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Comment by ihateneckbeards | Hacker News Reader

Not excusing the price, but people these days spend multiple hours a day on their phones. Phones are as important as cars for example. How high prices can go ? Even higher imo

People are ready to pay for expensive cars for a better experience and higher "social standing". Phones are not that different in this regard

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Yeah but there was a big jump in performance / new features between early iphone generations.

Nowadays the difference is really marginal for every day use. You are only going to take better photos in marginal low light conditions, if you even take lots of photos, everything else will be pretty much the same experience. I'd argue that we are even in removal of features mode (audio jack, touch id) which is putting off people like me who normally wouldn't mind a high price tag for a smartphone.

There are enough apple fans out there to buy any piece of plastic that apple will sell at the price of gold. But for a wider wealthy and techie audience, I think the value added of spending more on an iphone is becoming hard to justify.

Its surprising how good a used, $50 phone is today. You can get something on par with a Note 3 or Note 4 from LG and get two solid years of use out of it, perhaps more with ROMs.

This is part of why I stopped buying the latest flagship, just didn't make sense for me to worry so much when I could avoid that entirely, and get 98% of the same performance and features.

im still rocking my nexus6 because i dont see a reason to upgrade. before that i was rocking note line from samsung.

the only thing that im missing in comparasion with current phones is camera.

Nexus 6 isn’t even 3 years old. Many people keep phones that long.

that was not the point, the point was that the phones crossed some threshold in performance/features where cheap phones are good enough or flagships from 3 years ago, that you do not get that much more from current flagship vs older ones/cheap phone in comparison to some years ago

There's still no September update, while other phones got it last week. https://developers.google.com/android/ota#shamu

> 98% of the same performance and features

You’re talking about phones with hardware from half a decade ago. How exactly are you getting the same performance and features, let alone even support or updates from manufacturers?

In what world is a chip from 2014 a half decade old? Most of the phones in that price bracket will be using a Snapdragon 410 or similar.

Hmm…it looks like the Note 3 is actually only 4 years old.

Got a five years old Jolla which still receives updates every other month

My criticism was mainly aimed at Android, which has a tendency to drop support for devices within 1-2 years.

which is why should use Lineage OS.

And with 8.0 we will start to see commercial roms with even better and longer support

Source: Paul oBrien

Not every device has an unlocked bootloader or support in the Lineage OS device tree.

That's odd, considering their first phone was launched in stores less than 4 years ago.

In any case, I used to have one too until about 2 weeks ago when it finally broke down (tbh, possibly due to moisture). While it's not odd they still release updates for their phone OS for the only phone they've ever sold to regular customers, I can't brush away GP's point entirely. The hardware is definitely sub-par by now (it wasn't that good to begin with), not to mention the trade-offs made in the construction of the phone (loudspeaker issues are rather common, and my phone started later to have problems with the display back-light, too).

Maybe he is using an android converted to Jolla?

Naye, you could get one in late 2013

…that's less than four years.

How's the battery on those used phones? That feels like the main blocker for me.

New battery is about $10, not exactly a blocker, but they do increase the price.

Hmm OK, so I guess you just make sure you buy a phone with an easily replaceable battery then? Or is it that cheap when you have it done too?

You don't even need that. Phones like the LG Fortune, which I own and works totally fine, can be bought for $25 new and out the door, no contract, at mainstream retailers like Best Buy.

I also have a moto e4 which I'm using to type this. I think it cost me about $65. (I also have a variety of iDevices and flagship phones for testing stuff I write)

We are in the age of adequate, super cheap phones that aren't awful. I have the option of, but choose not to place my sim card in one of more expensive and flashy devices I own because I'd rather have the thing I carry with me be a "worthless commodity" that could get lost without my caring at all.

Last time my phone broke I just swapped the sim card that day, not caring in the slightest. This is a liberating experience.

You can also do this with prescription glasses - you can pay under $7 a pair online. Anti-scratch, investment preserving upgrades and the feeling of preciousness are all gone. Not having to emotionally invest in things is wonderful.

True, but avoiding the production of new phones is one of the draws for me, and batteries that quickly run out one of the hurdles :)

It's actually not too bad, even on phones without "easily" replaceable batteries.

Speaking for the OnePlus One and Nexus 5 the procedure is pretty straight forward: pop it open using plastic trim tools (which are often sold with batteries) disconnect the ribbon cable and pry the battery off any adhesive. Drop the new one in, reconnect it and snap it back together and you're done.

Depends on the phone I guess, but the whole thing takes maybe 15 minutes.

And obtaining a battery? That sounds pretty difficult for a years-old phone of which the battery is not meant to be replaced...

eBay is your friend, you can get batteries for ancient phones like the Samsung Intercept for $4 still, brand new. Luckily for us, batteries are a highly commodified component, you can replace the cells yourself with minimal effort if you so choose.

When I'm feeling like an uber-cheapskate I rebuild laptop batteries, recycling the failed cells and replacing them with good cells from other batteries.

There's no way I'd buy a used Android phone, unless it was from Google and was less than two years old. Android phone makers are terrible about security updates.

Actually things have improved considerably this year. You may still not have the latest OS version, but the security patches are arriving every 1-2 months.

Oreo is supposed to improve things even further, but for know its just a theory.

> Yeah but there was a big jump in performance / new features between early iphone generations. Nowadays the difference is really marginal for every day use.

You can say the exact same for PCs, which could have stopped getting any performance improvements about 5 years ago and the general populace wouldn’t have complained at all.

And you can see the effect on sales. The only reason to replace a laptop these days is if you spill some coffee on it.

Yup. I'm still happy with my 2013 15" MBP, and my wife just down-graded to a more portable 12" MB.

There are still reasons to replace a laptop before it breaks. For example, my 2012 Asus Zenbook has only 4 GB of RAM and cannot drive an external 4K display. Both are not urgent problems for me since I also have a desktop PC with plenty of RAM and a 4K display, but if I did not, I'd be looking into a replacement for the notebook around now.

Or you start getting into editing 8K+ images in Photoshop. That's not much fun on a Macbook 12" (I mean, it's doable but ... slow ... ly ... and ... clu ... nk ... ily.)

Computers haven't gotten much faster in the last half decade or so. This includes the MacBook 12".

GPUs and SSDs are a different subject...

It's that and Photoshop (understandbly) chewing RAM like an absolute demon - 8GB isn't really enough for Photoshopping large images with multiple layers. I would use my 24GB Windows 10 machine but ... that's even worse due to Windows 10.

What the hell are you doing with your windows?

I am doing nothing with it because it's clunky and slow and practically useless for anything except the occasional game.

Yes, some people have Windows 10 installations that run perfectly fastly and greatly and God's own nectar spews forth from their machine and feeds their family etc.

Which is nice for them but doesn't help -me- with -my- machine that runs like a dog with Windows 10 (but was perfectly fine with Windows 8.)

I keep reading that MacBooks have been selling well compared to the rest of the PC market, year after year.

And yet people keep buying iPhones in the tens of millions every year, so obviously there is something off with that logic.

Agree. People will spend $1000 (or more) for relatively minor features on their cars. A phone is with you 24/7 - it's less like a tool, or even a digital assistant, and more like a cybernetic implant.

The amazing thing isn't that phones cost so much but that competition is such that you can get an excellent product with top-of-the-line CPU, radio, RAM, screen, everything for $1,000 instead of $100,000 or $1,000,000.

> competition is such that you can get an excellent product [..] for $1,000

The really interesting part is that for ~$1000 you get the best product available at any price.

That's the magic of economies of scale in consumer markets, especially technology. It's so incredibly expensive and largely fruitless to step out of the economy of scale, that practically speaking no-one does it.

I don't have a yacht like Paul Allen, I bet my house isn't as nice as Bill Gates' and my bank account looks nothing like Zuckerberg's. But it's quite possible I have the same phone!

Andy Warhol: "What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

This is different to soft drinks in other countries... how? Change the drink to whiskey, another popular one, and you can be sure that there's a difference between what the American rich and poor drink.

> no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good

And coke is not the same everywhere either. My guess is that the prez isn't going to be drinking much watery post-mix coke with his meals.

Similarly, coke in glass bottles is nicer than post-mix coke, and it's more expensive. 'Regular' cokes are in-between. And, for the US with its HFCS coke, you can import the much better-tasting sucrose-coke, which is more expensive to obtain if you're importing it yourself (although a lot of places on the Mexican border already have it).

You can buy Mexican cokes now in California Safeway's and Lucky's supermarkets.

They're common even in South Florida convenience stores. Not every single one, but maybe 25% of stores.

> This is different to soft drinks in other countries... how?

The US - along with a select few nations - was a pioneer when it comes to mass-consumer economics that leverage a relatively free market to deliver high quality goods to both rich and poor. It required a dramatic leap in productivity, manufacturing output, to get the scale necessary to drive prices down to such an extent. Ford's Model T was arguably the earliest, best example of that. Over eight years post introduction it went from $850 (6k unit sales) to $360 (577k unit sales), eventually bottoming out under $300 (and incomes climbed substantially over that ~16 year total period). Whether we're talking mass production soda, or cars, or radios, or kitchen appliances, the US was particularly a global pioneer at it from ~1880-1980.

> And, for the US with its HFCS coke, you can import the much better-tasting sucrose-coke

To be fair, that's a Warhol quote from 1975. At the time he said it, Coke was still using sugar in the US market. It was 1984 when Coke and Pepsi announced plans to switch to HFCS.

Yes, Coke does taste different depending on the country.

(And I've tried it on 5 different continents.)

Whenever I go to the US, I always switch to diet coke. Not because of cutting down on that area to compensate for holiday food intake, but because aspartame coke tastes nicer than HFCS coke.

Coke is a bad example. Let's talk about a bottle of wine which is $20k. I certainly can't afford that along with a lot of other people.

$20k wine is probably not going to taste any better than $20 wine, objectively speaking. It's just a luxury good for conspicuous spending.

It's not true. Yes, there are snobs, and there is a lot of subjectivity involved, an several studies exposed that. On the other hand, some wines have a certain richness of flavor not present in other wines. Certain aspects of it can be better appreciate by people who developed a certain taste of wines and can differentiate better. They're the target group of the more expensive wines. You pay for a unique experience, for something that you like but you can' really get anywhere else. True, the prices of certain wines reach ridiculous levels, but it doesn't mean they wouldn't taste better, especially for someone who tasted a lot of wines and can appreciate them. All this in spite of the fact that "objectively better taste" is in fact an oxymoron, since all discussions of taste (as well as beauty etc.) are by nature subjective and all notions of objectivity are assumed because of a certain consensus (by a majority, an authority/experts etc.).

With wine and spirits, you're often paying for rarity, rather than outright quality.

I'm not a huge wine snob (most wines I buy are in the $10-$20 range), but I have tasted some rather expensive wines. In a lot of cases, you're not really paying for "richness of flavor" (a lot of cheaper wines have plenty of richness and balance), you're paying for name and for rarity, especially when it comes to older wines.

I'm actually more into whisky, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms, that the best whisky I have ever tasted in my life costs around $400. Now, that is still somewhat expensive compared to the <$100 whiskies I usually enjoy, but it's not outrageously expensive, especially considering how long a bottle of whisky lasts, when compared to a bottle of wine, once it's opened.

And it was immeasurably better than any multi-thousand dollar whisky I've had the chance to taste. With Macallans, Dalmores, Pappy van Winkle and other high-priced spirits, you are absolutely paying for a name, not necessarily for the quality.

As another whiskey lover, can you tell me what that bottle is?

Of course :-)

It was a Bunnahabhain XXV, the greatest sherry cask dram I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. I am very close to rationalizing buying a bottle, but I know I can buy four $100 bottles of other whiskies that are 95% as good, and will give me a wider range of experiences, for that same price.

Or you could buy two bottles of the Bunnahabhain and two other $100 bottles instead of buying the new iPhone ;)

Buying an iPhoney was never on my radar ;-)

I'm not a huge wine drinker and what I buy is usually on the relatively inexpensive side--though not lowest end. Now and then I have splurged for a premium wine tasting (maybe $50-100 bottles at retail). I do appreciate the difference--slightly. I'd also rather spend that money on a nice bottle of whiskey and stick with ~$10-15/bottle wine:-)

For the most part, I agree with your post. Interestingly, most of my favorite whiskeys are around $400ish too. That said, my absolute favorite (35yr Hibiki) I can absolutely tell the difference with and it's much more expensive than that.

You pay for a unique experience, for something that you like but you can' really get anywhere else.

What you're saying is certainly true for a $200-500 bottle of wine and possibly even a $2000-5000 bottle of wine, but once you get up to $20k you're buying a rare collectors item as an investment vehicle and not a drink.

A lot depends on what's meant by "wine" and the price range involved.

I like port, for example. I usually have a bottle sitting in my apartment so that I can pour a glass after dinner and drink it while relaxing.

And even without an "educated palate" I -- and other people I've invited to blind-taste who knew less than I did about it -- can taste the difference between, say, a $30 bottle and a $100 bottle. It's not a subtle thing at all; it's a massive difference.

But that's not because of the price; the price reflects the manner of production and the actual quality of the product. The cheap bottle is a blend of wine from several different years, and possibly different producers, may have been just dumped in steel tanks after fermentation to await bottling, etc., while the more expensive stuff is often going to be from a single year and/or single producer, barrel-aged, and so on. This produces a large and obvious difference in the way it tastes.

Once you get into that tier of well-produced port, you won't see much in the way of big jumps in quality for paying more. The difference between, say, a $200 bottle and a $100 bottle is much less than between the $100 bottle and the $30 bottle, despite the larger price jump. At that point you're mostly hunting for particular years which were known to be good, and are expensive because of that plus their scarcity.

This was said before fancier soft drinks were sold, I assume.

For example, some bars round here sell this cola: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentimans_Curiosity_Cola

But is is really… unaffordable to anyone but the richest?

Nop

http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/tesco-price-comparison/Soft_D...

I mean, it's still only three bucks.

even the wealthiest people are probably still going to go for a Coke (Fentimans isn't that good imo)

Great thing about America is that no matter how rich or poor you are, you drink the same coke - Andy Warhol.

This is a better quote about America's consumer culture - What was the nature of MTV? For me it was insatiable desire. Thats the very nature of Americans. We want what we don't have. One of the characteristics of American consumers in the early 80's was Shop till you drop. "I want it. I don't know what it is but I want it." - Dale Pon, Advertising exec part of the MTV launch campaign in Aug 1981

For example, look at the now defunct Vertu. All the titanium and ostrich skin in the world wouldn’t let them sell a better OS.

For what it's worth Vertu is still around (www.vertu.com) and still selling phones to a certain clientele at places like Harrods and Dubai Airport. And with Android 6, Snapdragon 820, a 534ppi screen and a 3200mAh battery, they can at least hold their own against your average android phone.

Note he said OS. As far as I understand the android fork on those phones is awful. Also the hardware is always a generation behind.

As far as I understand the android fork on those phones is awful.

According to this review: https://www.androidcentral.com/vertu-constellation it's pretty close to stock android these days with a slightly customized launcher and a few minor tweaks like "Where a typical phone might offer only a few options for title — Mister, Miss, Doctor — Vertu Accounts offer a laundry list of titles, ranging from King and Queen to Sheikh and Lord and His Excellency"

Also the hardware is always a generation behind.

Hey they're improving. They used to be at least three generations behind.

Ah, OK, I’d assumed that as they shut their manufacturing facilities and went bankrupt they’d closed their concessions as well: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/13/15963656/vertu-luxury-pho...

I wonder what phone Bill Gates uses nowadays!?! He said many times he's very loyal to MS but they have all but stopped making phones, so every choice left is a bad one...

If I was as rich as Bill Gates I wouldn't have a smartphone. I would have a secretary follow me everywhere and she would be the one to use her phone.

Just kidding. I'd have an android and a squad of engineers to set it up exactly like I want.

If I had to go back to Windows phone, I'd use a Lumia 950/XL or an HP Elite x3.

The main things I'd give up would be first party Google apps and neat apps like my D&D companion. I'd be giving up SnapChat, but I rarely use it. Not sure if Bill Gates is big into that one!

Honestly for a professional, a Windows Phone would probably work just fine. But you give up big players in social, most banking apps and a vast library of entertainment. Fortunately for some, you can bank on your computer, and distractions on your phone are not desired.

> But it's quite possible I have the same phone!

Maybe, maybe not: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/vertu-for-bentley-smart...

Or, for $50 you can get a phone with a midrange chipset that will be nearly as fast as any of the top tier phones out there. The slightly used phone market has really broadened access to cellphones quite a bit.

As an Android dev, I see the total opposite sentiment. Most new phones are pretty damn good, even the mid range.

I assume things will go the same way as the PC. Cheaper hardware for most, Apple still holding onto a niche in the market.

Mid range cars can also drive pretty much like top of the range cars, they share most features yet people like high end cars.

There is a noticeable difference in experience between a mercedes and a ford. I am not convinced there is a noticeable difference between an i5 and i7 unless you are doing something super demanding.

Yeah, the Ford drives better :P

http://www.motortrend.com/cars/mclaren/570/2016/2016-motor-t...

That's just not true in any possible way. The handling and driving experience of a nicer sports car is absolutely nothing like a regular midranger, not to mention all the quality of life features.

I think it's truer these days than most of us would admit. The current Shelby Mustang placed only behind the McLaren 570S in Motortrend's 2016 best driver's car contest, beating out the Merc, Aston Martin, Porsche, and others[0]. The BRZ might not be fast, but it has almost universally positive reviews anyway because it handles and drives so damn well[1]. Even the $23k Ford Focus ST gets positive reviews as a great driving car[2]. You can get a fantastic sports car for well under $75k these days.

0: http://www.motortrend.com/cars/mclaren/570/2016/2016-motor-t... 1: https://jalopnik.com/what-nobody-understands-about-the-subar... 2: http://www.automobilemag.com/news/2016-ford-focus-st-one-wee...

Oh I know, I have a fiesta ST myself for weekend driving and taking to the track; it's amazing. In fact I find it far more fun to drive than some much more expensive sports cars (specifically a F80 M3 owned by someone close to me). While it doesn't have anywhere near the driving joy it still doesn't hold a candle to the M3 on faster tracks.

For reference, the trackday club I belong to is doing a weekender trip to the nurburgrink in late october: I'm not taking the fiesta for that (also I don't want to drive 800km in it to get there).

Android security updates are the only reason to update my Nexus 5. A decent midrange phone, with an open bootloader, would probably do me for many years.

How are you still getting security updates for the Nexus 5? The last security update they released was from October 2016.

Someone I know has a Nexus 4 and gets regular security updates.

Yep, I'm using a Nexus 4 picked up nearly 2 years ago off ebay for around $US60.

It gets the monthly security updates. I guess I worry about the binary blobs that vendors may or not be updating but that's true of any hardware no longer receiving updates.

I use the Lineage ROM on my Nexus 5, and that does the trick for me.

> Most new phones are pretty damn good, even the mid range.

For the first week, at least. Then they start to accumulate cruft and slow down, eventually becoming barely usable.

I've experienced it in the past. I see it happen for my friends and family. I decided some time ago to save up that $750 - $1k and go for the high-range phones, so that I can use them for two or three years without daily frustrations.

The top-most commenter is right. Phones are used even more frequently than cars; for many, even more frequently than other types of computers combined. It's one of those things it's not worth to cheap out on - like a mattress or an office chair.

(Now, of course part of me is happy for the mid-range phones costing what they do, because this is why high-end phones cost $1k and not $10k.)

I disagree - I've used a $300 stock android phone for just over a year now, and I haven't really run into any "cruft" issues. But, poor android performance is a very valid problem with android.

Agree with this - cheap Android phones are what they are, but mid-range hardware is astonishing and if you don't install clutter, you don't get clutter.

(I even remove/disable any Facebook clients etc, only use Chrome to access services. Perhaps this is why I'm happy.)

I have a Nexus 5X and then I bought my wife a Moto G4 plus and I was really impressed with her phone which was a good amount cheaper than mine.

We've both had them for a while now and they are both good phones but I think I'll spend less on my next phone since I can and still get something that works very well.

I've been using a 5s for 3 years now, and I don't have much desire to replace it. I don't find it the least bit slow. The only time I get frustrated with it is when network performance is slow or reception is bad, but that happens with any phone.

The 5S was indeed a champ. You might want to hold off on iOS 11, though; I’ve been running a beta on an iPad with the same A7 cpu, and it just can’t keep up.

(Perhaps the 5S wont have it so bad given that it won’t have to deal with the new springboard and multitasking...)

Please don't spread lies :/

300-400$ range phones work perfectly well for years and there's now even a staggering amount of pretty good phones covering most usecases from companies like Xiaomi that can be bought for as low as 150$ and they still run about as well as an iPhone 5c.

Just by the virtue of having more system storage to begin with than the entry level models.

So they run as well as a 4 year old phone with a 5 year old CPU/GPU? Sounds... not good. Not to mention you can get that 5C for about $100 today, so $50 less than your Xiaomi.

I've never seen a new 5C for that price shrug

My point was - they run well enough, do their job and are really affordable (after all, people were happy with performance of iPhone 5 / 5C weren't they ;).

iPhones (especially refurbished ones) aren't here (I do understand that situation in US is a bit better).

> Then they start to accumulate cruft and slow down, eventually becoming barely usable.

When naive users install 3 different weather widgets, 2 battery meters and a custom launcher, you start to understand why people say mid-range phones start to slow down.

That sort of behavior should not slow a (mid-range) phone down.

That's probably not a great outcome. Financially, Apple is doing well. Are there any PC makers with solid profitability? I think the phone market is even worse. Apple takes almost all the profit.

I mostly just don't get the loyalty people have to operating systems or particular manufacturers. When there is an application that I need and it's exclusive to some platform, then that decides what OS I need.

I also am not bothered by a $1000 phone and I'm surprised that it's a topic of contention here. Many of us spend more than that on coffee in a year and the phone is probably just as important. $3 / day is well within reach for most of us. My life isn't going to be any different if I choose the $1 / day phone.

I must be the exception here as I spend no more than an hour on my iPhone (6s) each day.

I use Apple Music, WhatsApp, and the camera. However, WhatsApp is available on Android and the camera on the iPhone 6s still doesn't even come close to that of an SLR so I tend to use that and keep the iPhone in my pocket. When I take photos, I have gone out with the intention of taking photos, so there is no convenience factor of an iPhone for me.

However, I also love cars. You can take them out for fun on a weekend, show them off and talk to other owners at meets, drive them on tracks all over the world, and, if you made sensible choices, have the depreciation of an iPhone make a car look like an investment. Meanwhile, everyone and their mother has an iPhone - there is no novelty to owning one.

Thus, until I start getting more out of an iPhone, I can't help but think how a Moto G and an extra $800 in pocket to spend on something else would give me so much more pleasure than the next iPhone.

Give me a $300-$400 Android phone with support for Project Treble and an unlocked bootloader and we're talking. I'll put LineageOS on it: regular security updates, yearly OS updates and no crapware!

> Not excusing the price, but people these days spend multiple hours a day on their phones

That's my reasoning when I buy a new computer. I can buy a MBP for $2000, use it for 3 years and sell it used for $1000. $30 a month is a bargain considering I use it between 5-10 hours a day. I may pay a mac a little more (20%?) than the competition but it's worth it considering it's subjectively better (and objectively different, Mac OS / design / size -- arguably less and less so).

However, I'd never buy an iphone (or an expensive smartphone). Iphone users may disagree, but for what I've seen they provide almost the same experience as much cheaper phones (typically two times cheaper). Another issue I have with the price is that I don't feel confortable walking around with such a small expensive item. So easy to lose it or forget it.

Much of this logic is why I stopped buying new computers or phones. I'd rather use a $70 T440 that I've upgraded and know how to repair most everything on than haul a MBP that I'll need to get a pro to service, that also happens to have terrible ventilation. I mean, my last MBP literally cooked itself, comparatively this T440 has a giant grill that it rapidly removes heat through (though its 15w i5 doesn't make much).

You make it sound like the MBP is a weighty piece of burden compared to a dainty T440 (use a T440 vs. haul a MBP.)

And the part about cooking itself sounds like a manufacturing defect for which you should have gotten a replacement - in normal conditions it should just shut down, if temperatures get high enough that ventilation and throttling don't help.

My old MBP is heavier than my T440 by half a pound. I also never said that it shut itself down, just that it was consistently uncomfortably hot to be using, and I couldn't imagine attempting to use it to run a bunch of VMs like I use my T440 for.

I'm happy to have sold that MBP and put Apple far behind me, with the inflatable battery and high temps, it was on par with the $20 x100e I picked up last year (though that x100e was much lighter/smaller).

> You make it sound like the MBP is a weighty piece of burden compared to a dainty T440 (use a T440 vs. haul a MBP.)

I made the mistake of buying a MBP to see what all the fuss was about and fantasize regularly about destroying it Office-Space style, "weighty piece of burden" is just about the nicest way you could put it

I do exactly the same but with X220s. With an SSD and Debian they make a great coding laptop. I buy stacks of them and just move the SSD across when the break.

Also means I can leave one in the office and have one at home then just move the SSDs between them.

That sounds so much easier than what I am doing with my laptop (macbook): I have to put it in my bag somewhere and take it out somewhere else and continue exactly where I left off every time. It is such a burden...

A friend of mine takes that approach, but the T440 has a whole unibody panel that takes a minute or so to remove. The T430 and T410s comparatively have nice little hatches where a single screw will let you pull the drive.

How do you like the X220s? I nabbed one for a friend a while back, seemed like a nice smaller form factor laptop, she rather liked it iirc. Good price too, think I paid $65 for it.

What sort of battery life do you get with these? My 4 year old MBA now gets around 6 hours while coding vs 10 when new.

I'm just passing the 6 hour 30 min mark, though my battery is a few years old. Its reporting as 75.8% capacity with 4% left, so another 20 minutes perhaps, gonna throw it on the dock here though.

I've got Atom open, Signal Desktop, Tor Browser Bundle (Youtube), Firefox with a few dozen tabs (Soundcloud, HN, etc). Couple spreadsheets too in LibreOffice, and Thunderbird & Transmission too. With a few of those closed, should be able to get some more battery life, but I don't feel in need of it.

The X220 is a great laptop, especially if you find one with the IPS screen (and no bright/dark spot defects).

I kind of wanted to do that, for the hipster geek cred, but after retina screens, actually usable touchpads and operating system that just works and also is unix at the same time ... I just can't go back.

I have also looked at switching to Linux over OS X and the retina/hidpi alone stops any attempt. I actually had someone on here argue that no one needs retina, and that it didn’t make any difference visually!

GNOME works just fine on hidpi screens. I use it on my (2013) mbp and (2015) chromebook pixel and it looks great.

You do have to use wayland to get scaling across a low dpi external monitor to work, but that has been fairly painless these days (if your GPU is supported by the open source drivers).

This is exactly the reason I switched to Linux laptops on cases that I can open up and easily switch out any parts of need be.

What might be interesting is if the iPhone X ends up being a device that combines more laptop-like features into a phone.

Better keyboard/mouse/display integration. Support for laptop-like apps. Then it could be worth laptop-like pricing.

iPhone provides software update much longer (typically two times longer) than any Android phones in the market, so it actually has longer life. If you plan to use it for a long time, it makes sense.

I agree if you plan to use iPhone for less than 2 years it's probably expensive.

Not necessarily true - if you have the know how or know someone who does, you can run a custom rom on your Android device, Lineage is updated weekly for many devices and will easily provide many more years of life. Once it's set up it's pretty hands off too, so just knowing one person who can do it for you once is pretty much enough.

The official situation is slated to improve now with Android 8 separating the HAL and the rest of the OS more clearly it likely means that in a generation or two this won't even be a concern.

> Lineage is updated weekly for many devices

You see, right there you described why most people, myself included, aren't interested in that. I can't be bothered to care about weekly OS updates, I tolerate the 1-2 yearly updates to my android because as someone in the security industry I understand the need for updates but that's it. A phone isn't something I care about tinkering with, it's a tool and I want it to work well with as minimal maintenance getting in the way as possible. I couldn't even be bothered to root my current phone, much less install a different OS.

I find it ironic that you're in the security industry, yet have no interest in getting security updates as quickly as possible.

We're not talking about major updates here, we're talking about updates that take about 30 seconds to apply plus a reboot, once a week and you know you're always running the latest and greatest from a security standpoint. Most change nothing from a user perspective.

Of course, you're free to treat these updates as you like, I typically only patch about once a month or when there's a major remote vulnerability.

I'm not in the operations side of it, I'm on the development side: whether admins apply patches or not is not our problem :)

Like I said, doing weekly or monthly updates and reboots would be an extra concern that I'd rather not have. As it stands the only "management" burden my phone (I use an HTC 10 for reference) imposes on me is having to connect it to the charger every night; It's already more than I would like but unfortunately it doesn't have wireless charging.

As far as I'm concerned, for non-hobby stuff, the least management a device asks of me, the better it is because it's a few more things I don't have to bother taking care of.

> So easy to lose it or forget it.

Or break it. After I broke my Nexus4's screen three times I gave up and bought some cheap Zenfone (and it cost as much as one screen repair for Nexus).

"I can buy a MBP for $2000, use it for 3 years and sell it used for $1000."

I've used a refurbed Thinkpad T420 for about a year now. It cost me $350 to buy, and I expect it to last at least 2-3 years. Less than $10 a month, and it's more than fast enough to do absolutely everything I need to do. Not too shabby for a 6 year old machine.

The only reason for buying a brand-new computer is if you absolutely need the highest end of computing power, or need the very newest peripheral ports for some reason.

We carry these things on our bodies damn near most of the day. We use them in our down time to read books and news. To communicate with others and consume information in a matter of seconds. To remind ourselves of things occurring throughout the day. To keep track of grocery lists, diets, fitness activities, sleep cycles and etc. It's basically the first fully functional extension of our body. So, absolutely... why the hell not pay more? It's almost like paying slightly more for a bionic arm that will get you a little closer to truly experiencing the sense of touch you've been missing for years.

why not pay more ?

1) A CAN$100 phone gives you 75% of the experience, a CAN$250 gives your 95% of the experience

2) Android doesn't lock you to use a single app depot

3) Android doesn't require 2 or 3 login / password (iCloud + iTunes)

4) Android accounts work worldwide, it doesn't fail to log you in if you change countries (I had to re-create an AppleID when I moved to Canada because the US one no longer worked)

5) You don't have to use an extra step when migrating, just log-in et voila ! (ie. not iTunes shenanigans)

6) generally poor software full of UI glitches

7) No pressure sensitive touch-ID which fails to work with aging users (try to explain the concept to a +80 yo).

8) I can still use my $2 earplugs without an adapter

9) Android does not care what OS you use on your main desktop

10) MULTIPLE SIM ! Dual SIM phone is pretty much getting standard. I wish there was triple or quadruple SIM phones

11) External storage

12) Removable batteries

etc.

On the other hand, receiving timely security updates is nice. To me, saving a few bucks isn't worth using an unpatched phone.

> No pressure sensitive touch-ID which fails to work with aging users (try to explain the concept to a +80 yo).

It can just be disabled in the phone settings.

I wasn't really speaking about the touch-ID feature per-se, but the lack of physical feedback from the pressure sensitive home button, as you can last find on the iPhone 6/6S. My uncle had all the trouble in the world to use it. For such an expensive device, this is just not acceptable.

Apple and other computer makers have tried the social standing thing too with their products, but thye have always failed. It only works up until certain point.

I do think that there are markets for $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 iphone, but they must provide functional enhancements over $1,000 model, be it insanely good camera, insanely good display, 1TB storage, or 50% more battery life in same form factor.

With computers and devices, it's more about practical utility.

So why doesn't Apple do this? Because the market for $2-$5,000 phone is too small, and given Apple's reliance on parts maker, they can only have so much competitive edge. (i.e. if they can do it, then so can Android)

Even then, there will always be lower-tier iPhones and lower-tier "other" devices that will be cheaper and work just fine for most people, just like most people only need a Corolla, Camry, Civic, etc. for their daily car needs and not necessarily the newest BMW 3 or 5 series, etc.

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