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Everything from 1991 Radio Shack ad I now do with my phone (2014)
- zer00eyz 1y ago> Mobile CB, $49.95. Ad says “You’ll never drive ‘alone’ again!” iPhone. I mean sort of. CBs are still a thing that the phone doesn't quite replicate. I would make the argument that the modern version of this is LORA/Meshtastic... Im sure at some point they will jam a few more radios into the phone just to have more features.
- Slash65 1y agoI like the comparison of Meshtastic being the replacement for CB, it fits pretty well since they are both decentralized and made to run without a lot of underlying infrastructure and both work well to communicate in emergency’s.
- paulkrush 1y agoFrom 2012. 13 years ago. It's interesting to note if we are talking just the desktop almost nothing has changed from 2012.
- MBCook 1y agoWhich means it’s time to update the current value! In 2025 it would be $7,245.62.
- MBCook 1y agoI’ve kept thinking about this, so I decided to run it in reverse. An iPhone 16 would be would be about $340 in 1991 money. That’s only 70% more than the cell phone in the catalog, or only _42%_ of the camcorder! The camcorder alone would be almost $1900 today. You could get a folding phone for that. Or three iPhones 16Es.
- TJSomething 1y agoPractically speaking, you can also replace a radar detector with the Waze app.
- andrehacker 1y agoI thought the same but then I realized the post is from 2014, so maybe not at the time
- macNchz 1y agoWaze works great once there's a critical mass of other drivers—busy roads in populated areas. My radar detector fills in the gaps on back roads and small towns very well.
- wooooooshter 1y agoWhy not just obey the speed limits and stop putting innocent people at risk so that you can edge lord your way through late adolescence?
- mcny 1y agoSpeed limits are not the solution. Proper road design is the real solution. We shouldn't have straight four lane stroads that look like a racing strip going straight as an arrow for five miles if the intent is to limit speed to twenty five miles per hour. Slow the road down with curves and bends, not with a signage and paint.
- macNchz 1y agoI’ve driven a lot in urban places with speed camera programs (which I fully support along with other car reduction and traffic calming designs) and lots of pedestrians and cyclists around, but I’ve never had a camera ticket in 20 years of driving. Eight years ago I was driving on a genuinely empty back road in a rural part of America, speed limit 55mph. I failed to notice that, for one mile, the speed limit went down to 45mph. The character of the road didn’t change, we weren’t passing through a populated area. I don’t know why it changed. For miles in either direction it was 55. I kept going 55 and put absolutely zero people at risk of anything. That oversight cost me $400, and the cop was a huge asshole about it. So I bought a radar detector. There are various layers of dysfunction at play in American road design and policing that I’d happily advocate we address. In the meantime I’m doing what I can to avoid any interactions with power drunk people who have the ability to decide my fate on a whim.
- mingus88 1y agoInteresting that one of the items that they iPhone can’t replace is the “fuzz buster”, a radar detector Arguably that’s also covered by Waze or any other speed trap app But the dystopian take is that the iPhone gave away far more to the surveillance state than we ever had with scanners and radar detectors of old. I don’t think we’ll ever go back.
- analog31 1y agoIs that because the wireless hardware on the phone can't pick it up, or because nobody has attempted to program it? Then again, it needs to be a laser detector today.
- b112 1y agoYeah, but then the cops had radar detector-detectors. And of course the war of escalation continued, with radar-detector, detector, detectors. and even radar detector-detector-detector-detectors. Fun times. As I recall, the goal was for the detector detectors to shut off once detecting that they were being detected, to avoid a ticket in places where detectors were illegal. And in Ontario, Canada? One single company sold to the cops and people, in a war of escalation that left their pockets quite padded. Wikipedia says BEL-Tronics, Inc. of Ontario, Canada
- djmips 1y agoKind of the same game-plan (suspected) of antivirus companies.
- myself248 1y agoI feel the same about the 1993 issue of Mondo 2000's "R U A Cyberpunk?" https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Mondo_2000_magazine_issue_10_1993_RU_a_Cyberpunk_p30.jpg https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Mondo_2000_ma... Except the stun gun, volt meter, and the cash. Even back then, they call out the value of non-digital paper money. A phone absolutely can't replace that.
- behringer 1y agoCrypto coin is the next best thing to cash, I would say that it's in the bag if you use a wallet on your phone, although it could be argued.
- smegger001 1y agosure if you don't mind waiting around anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour for a transaction to be confirmed you can replace cash. sure if you don't mind your every transaction being published on a immutable public ledger and linked to your wallet. don't get me wrong it has its place and use but its not anonymous or quick cash is both
- behringer 1y agoNot every crypto coin is bitcoin.
- lysace 1y ago1991 me would prefer the phone do-it-all. 2025 me would prefer the separate devices.
- glhaynes 1y agoBoth of those think that’s what they’d prefer
- kogasa240p 1y agoRelatable.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- citizenpaul 1y agoWhile its rather cool that its available to everyone. Phones kinda killed the cool gadget market. Since your phone does everything, anything new or interesting is now some $5k+ minimum purchase. I wonder if inflation adjusted gadgets are similar priced.
- epicureanideal 1y agoOr have gadgets become incredibly cheap? 99 cent iPhone apps etc?
- ars 1y agoThere's an aspect of fun and tinkering that is gone. You can't usually change those apps or use them in ways not intended by the maker.
- smelendez 1y agoPhones especially killed the giftable gadget market. Department stores and Radio Shacks used to be full of little golf computers and VHS rewinders and electronic Scrabble dictionaries and sports trivia games around Father’s Day and Christmas. It would be unusual in most families, I think, to give someone an app for Christmas. They’ve also changed our relationship with industrial design. There are probably fewer people designing gadgets, and consumers are less used to acquiring a new device and learning how to use it. I didn’t grow up in a particularly gadgety household, but by the time I was 12 I had learned to work a pretty wide variety of electronics with different interfaces and physical media. Nowadays even your TV is basically a smartphone with a remote.
- teachrdan 1y ago> Nowadays even your TV is basically a smartphone with a remote. I bought a decent amateur camera 10 years ago that ran on Android. No idea if they're still using that OS for cameras or other non-phone electronics.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI'm still falling in love with dedicated devices. My Sony digital camera is still a lot of fun (so are my medium- format film cameras for that matter). Of course the phone is the camera I always have on me. I have plenty of other dedicated devices but I'm kind of lazy to think about them, list them. (A digital 12-channel recorder/mixer just jumped to my mind though.)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gxs 1y agoThe good old days when iPhones came with earphones and a charging block To a lesser extent, the good old days when swiping up brought up the control panel
- LorenDB 1y ago(2014) I'd argue this is important to add since iPhones no longer ship with earbuds (or so I'm told; I'm an Android guy myself).
- accrual 1y agoNo earbuds or 5W USB-A chargers in years. :(
- hnlmorg 1y agoThe lack of earbuds is a welcome change because the included ones were almost always shit. Either sound quality wise, build quality wise, or simply just the lack of different silicon moulds for different ear shapes. I do miss the power bricks though. As an aside, you’d almost always want more than 5w to charge modern handsets in any reasonable time.
- accrual 1y agoDefinitely, I agree. My comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek, I don't need new earbuds or chargers these days. 1 Amp x 5 Volts = 5 Watts isn't enough for modern phones these days, we need USB-C adapters with various outputs like 22.5W, etc. Personally I'm OK with Apple dropping the extras. They were nice but now I have a box of old Apple chargers and stuff that I don't need, and I think that is what they were trying to limit.
- Jolter 1y agoAuthor seems to have misread what the ”10-channel desktop scanner” is about. He seems to think it’s referring to an image scanner? I think it’s a device that monitors AM or FM radio for you. I’m sure it’s been made obsolete, but I’m not sure it was by the iPhone.
- jacquesm 1y agoIt monitored various emergency and other radio channels used by police, fire department, ambulance service, taxis and so on. The '10 channels' is in reference to how many tuned channels the thing can scan. Here is some more detail for that particular scanner: https://www.rigpix.com/rs-realistic/realistic_pro57.htm https://www.rigpix.com/rs-realistic/realistic_pro57.htm
- Jolter 1y agoAh, I remember those now! I forgot they were called scanners. Thanks!
- jacquesm 1y agoI used to sell that particular model (I worked for Tandy on Saturdays in Amsterdam when I was a kid).
- pfexec 1y agoWaiting for someone to explain that iPhone has replaced this too (via streaming), completely unaware that the origin of the stream is likely a 3.5mm jack on... an actual scanner.
- brewdad 1y agoWhile very true, so long as someone keeps that scanner online and the source remains unencrypted, only one person needs to own a scanner rather than hundreds. Sadly, my city now encrypts all police channels. Fire and EMS can still be streamed though.
- giveita 1y agoCB? Maybe you can get a walkie talkie app but there is nothing like CB on phone. (If there was it would be banned!)
- guerrilla 1y agoCame here to say this. There's nothing like a CB radio or the mentioned scanner on a phone. (Scanner apps are streaming from actual scanners in the real world somewhere).
- CamperBob2 1y agoHow/why would it be banned, if all it did was provide emulated 'channels' for shared voice comms among users in a local geographic area?
- ielillo 1y agoIphones don't have fm radios so add 13.88 to the bill
- bloaf 1y agoMost radio stations are simulcast online, so strictly speaking you can get the same content without an fm tuner https://radio.garden https://radio.garden
- b112 1y agoExcept when camping in the woods, where AM radio still does reach. But I guess with Starlink, eventually it will be everywhere.
- dwheeler 1y agoPhones should include an AM/FM tuner. Then you can hear local stations, and if you're out of cell range or things go badly, receive broadcasts.
- ianburrell 1y agoThe problem is that without 3.5mm jack, there is no antenna for FM. Phones used the headphone cord as the antenna. I doubt it is possible to repurpose the USB-C wires as antenna. If it was, would require a custom USB-C chip. I couldn't find FM/AM USB-C dongle. My guess is that nobody uses FM/AM or if they do, they get a standalone radio.
- vel0city 1y agoMy biggest use for the FM radio on my old phone was sporting events which have the commentators broadcast locally with no delay. Now I have to remember to bring a little pocket one or be sure the old phone is charged whenever I go to sporting events. Really kind of a pain. Luckily the kids also like to play games on the old phone so its a handy distraction machine on the train ride.
- bee_rider 1y ago
- Aloha 1y agoSo my broad comment is, yes, your iPhone will replace all of these things, with some compromises. Its just like the things I see with with UI/UX design in my day job - I can make an app that does three unrelated things, but you lose something for each functionality you're adding in. * All weather personal stereo, $11.88. I now use my iPhone with an Otter Box Sort of, but not exactly, yes it does all of the things my portable radio does, but not as well - mostly audio fidelity. * AM/FM clock radio, $13.88. iPhone. Again, sort of, but not exactly, yes it does all of the things my clock radio does, but not as well - mostly audio fidelity. * In-Ear Stereo Phones, $7.88. Came with iPhone. This is a place with notable improvements from then. * Microthin calculator, $4.88. Swipe up on iPhone. This is a place with notable improvements from then. * Tandy 1000 TL/3, $1599. I actually owned a Tandy 1000, and I used it for games and word processing. I now do most of both of those things on my phone. If this was an iPad I would agree, but it's the same thing as the others - sort of but not exactly. It can do those things, but not as well. * VHS Camcorder, $799. iPhone. Again, yes if I squint at it - but it's the same thing as the others - sort of but not exactly. It can do those things, but not always as well without additional accessories. * Mobile Cellular Telephone, $199. Obvs. This is a place of clear improvement, todays cell phones are a world better in both audio quality and coverage. * Mobile CB, $49.95. Ad says “You’ll never drive ‘alone’ again!” iPhone. Yes, iPhone can do these things, but not as well as a dedicated device (no PTT button for a start) * 20-Memory Speed-Dial phone, $29.95. Yes, a clear win for replacement. * Deluxe Portable CD Player, $159.95. 80 minutes of music, or 80 hours of music? iPhone. Yes, a clear win for replacement. * 10-Channel Desktop Scanner, $99.55. I still have a scanner, but I have a scanner app, too. iPhone. Not much of an improvement over a dedicated device. * Easiest-to-Use Phone Answerer, $49.95. iPhone voicemail. Voicemail (which you could get in 1991), is a clear winner over an answering machine. * Handheld Cassette Tape Recorder, $29.95. I use the Voice Memo app almost daily. Also a clear improvement. * BONUS REPLACEMENT: It’s not an item for sale, but at the bottom of the ad, you’re instructed to ‘check your phone book for the Radio Shack Store nearest you.’ Do you even know how to use a phone book? The internet replaced the phonebook before ubiquitous mobile data, I do miss phonebooks however.
- floren 1y agoA phone playing music from its speaker doesn't sound amazing but neither did handheld AM/FM radios or clock radios. Especially since the station you wanted to listen to always seemed to be just slightly too far away and you'd get a little bit of static.
- pfexec 1y ago> All weather personal stereo > AM/FM clock radio > In-Ear Stereo Phones > Microthin calculator > Mobile CB > Deluxe Portable CD Player Maybe I missed the rollout for the iPhone that performs all these functions, but no iPhone has ever: • Picked up AM/FM radio (even though throwaway Nokia mobiles could do so) • Allowed you to talk to truckers on the CB band. • Played CDs you already own. iPhones no longer come with earbuds (so they can sell you overpriced wireless ones), and a wayward update to the Calculator app kept it from functioning like a traditional 4-function calculator ever again. (Delete button? Really?) Considering this article is nearly 12 years old and there have been no improvements on the above I declare this list dubious at best.
- parsimo2010 1y agoWell if you want to be completely literal, then you’re right. It also isn’t literally a Tandy 1000. But if you actually comprehended the article, the author said that you use your phone to perform all those functions. The iPhone can replace all of those functions you listed. It is water resistant and has a speaker. It does not have an AM/FM station but most broadcast radio stations also have a live stream that you can get in your phone. The iPhone came with earbuds when this article was written. It had a calculator app on day one, and it’s just fine. You don’t have literal CB but you can use a variety of apps to communicate with voice in real time. You can’t play the literal CDs but you can’t play the literal .wav files on the CDs.
- pfexec 1y ago> The iPhone can replace all of those functions you listed > It does not have an AM/FM station > You don’t have literal CB > You can’t play the literal CDs So not the same function, got it. As for your last example, you might as well replace "iPhone" with "tape deck".
- scheeseman486 1y agoiPhones did replace tape decks. The mini hi-fi in my living room, my car stereo, my tape and CD walkman, all are now either bluetooth recievers for smartphones or play audio directly from the smartphone. The function wasn't "playing tape" or "playing CD", it was playing music or audio books.
- wrboyce 1y agoTangibly related, but I enjoy remembering my GCSE (an exam taken in the UK at 16 as you leave compulsory education) Maths teachers telling us “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket”. I guess they were half right, in a way? It’s not a calculator, but it does have a calculator alongside access to the entirety of human knowledge. On the other side of the coin, while I enjoy this memory I do think it’s a shame how lacking most people’s mental arithmetic skills are… and indeed their understanding of some basic mathematical constructs, like multiplication being commutative, but I suppose that’s not the calculators fault.
- VeryNosy 1y agoVery original reflection, never seen it before https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22calculator%20in%20your%20pocket%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- JdeBP 1y agoIt's not really the entirety of human knowledge, either.
- thendrill 1y agoSo we pay roughly 3 times more for the same functionality... Is the convince worth that much?? By this logic in 2090 people would have to pay most of their salaries for that "one device".... Dystopian....
- Jtsummers 1y ago> So we pay roughly 3 times more for the same functionality How do you figure that it's 3 times more? The article says those things add up to $5100 updated for inflation (written in 2014, so more today). A smart phone then was a lot less than $5100.
- ben_w 1y agoYou’d have spent $3054.82 in 1991 to buy all the stuff in this ad that you can now do with your phone. That amount is roughly equivalent to about $5100 in 2012 dollars. For a fancy but not top-end device, we pay one third, or one fifth inflation adjusted, not three times as much. For a budget device, we pay, what, 2%? Not 2% less, just 2%.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoWow, cool, but is it a good thing? It's a bummer that so much of computing has moved from content creation devices to content consumption devices. Desktop applications can be more advanced than mobile apps, there's just inherent limitations on the mobile input methods and OS. Though if you're playing games or browsing the web, touching and swiping works great. Don't even get me started on the fact that only one tech giant allows you to run code on your mobile OS without their permission, and next year we're even losing that. Because the other tech giant normalized taking away the freedom.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoThe ecosystem had a lot of diversity. When there was a new need or opportunity, new hardware arrived from a fairly diverse set of manufacturers and distributors. Some of those still exist in niches - music hardware, ham radio, specalised navigation hardware for boats and planes, and high-performance high-end professional cameras and such. But consumer-grade products are now mostly software, and the software runs on a handful of platforms controlled by a handful of corporations who charge access tribute (taxes.) The entire system is very locked-down and brittle, and gives those corporations the option to create individual and collective kill-switches for people and/or activities they don't like. That would have sounded unlikely a couple of years ago, but it sounds a lot less unlikely now.
- yepitwas 1y ago> It's a bummer that so much of computing has moved from content creation devices to content consumption devices. I continue to find this assessment of phones and tablets impossible to relate to. The very-portable device with multiple cameras, microphones, various other sensors, maybe stylus support built-in, is in most cases in which I’m creating anything in my personal life vastly more useful than a laptop or desktop computer. This seems to also be what many people who create real things for work have decided. (I do computer-things with computers for pay, so it’s different for me there)
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoI could have been clearer, what I said wouldn't apply to cameras, I was only talking about things that could be done on a desktop. If a phone can capture audio/video in the field freeing people up from having to carry a separate camera, that is a good thing.
- Sharlin 1y agoAdditional 1991 gadgets you now have in your phone: - Color TV (screen's a bit tight though) - VCR - Pager - GPS (very recent and expensive in 1991) - In-car navigation (just barely available in 1991) - Portable cassette player - Portable video game console (GameBoy launched in 1989) - Modem and sound card for the Tandy - SGI workstation for rendering 3D graphics
- accrual 1y agoIn some ways one could also include a Game Boy in that list!
- dude250711 1y agoMeh, I'd rather had been born to same parents but as a USA boomer baby.
- glandium 1y agoPhones in Japan used to receive actual TV. Well, slightly different, but still directly from the waves rather than the internet. Phones used to receive AM and FM, too.
- bri3d 1y agoIn the US we also briefly got this really cursed thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaFLO https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaFLO
- promiseofbeans 1y ago
- modeless 1y ago> Mobile CB It's actually ridiculous that our phones support dozens of sophisticated radio protocols but can't act as two way radios without a cell tower from the right company nearby. A $10 walkie talkie can communicate over miles but your phone is a brick without service. This capability would save more lives than Apple's satellite SOS IMO.
- Lerc 1y agoThere are a lot of things our phones are capable of that we are not able to get them to do. Even before the iPhone I had a phone with front and rear cameras and Bluetooth, it has long since been replaced and is probably sitting at the back of a drawer somewhere. If I had the ability to make it work as a Bluetooth webcam it might have had a productive second life. It was physically capable of doing this, just not software capable
- com2kid 1y agoThe latency and bandwidth on BT does not suffice for today's expected webcam level quality. FWIW you can use an Android phone as a web cam. Not sure what the latency is though...
- Lerc 1y agoYes but this was pre iPhone days. It was not going to be doing today's expected webcam level quality no matter which way you sliced it.
- ianburrell 1y agoWalkie talkies require a lot more power than smartphones have. FRS is 2W, ham radio handhelds are usually 5W, smartphone Wifi is 30mW. They also require a long antenna sticking out the top. Smartphones have UHF range antennas so possible to fit them but won't be as good. What is disappointing is that LTE Direct and 5G Peer to Peer didn't go anywhere. They do LTE or 5G directly without towers. The range is 1km, not walkie talkie distance, but enough for a lot of things. There are some first responders phones with but it doesn't seem to be available for public.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bilsbie 1y agoThis is how I talk myself into spending a lot on a phone.
- filchermcurr 1y agoI was sort of on board until the Tandy 1000. It's disingenuous at best to assume that your phone can replace it because it 'does games and word processing'. A phone, no matter how much you like it or how much you can do with it, does not replace an actual personal computer. A phone is a locked down appliance running software written on personal computers. By design, you will never be able to truly explore the system or get it to do anything you can dream. You can do what the software designers / managers want you to do and that's it. (Obviously there are exceptions, but those exceptions are rapidly diminishing.) These old PCs encouraged exploration, expansion, tinkering, and development. They were true personal devices that you could do whatever you wanted with. Phones are personal in that they know everything about you but they will never match the freedom and exploration of a personal computer. I truly feel like we've lost something special with the move to smartphones and tablets. :(
- crq-yml 1y agoYou can emulate the Tandy in a web browser, e.g. https://dosee.link/#emulator https://dosee.link/#emulator So if you evaluate it by hardware, it's true that the phone isn't giving the same I/O capability. But the application software is there, there are far more apps for a phone and you can access the old ones in some degree too. If you need an actually hackable PC equivalent, we have all kinds of boards and configurations, from microcontrollers to rasPi style computers through FPGA boards. Any of them are a tiny fraction of the cost of the old desktops.
- ThrowawayR2 1y ago> "These old PCs encouraged exploration, expansion, tinkering, and development." Most users of that era did none of those things. They used apps or shareware they purchased, not much different from today. If anything, it was vastly harder at that time to get the tools to tinker. Compilers and assemblers were quite expensive products; users would be limited to Microsoft GW-BASIC and debug.com that came with MS-DOS or a copy of Borland Turbo Pascal if they were willing to pay extra to get it.
- rep_lodsb 1y ago
- zippyman55 1y agoBut Radio Shack had a tube tester and gave me a free battery on my visit
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- aswanson 1y agoEverythings computer
- mastazi 1y agoAs anyone who's used it knows, CB radio is very much unlike anything you can do with a smartphone[1][2], so I argue it should go in the second list at the end of the article, where the author talks about things that can't be replaced by a smartphone. [1] notice how CB radios can still be bought at major retailers such as this one, one of the largest in my country https://www.supercheapauto.com.au/4wd-recovery/uhf-cb-vhf-radios https://www.supercheapauto.com.au/4wd-recovery/uhf-cb-vhf-ra... (the same can't be said of cassette recorders or answering machines or VHS camcorders) [2] there were many attempts to make smartphone apps where you can communicate with people that are physically around you. These never picked up steam and the two examples I remember are now defunct (I can't remember the names, I will update this post if I find them) EDIT: the apps in question were called Highlight app and Glancee app. Highlight: https://parislemon.com/post/18994363772/meeting-people-is-easy-remembering-them-is-hard https://parislemon.com/post/18994363772/meeting-people-is-ea... https://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/highlight2x/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/highlight2x/ Glancee still has a website, but it no longer exists as a standalone app as they were acquired by Facebook many years ago: https://glancee.com/ https://glancee.com/
- Hobadee 1y agoNot quite CB but similar; as a Ham radio operator, I can do Ham radio on my phone. (EchoLink)
- masternight 1y agoI'm in the same country. Another big reason to use a CB over a phone is that it's illegal to touch a phone while driving. No such restriction applies to CB radios. The tech is very much alive and well.
- gbraad 1y agoFor those that are unfamiliar. In short it is a push-to-talk broadcast, public channel, communication. CB stands for Citizen Band. In Europe, I remember the same frequency, 27 MHz being used for early RC cars. Not sure if EU truck drivers used this too, but it is available and caused runaway RC cars as it was unreliable to use that band. 40Mhz didn't have that issue, but perhaps it was not allowed for regular/unlicensed use...
- jameslk 1y ago* $1,599 for a computer * $799 for a camera * $149 for a speaker/woofer Over 30 years ago and yet these are roughly the prices I’d expect today
- hakfoo 1y agoIt feels like speakers have gone up in price. This is probably because their BOM is still highly dependent on physical enclosures, cones, and magnets, which can't be Moore's Law'd-away. I can find some basic setups in the $300 range, but they're usually bookshelf or slim-floorstanding speakers where you're expected to add a subwoofer to fill out the bottom end, not a true full-range.
- leephillips 1y agoBut the things I used to buy at Radio Shack before smartphones existed, like capacitors and solder, can no longer be found there, and phones don’t replace those.
- anonymousiam 1y agoMy Valentine One radar detector has an app. You still need the external hardware, but you can use it via the phone if you like. Partial credit?
- maxerickson 1y agoAlso, maps apps have speedtrap warnings.
- curtisszmania 1y ago[dead]
- bawolff 1y ago> Tandy 1000 TL/3, $1599. I actually owned a Tandy 1000, and I used it for games and word processing. I now do most of both of those things on my phone. I think its a stretch to say the iphone does word processing well.
- wallopinski 1y agoI'm really surprised 286-based machines were still $1600 in 1991. But it was a brand name and not a frankenclone assembled from the back of computer shopper.
- waltwalther 1y agoThe author lists everything his phone has replaced, and the two items his phone cannot replace yet. One of those is a radar detector. To that I offer the Waze app. While it is not exactly a radar detector, it still serves the same purpose. Funny story. I first heard of the Waze app while reading a Car & Driver magazine in my doctor's office nearly 15 years ago (possibly before 2010). There was an article on illegal cross-country car racing. One of the drivers said something like, "I use a combination of radar detector and Waze to avoid the police." I had no idea what Waze was, and researched it as soon as I got home. It has always been crowd-sourced, and there were not many users back in those days (at least in my area), but I used it and spread the word anyway,
- _heimdall 1y agoThose are two different use cases for me. A radar detector is much more specific. Waze replaces the usefulness of other drivers flashing their lights at me. Anecdotally, people rarely seem to do that today for whatever reason. I expect at this point people think I'm either trying to cuss them out or complain about how bright their headlights are today, but if you see me flashing my lights there is a cop ahead looking for tickets.
- integricho 1y agoI find it distasteful whenever someone says iPhone instead of smartphone, where it is clear that iPhone is not the only solution. I don't like Apple, and I even less like cult followers.
- zkmon 1y agoSo all of those different technologies got swirled into the magic lamp (smart phone). And then what happened in the next 10 years until now? The phenomenon stagnated. The lamp got bigger and bigger screens, more hardware, but the core abilities didn't change as much they did back in those years.
- fmbb 1y agoI think the only explanation is that Steve Jobs was some kind of god, or extraterrestrial visitor. You write 10 but isn’t it a lot closer to 20 years by now?
- jml7c5 1y agoWe're on the verge of another consolidation, where laptops and tablets become dumb shells for phones. (Exceptions: "hardcore" gaming, software development, content creation.) But yes, there's less to capture.
- tho23i4324234 1y agoThat's hardly surprising no ? These 'revolutions' only happen once every few decades, and looking back everything looks insignificant (because their significance shrinks to nothing when you're at the wake of the exponential function). If you look back there's basically "nothing" that happened till the 90s; and if widen the horizon a bit and look back 'nothing' appears to have happened till the 20th century and so on. We grow in ability, not wisdom (which is why 'forgetting' is so much more catastrophic).
- know-how 1y ago[dead]
- dogman1050 1y agoI still have a pair of those Mach Two speakers in use in my garage. Can confirm that a cell phone can't sound like that and that driving them with a Phase Linear 400 playing Led Zeppelin II can really rock the block until an amp output shorts and blows out the woofer with frying egg sounds. That amp is also known as a "Flame Linear."
- smcameron 1y agoCan't mention a Bob Carver designed amp without also mentioning the amplifier challenge: https://www.stereophile.com/content/carver-challenge-0 https://www.stereophile.com/content/carver-challenge-0
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1y agoWhich bit of kit was the government wiretap and tracking device? I guess the phone and the computer (like is still the case).
- nancyminusone 1y ago>(2014) Here in 2025, I'm thinking of things my phone could do in 2014 that it can't do now: SD card, removable battery, headphone jack, ir blaster, less ads, less surveillance, easier to install third party apps Besides the camera, almost nothing else has been an improvement.
- qwertfisch 1y agoMy phone is from 2019 and already lacks removable battery (but this doesn’t matter in reality) and IR blaster. I regularly look for possible replacement phones and only see, that there is no advancement anymore, except for having more CPU power and maybe a little bit better cameras. Instead phones are - bigger, though still no more pixels, which means less DPI), - thicker, resulting from more battery power, which I would not need to use if they would integrate better power saving CPU/GPUs – also I don’t play on the phone, - therefore much heavier, - lack headphone jack - lack SD card slot (but the built-in storage is sufficient enough) - are increasingly more bloated with software than cannot be deactivated or removes phone features if done so And all phones are the same with the same disadvantages. There’s no variaty like e.g. on the car market.
- smegger001 1y agomy cheap budget android smart phone has a removable battery micro sd headphone jack, the ads well that a function of what apps i chose to install, firefox with a adblocker and beig selective on my apps a i encounter minimal ads, thrid party apps well i have F-droid open source app repository (and at one point installed the amazon app store on my last phone) all i needed to do was check a box on a system settings menu. the IR blaster i do admit i haven't had on a phone/tablet in year but even in 2014 that wasn't common and my tv's streaming stick has a Bluetooth/WiFi remote app. surveillance is mostly done a network level so not something my phone can do much about other than use tor enabled apps
- KevinMS 1y agoWhat was better in 1991 than on my phone today: Caller ID