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If you have Voyager 2's budget, I'm sure someone would be quite happy to sell you a phone that receives updates for decades.

autoexec 3y ago
It's not just an issue of money. Apple made a lot more money last year than NASA did.
- randomdata 3y ago
  And Apple would have made a lot more money if you spent the equivalent of Voyager 2's cost on your iPhone. It is just about money. Cheap out and buy a budget phone and you will also get budget support.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    You're right, I misspoke. I should have said it wasn't about the costs. NASA can keep updating their hardware after all this time with far fewer resources than apple has, so it isn't that it's prohibitively expensive to keep supporting old devices, it's just that ultimately "It is just about money" and cell phone companies would rather have people throw out their old devices and buy new ones.
  - saberdancer 3y ago
    I think it's better to say - if your phone was 12 billion miles from Earth and used to send sensitive scientific data - it would get updates as well.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      Not when you only paid on the order of $1,000 for it. For so little, nobody is going to bother to support your device for decades, no matter how near or far away it is from you or what you happen to be doing with it. The original Voyager budget was $865 million (~$5 billion today), and has paid out even more for maintenance and operation since. Spend that much money on an iPhone and not only will updates be available for decades, but someone from Apple will come and personally install the updates for you.
      - jabradoodle 3y ago
        Apple made more than 100 billion on iPhone sales in the first half of 2023 and the marginal cost of an update is essentially 0, so what your saying doesn't make sense.
        randomdata 3y ago
        And the vendors who supplied the Voyager program may have made quadrillions across the entire customer base for all we know. But there is no reason for a vendor to use the income from one customer to subsidize another. If you only pay $1,000 for an iPhone, you are going to get $1,000 worth of support. Don't be such a cheapskate if you want greater service, I guess?
        jabradoodle 3y ago
        Economies of scale are not a subsidy.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        randomdata 3y ago
        That's right. Now, if you'd like to return to the thread...
      - leptons 3y ago
        In your scenario there also needs to only be 2 iPhones in existence and making more would cost significantly more than the first 2 did, and you would have to wait decades for them to do anything noteworthy that the first 2 units aren't doing right now. Instead, iPhones are like the basic bitch of devices and are mass produced to the point they are ubiquitous and still 99.999% of use of the device is pointless drivel.
      - saberdancer 3y ago
        The point is that they are getting updates, not because NASA paid 865 million in 1970s but because it is doing scientific work that no other spacecraft is able to do currently. If Voyager was orbiting around Earth it would get no updates at all, no matter how much NASA paid to get it into orbit. So my point stands - if Voyager ran on an iPhone it would get those updates.
- ilyt 3y ago
  Apple updates their phones for LOOONG time compared to Android

autoexec 3y ago

It's not just an issue of money. Apple made a lot more money last year than NASA did.

randomdata 3y ago
And Apple would have made a lot more money if you spent the equivalent of Voyager 2's cost on your iPhone. It is just about money. Cheap out and buy a budget phone and you will also get budget support.
- autoexec 3y ago
  You're right, I misspoke. I should have said it wasn't about the costs. NASA can keep updating their hardware after all this time with far fewer resources than apple has, so it isn't that it's prohibitively expensive to keep supporting old devices, it's just that ultimately "It is just about money" and cell phone companies would rather have people throw out their old devices and buy new ones.
- saberdancer 3y ago
  I think it's better to say - if your phone was 12 billion miles from Earth and used to send sensitive scientific data - it would get updates as well.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Not when you only paid on the order of $1,000 for it. For so little, nobody is going to bother to support your device for decades, no matter how near or far away it is from you or what you happen to be doing with it. The original Voyager budget was $865 million (~$5 billion today), and has paid out even more for maintenance and operation since. Spend that much money on an iPhone and not only will updates be available for decades, but someone from Apple will come and personally install the updates for you.
    - jabradoodle 3y ago
      Apple made more than 100 billion on iPhone sales in the first half of 2023 and the marginal cost of an update is essentially 0, so what your saying doesn't make sense.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        And the vendors who supplied the Voyager program may have made quadrillions across the entire customer base for all we know. But there is no reason for a vendor to use the income from one customer to subsidize another. If you only pay $1,000 for an iPhone, you are going to get $1,000 worth of support. Don't be such a cheapskate if you want greater service, I guess?
        jabradoodle 3y ago
        Economies of scale are not a subsidy.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        randomdata 3y ago
        That's right. Now, if you'd like to return to the thread...
    - leptons 3y ago
      In your scenario there also needs to only be 2 iPhones in existence and making more would cost significantly more than the first 2 did, and you would have to wait decades for them to do anything noteworthy that the first 2 units aren't doing right now. Instead, iPhones are like the basic bitch of devices and are mass produced to the point they are ubiquitous and still 99.999% of use of the device is pointless drivel.
    - saberdancer 3y ago
      The point is that they are getting updates, not because NASA paid 865 million in 1970s but because it is doing scientific work that no other spacecraft is able to do currently. If Voyager was orbiting around Earth it would get no updates at all, no matter how much NASA paid to get it into orbit. So my point stands - if Voyager ran on an iPhone it would get those updates.
ilyt 3y ago
Apple updates their phones for LOOONG time compared to Android