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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

These iPads can easily be bent in half with bare hands

Why would you want to?

I just don't understand the way people treat their tech devices these days. I see millennials putting iPhones in their back pockets and then wondering why the screen shatters when they sit down. You are putting a piece of glass against your butt and sitting on it!

I remember when flip phones, digital cameras, floppy disks, and even Atari 2600's were handled with care. Because they would break, and were expensive to replace!

Do people act this way because stuff doesn't cost enough? Because paying for stuff with credit makes it seem like it's free, and therefore not worth anything? Or has the magic just gone out of tech for the average butt-storing phone user?

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You shouldn't have to treat a $1000 device like it's going to turn into dust. Sure, don't chuck your phone at concrete walls, but in general a phone needs to be able to take a spill occasionally or have someone sit on it because those things happen in real life.

It sounds like Apple has sacrificed too much in the name of being thin, and really botched their structural integrity.

Devices exist to be used, not kept in a museum.

> Sure, don't chuck your phone at concrete walls

A friend of mine had her horse stand on her phone. Carried on working for the next few days until it needed recharging, found some mud in the connector, cleaned that out, lasted another few years.

The nokia 3210 had a lot going for it.

You shouldn't have to treat a $1000 device like it's going to turn into dust.

I don't understand the link between price and resistance to damage.

If I buy a Faberge egg for $4 million, I don't expect that I can sit on it without causing damage.

A friend recently spent $20k on new windows for his house. I don't expect them to be baseball-resistant because they cost more than his previous, cheaper, windows.

It sounds like Apple has sacrificed too much in the name of being thin

I don't disagree with this. I'd rather have a little thicker laptop in exchange for a better keyboard. But because my laptop cost $4k, I don't expect that I can treat it anyway I like. It's a computer, not a rock.

> I don't understand the link between price and resistance to damage.

People expect tablets to be somewhat durable, and they expect the best tablets to be especially so.

People expect tablets to be somewhat durable, and they expect the best tablets to be especially so.

Then why is there a massive market for protective cases and screen protectors?

The point is that plenty of manufacturers (including Apple!) have made phones that don't bend if you look at them crooked. And a reasonable hypothesis is that users will migrate to those phones, once/if Apple gets a reputation for unreliability.

I'm not so sure, though, between the cult of Apple and consumers' well attested love of device thinness.

I carry my tech in a cyclists backpack which I wear when riding my bicycle or motorcycle. Increment weather, dust, high winds and extreme heat/near freezing cold are are normal conditions on my way to work. My current laptop was even able to survive an 80mph over-the-bars log roll.

Why would I "upgrade" to a device that can't?

> Do people act this way because stuff doesn't cost enough?

Cars cost 5-20x+ the price, not to mention fuel and insurance, and people get into car accidents all the time. Cost has nothing to do with it. People aren't robots, they make mistakes.

Good mass-market design is life-proof where possible. People will drop their phones, they will forget their phones in the pockets of the pants they just put in the laundry. Designers can either design for humanity as it is, or humanity as they wish it was, and the latter do all of us a disservice.

Did you happen to watch the video? He didn't try very hard to break it. It's not like he put it over his knee using all his strength.

You're missing the point of the video. It's not that you would intentionally bend it in half with your bare hands, it's that if it's so flimsy that that's trivial then it's flimsy enough to not withstand common accidental loads.

I'm not going to buy an expensive portable piece of electronics that can't survive being in a backpack. I do own expensive fragile things, but they stay on a shelf in my apartment. No way in hell would I bring them out into the world with me every day where they can be easily destroyed.

This isn't "millennials'" fault for being less careful with things; it's a simple failure of industrial engineering. And no, back in your day, people weren't more careful.

> I remember when flip phones, digital cameras, floppy disks, and even Atari 2600's were handled with care. Because they would break, and were expensive to replace!

What on earth are you talking about? The meme of indestructible nokia phones came about because people treated flip phones terribly. People used to toss phones & cameras into bags all the time back in the day. And unsurprisingly they still do.

If anything younger generations are better at this than older ones as they are used to tech being fragile instead of the indestructible tanks of a decade+ ago.

The meme of indestructible nokia phones came about because people treated flip phones terribly.

Amazingly, there were other phones on the market besides low-end Nokias.

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