribly much at that price point.
drevil-v2 7y ago
I treated myself to the 2019 Kindle Oasis and compared to my two year old Kindle Paperwhite (which has been donated to a grateful family member) it is miles ahead. The larger warmer screen is just incredible and I have no regrets. On the other hand I am quite happy driving a 15 year old car and would not spend money on a brand new fancy car even though I can afford it. No Tesla or BMW or Merc for me. It's different strokes for different people.
- castratikron 7y ago
  A couple years ago I bought an almost new video iPod circa 2005. It was my first Apple product so I didn't have the cable to charge it. I went to a Sprint store near my apartment and asked if they had a cable. They told me that they didn't carry "budget items" and that maybe I should try the Walgreen's next door. Ten short years this iPod was center stage at an Apple keynote and considered the best in the world, and it still worked just as well as it did when it came out. It just goes to show that the value of tech is relative to the times. I'm waiting for the day when I can pick up a cheap Tesla that "only" goes 200 miles and "doesn't even drive itself". I'm already seeing Craigslist ads for Teslas where they have to state no autopilot. No car ad five years ago that would have to say that.
  - steelframe 7y ago
    > I'm waiting for the day when I can pick up a cheap Tesla that "only" goes 200 miles and "doesn't even drive itself". I just sold my first-generation 2016 Model X to a dealer at 80% of its original cost 3 years ago, which to me indicates a profound level of delusion in the marketplace about the long-term reliability of Tesla vehicles. Going through my own personal experiences and following stories of what Tesla owners have had to go through when they needed repairs, I've finally accepted what my friend said long ago about Tesla cars being repair-hostile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898 Speaking as someone who has gone through 3 years of repairs with a brand new Tesla (fortunately all being under warranty), if your objective is to buy a car that will be reasonably reliable and easily and cheaply repaired as its aging parts break, an old used Tesla would be the absolute last car I'd ever consider.
zitterbewegung 7y ago
I generally buy products when I need to than when I want to. For other products I usually wait 3 months or more for all of the tech reviewers to get in their 2 cents on each product. Although, waiting for longer periods of time might be more beneficial because then you know more information about the devices long term durability. I have started to buy used Macs due to a bad experience with buying a Macbook Pro 2017. I think I may have had some processor issues at that time. The other problem was that during repair my laptop was lost for a few weeks. I had other concerns on the long term durability so I sold it for a large loss. I have a Desktop computer that I use as my "lab" computer. I generally use it for video games but I have also used it to do some freelance work in the past. I try to avoid version one of any product that I could own also.
alexashka 7y ago
This may be sensible advice if being educated is not an option you're not interested in. Blanket advice is great for dummies. We have the internet, with every opportunity to become knowledgable. You don't even have to read! Youtube alone has a dozen excellent tech channels that'll break it all down for you, in a somewhat entertaining manner too.
steelframe 7y ago
Meanwhile the battery in my trusty and otherwise-perfectly-functional Sony Xperia Z5 Compact just swelled up and popped the back cover off. Just like what happened to my Z3 Compact. And apparently replacing the battery is an exercise in completely disassembling the phone and re-assembling it, which can take an experienced repair technician over an hour of time. The process also has a high failure rate, since it involves disconnecting and reconnecting both front and rear cameras, the loudspeaker, the LCD screen, and the NFC antenna. I'm particularly salty about this because not only does this ruin a perfectly good device, but it can actually be quite dangerous. https://www.macworld.com/article/3162109/beware-the-bulgy-battery-lithium-ion-batteries-removed-from-laptops-can-still-be-dangerous.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3162109/beware-the-bulgy-ba...

69 points by sneeze-slayer 7y ago

Funny how it uses the original iPhone as it's example. I also got the original when released (though I used the buy from store and don't activate workaround). In my case, it didn't bother me at all when the next model came out, I just kept using my just as useful as when purchased it. Less true today as OS updates accelerate obsolescence. Where I agree is with product updates. Version 1 can be significant as it was when I got my first iPod (Apple's first killer product). I got subsequent generations but not every one, mainly to increase storage, and never regretted any purchase. The difference between having an iPad or no iPad around the house is greater than having the prev gens iPad or the current.

fmajid 7y ago
The question is whether the extra year of having the first usable smartphone was worth the price, and the answer in my case was an unequivocal yes. Nowadays smartphones have reached a point of good-enough sufficiency, and that's why upgrade cycles have risen to one every three years.

rienbdj 7y ago

Does this argument hold up when the next generation is significantly different? I would take an iPhone 6 over a 5S any day.

fmajid 7y ago
The non-S are usually a much bigger improvement over their predecessors than the S. Almost as if Apple have an A-team working on the non-S and a B-team refining them into S with minor iterations.
- afthonos 7y ago
  However, the S is almost always the version I prefer; your so-called “B-Team” are the ones who polish the designs, and the results are clearly superior. As the saying goes, a trifle makes perfection, but perfection is no trifle.
  - kingkongjaffa 7y ago
    This rings true for me, I got a iphone 6plus at launch and hated the large form factor. it broke and I bought a used 6s (non-plus) and it was so much more refined. Not to mention the smaller size was way more practical. The only time I wished for a larger screen was to watch movies on flights and an iPad is way better for that anyway.
ralusek 7y ago
Obviously this argument is entirely contingent on how valuable the changes in the newer model are to you. If you take a lot of photos, maybe a 2 megapixel jump is worth the upgrade. If you use your phone as a display of affluence, maybe the latest number is worth it to you. I think the point is that we should honestly evaluate the difference and honestly determine the value to ourselves, because for many people the compulsion to upgrade is basically rooted in a strange sense of obligation, rather than any measured utility delta.

EliRivers 7y ago

“We’re in the golden age of smartphones,” he said. “Your smartphone from two years ago still works great and will continue to work for a while.” If this is where smartphones peak - usable for two and a bit years - we need to take ourselves out to the car park for a strong conversation.

jotm 7y ago
I still have a HTC One M8, which is almost 5 years old. The processor is fine, storage seems fine, battery is almost dead which is normal... But 2GB of RAM is now not enough for the same apps I've used for years. Open a few tabs in Firefox and it slows down a lot. Before quad core processors, I found the CPU was a serious bottleneck, as well. And fwiw, Windows Mobile phones had full fledged browsers and 3G long before the iPhone.
- pentaxy 7y ago
  I would put all hardware in the same bag - can be good as new after 5+ years - but whatever electronics you want to buy today (be it a phone, "smart" TV, even a car), if you have any experience you know that vendors are now mostly in the business of providing a service, not just a physical product. And that's what you'll want to look up and pay most for. If the stuff becomes incompatible or not secure for everyday use because the vendor stopped (or didn't even intend) to release updates, what's the good?
  - jotm 7y ago
    Thankfully, it's still possible to update software yourself. If that's impossible, well, good bye from me. I'm not going to be forced to buy new stuff because the perfectly good old one is not going to be updated.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      I can’t wait for people to start JTAGing their smart TVs.
- 7y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago

I always wanted a MacBook (the 2015+ Retina one), but they always seemed too expensive once the storage was upgraded, and sadly this year Apple discontinued it. But last month I happened to look on the right Amazon site and hey, they have unsold brand-new stock for the latest model with the upgraded storage in the colour I want, discounted several hundred euros. Finally a good price :D

eisa01 7y ago
Note that the 2015 MBPs are a great buy - you can upgrade the SSD yourself using a $10 adapter: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-macbook-pro-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-mac... Grabbed a used 13" model with 16 GB RAM, and put in a 1 TB drive myself. Couldn't be happier upgrading from a 2010 edition If they release new models with fixed keyboards next year, I might upgrade and shell out for the SSD and RAM upgrades.

ZoomStop 7y ago

Most of the authors examples involve buying a generation or two older and buying used. I would certainly expect previously owned gadgets to cost substantially less. While there is a lot less early adopter risk in this, most of the savings are realized from buying second hand.

mojuba 7y ago

I think Apple knows this perfectly. I'm not even sure whether the "I'll wait for the S upgrade" people (myself included) outsmart Apple or it's Apple who created the market for those who want to feel smarter than the rest. At the end of the day, the economics of major upgrades vs. incrementals is very straightforward: major upgrades do bring significant new convenience features (e.g. once you are used to Face ID you don't want to go back) and if you want to own them today, you pay more. There's nothing smart about not benefiting from the new features today for the sake of saving a few hundred dollars.

esotericn 7y ago
> There's nothing smart about not benefiting from the new features today for the sake of saving a few hundred dollars. I suppose you mean that it's obvious (i.e. doesn't require some masterstroke), not that it's a bad idea? Sounds great to me. I don't upgrade my computing hardware until it's no longer fit for purpose for the most part, it would be stupidly wasteful to buy a new thing every 6 months regardless of whether I can afford it.
kd5bjo 7y ago
> There's nothing smart about not benefiting from the new features today for the sake of saving a few hundred dollars. Sure there is. For every life-changing new feature, there are a dozen that end up not going anywhere. For the ones that are, their true advantages and disadvantages only become clear after they’ve been in the world for a while. I’m thankful for all of the early adopters out there that hapily deal with the churn and find out what’s actually good so that I don’t have to— I can spend that time focusing on what’s important to me and still get most of the benefits, if only a year or two later.
- mgkimsal 7y ago
  "For every life-changing new feature, there are a dozen that end up not going anywhere" "3D Touch" (IIRC?) would seem to fall in to that camp, no? I've never had a device that offered it, and the folks I know that do didn't realize they had it.

esotericn 7y ago

I just wish that smartphones had a more standardised OS. Old laptops are fully usable in exactly the same way as a modern machine. They might be slightly slower. Well, I mean, it's getting more difficult to deal with 32bit hardware, but that's about 10-15 years old now. My 32bit atom netbook is still usable; still gets security patches; runs the latest everything (it's just very slow, and e.g. some distros dropped 32bit support). I think that the phone manufacturers, Google, etc, should address the fact that they are creating mountains of e-waste for no good reason. The last new phone I bought was partly because old software stopped running on my version of Android. That's really a shame. I'm keeping an eye on the progress of the Librem but that's a tiny niche market for nerds like me and doesn't address the wider problem.

leetcrew 7y ago
> I think that the phone manufacturers, Google, etc, should address the fact that they are creating mountains of e-waste for no good reason. The last new phone I bought was partly because old software stopped running on my version of Android. That's really a shame. this might be naive, but I do suspect we are getting close to an inflection point with the two year phone lifetime. up until the last few years, phone hardware was advancing rapidly and major features were being added to the mobile OSes every year. no one who could afford to wanted to keep a phone more than two or three years. now that mobile tech is more mature, they will start having to cater to people who want to buy a quality device and keep it for longer. arguably apple is already doing this; iOS 13 will still support a phone from 2015.
- esotericn 7y ago
  I'm not so sure. We need an "IBM PC" of the smartphone world. It's not a matter of the hardware manufacturers "supporting an OS". It's about the lack of standardization, hardware drivers, fragmentation etc. Samsung don't support my 15 year old laptop, but it works and works fine, because it's a PC. If the kernel drivers for my phone were mainlined that would be a huge step.
  - ianai 7y ago

spodek 7y ago

Besides phones, other applications: - Wait for movie hype to end to avoid crap movies with great marketing. I usually wait to borrow them from the library. - I buy all my computers used from Craig's List. I'm typing on one I paid $500 for that would have been $2,000 new. - Latest news about "superfoods" or nutrition. I heard about someone who waited 5 years to act on food trends. None lasted that long before more latest nutrition news superseded it. - Reading daily news. Doesn't improve my life nor make me better informed. I still check my email too much.

bigmanwalter 7y ago
Lots of Craigslist computers are bought with stolen credit cards
- iamnotacrook 7y ago
  Are you implying OP is a thief?
  - ianai 7y ago
    How would that statistic be accurately calculated?
ianai 7y ago
Computers definitely peaked in performance almost a decade ago, but this might change with more parallel software and core counts - but emphasis on parallel algorithms. Superfood is also marketing hype. But I’d say there is an underlying truth: fresh, whole foods are more nutritious than spliced up or fried options and a diet lacking nutritious food can easily be deficient. Herbs are pretty crazy packed with (sometimes unique) beneficial compounds though. edit-possibly it’s that plants pack nutritional compounds into their fruits, leaves, and bodies and the smaller the whole component of a plant is the more densely packed it will be.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  > Computers definitely peaked in performance almost a decade ago haha no way. I was lent a octoccore server from ~2009 recently, and I'd describe it as a hairdryer with a modicum of compute tacked on. My personal dev machine is ~4 years old is a boatload faster core for core, and matched the octocore overall performance (DB benchmark on real world task, not disk-bound).

davnicwil 7y ago

I think particularly with phones, 5-10 years ago it was necessary to get a flagship model to get something that at least wasn't awful, and you wanted to upgrade that flagship as often as possible to get to 'good' as soon as possible. The last 5 years we reached 'good' for all flagship models, and so you bought one to get that but could then just keep it until it broke. Now, and going forwards, I think we're in the phase where non flagships are reaching 'good' too, so it's really compelling to just get something that's cheaper and more of a commodity device. As the article points out, it'll be fantastic when we reach the point of having good phones that are perfectly nice to use day to day, but if we occasionally lose or break them the reaction is 'ah well, I'll just go buy another one tomorrow' because they cost $50 brand new.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
drcross 7y ago
I agree that we've reached "peak phone". The newer models don't have any features you particularly need so keep using your existing one as a commodity until it breaks. The sales cycle is now looking like it's supposed to skip a generation of users. Unless you are getting it for free that 1000 or 1200 dollars you spend on a flagship could be used to enhance your life, either through having more disposable income, a holiday or investment. Enjoy your life and don't be a slave to devices.
- koonsolo 7y ago
  The foldable ones look to bring 2x the screen size. It's like having a tablet in your pocket. But I'm a late adopter too, so I'll wait until that tech is robust enough.
ryl00 7y ago
> Now, and going forwards, I think we're in the phase where non flagships are reaching 'good' too This will obviously vary from person to person, but I felt we already reached this point 4-5 years ago. After getting an unlocked Moto G2 in 2014 for roughly $200 new, I no longer felt like I was sacrificing so terribly much at that price point.

drevil-v2 7y ago

I treated myself to the 2019 Kindle Oasis and compared to my two year old Kindle Paperwhite (which has been donated to a grateful family member) it is miles ahead. The larger warmer screen is just incredible and I have no regrets. On the other hand I am quite happy driving a 15 year old car and would not spend money on a brand new fancy car even though I can afford it. No Tesla or BMW or Merc for me. It's different strokes for different people.

castratikron 7y ago
A couple years ago I bought an almost new video iPod circa 2005. It was my first Apple product so I didn't have the cable to charge it. I went to a Sprint store near my apartment and asked if they had a cable. They told me that they didn't carry "budget items" and that maybe I should try the Walgreen's next door. Ten short years this iPod was center stage at an Apple keynote and considered the best in the world, and it still worked just as well as it did when it came out. It just goes to show that the value of tech is relative to the times. I'm waiting for the day when I can pick up a cheap Tesla that "only" goes 200 miles and "doesn't even drive itself". I'm already seeing Craigslist ads for Teslas where they have to state no autopilot. No car ad five years ago that would have to say that.
- steelframe 7y ago
  > I'm waiting for the day when I can pick up a cheap Tesla that "only" goes 200 miles and "doesn't even drive itself". I just sold my first-generation 2016 Model X to a dealer at 80% of its original cost 3 years ago, which to me indicates a profound level of delusion in the marketplace about the long-term reliability of Tesla vehicles. Going through my own personal experiences and following stories of what Tesla owners have had to go through when they needed repairs, I've finally accepted what my friend said long ago about Tesla cars being repair-hostile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898 Speaking as someone who has gone through 3 years of repairs with a brand new Tesla (fortunately all being under warranty), if your objective is to buy a car that will be reasonably reliable and easily and cheaply repaired as its aging parts break, an old used Tesla would be the absolute last car I'd ever consider.

zitterbewegung 7y ago

I generally buy products when I need to than when I want to. For other products I usually wait 3 months or more for all of the tech reviewers to get in their 2 cents on each product. Although, waiting for longer periods of time might be more beneficial because then you know more information about the devices long term durability. I have started to buy used Macs due to a bad experience with buying a Macbook Pro 2017. I think I may have had some processor issues at that time. The other problem was that during repair my laptop was lost for a few weeks. I had other concerns on the long term durability so I sold it for a large loss. I have a Desktop computer that I use as my "lab" computer. I generally use it for video games but I have also used it to do some freelance work in the past. I try to avoid version one of any product that I could own also.

alexashka 7y ago

This may be sensible advice if being educated is not an option you're not interested in. Blanket advice is great for dummies. We have the internet, with every opportunity to become knowledgable. You don't even have to read! Youtube alone has a dozen excellent tech channels that'll break it all down for you, in a somewhat entertaining manner too.

steelframe 7y ago

Meanwhile the battery in my trusty and otherwise-perfectly-functional Sony Xperia Z5 Compact just swelled up and popped the back cover off. Just like what happened to my Z3 Compact. And apparently replacing the battery is an exercise in completely disassembling the phone and re-assembling it, which can take an experienced repair technician over an hour of time. The process also has a high failure rate, since it involves disconnecting and reconnecting both front and rear cameras, the loudspeaker, the LCD screen, and the NFC antenna. I'm particularly salty about this because not only does this ruin a perfectly good device, but it can actually be quite dangerous. https://www.macworld.com/article/3162109/beware-the-bulgy-battery-lithium-ion-batteries-removed-from-laptops-can-still-be-dangerous.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3162109/beware-the-bulgy-ba...