Ask HN: What are some “10x” *hardware* product innovations you have experienced? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some “10x” hardware product innovations you have experienced?

17 pointssupernova87a26 comments

Since we have the 10x software thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26477507), I'm interested to have us all recall the hardware innovations too!

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My first computer had a 2MHz CPU; my current has roughly 4GHz (2000x faster).

My first computer had an 8 bit CPU; my current has 64 bits (8x, so ... could try harder :-)

My first computer had a single core; my current has 16 cores (so 16x).

My first computer had 32KB RAM; my current has 32GB RAM (so, 1,000,000x).

My first computer with a hard drive had 30MB; my current has 32TB (so, roughly 1,000,000x)

My first computer had 640x400 pixels (kinda); my current has dual 3840x2160 pixels (so ... 32x)

My first computer network was 1Mbps Ethernet; my current has 10GbE (so, 10,000x)

10x? That's nearly nothing ...

I think the 10x means an immediate 10x over the competition rather than moores law doing its thing. For example the apple m1 might be this (I’m not an expert). 10x might mean in terms of perceived value not just raw metrics. The idea is that you kill the competitor immediately because it’s so good. It’s like why get a taxi when Uber is cheaper, comes quicker, doesn’t rip you off by going the long way and has an app (taxi companies had to catch up on the app part). Subjectively that’s 10x taxis!

SSD is the obvious one.

Robot things. Robot mop/vac and robot pool cleaner.

iPhone. My first was the 3GS.

The standard IBM PC form factor thing. Might have started with 286 processors in 90s?

Drones

Solar cells becoming economical enough to bolt onto your house

Dyson vs. traditional vacuum cleaners at the time (the competition weren’t interested in losing their bag selling biz)

Skis apparently used to be heavy and hard to ski in but now they are all easier but the technique changed.

How damn cheap consumer products are. I remember when owning a kitchen appliance was a big thing. Now we have too many!

Possibly the M1 processor but I’m not an apple “non phone computer” person so not sure.

GPS getting into phones, killing the sat nav market.

Moving from a 13 inch laptop to 2 large monitors. You don't realise how much the screen space affects the way you think.

Electric assist bikes. I don't have one yet but I've rented them in SF before. They make biking in a hilly city a far more enjoyable experience. If the cost falls enough to be on part with a normal bike in a few years, I suspect everyone will start riding them and cars will be less prevalent for short trips.

I rented one once and I suspect the electric was just compensating for the bike weight (unliftable so I’m guessing 40kg or more!) so I can’t imagine hoe good they are on a lighter bike.

WebUSB Postage Label Printer and WebUSB Postage Scales[1]:

  - No OS based printer queue to get gummed up
  - Super-fast (just ZPL printer commands being sent down the wire)
  - One-click to create a postage label
  - Automatic label printing when a new order comes in (Websocket + WebUSB)

We used to create labels by copying and pasting between Shopify and Australia Post. This hardware saves us ~4min per parcel.

[1] https://chickcom.com/hardware

WebUSB in general was crazy to me, then I found out there was a WebHID and serial port API available and suddenly something I was looking at making a kernel driver for could be a web app???

optical mice - anyone remember cleaning mouse balls?

led lighting

+1 the Logitech MX Master mouse with lots of buttons

And TWO scroll wheels!

Or the ones that required a special grid mouse pad.

The old bang bang bang, grunt, sigh then get a tissue for the gunk then temporarily castrate the mouse to clean it out. Yes.

Wow that brought back memories. I use to clean mine daily.

Powerful 22-core, 18-core server-grade systems with fully open firmware and hardware, fully open BMC, with PCIe 4.0, DDR4 memory with ECC and other modern features [1]. They are FSF RYF (Respects Your Freedom) certified [2]. Truly FOSS hardware. Quite affordable too. I think not many have heard of it. They have fully FOSS desktop processors too (4-core, 8-core).

[1] https://www.raptorcs.com/

[2] https://ryf.fsf.org/vendors/raptor

More info:

[3] https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Main_Page

[4] https://www.talospace.com/

[5] #talos-workstation on IRC, where people using these systems daily hangout. Accessible through the Element Matrix app IRC bridge too.

Now idk whether that's innovation, but it's a big thing IMO. AMD, Intel and ARM have proprietary bits in them that can potentially spy on your entire system (AMD Platform Security Processor, Intel Management Engine)

Voodoo 1 graphics. A whole separate card, for one game? wtf is "OpenGL"? ... then sit down in a Quake deathmatch for a second and its "I never realized how much i needed this until i saw it"

I remember how computer power supplies used to be the size of your foot and weigh a brick. Now they're less than a pack of playing cards, and cell phone chargers are the size of a finger. Someone told me it was because of higher frequency voltage conversion silicon that this became possible?

maybe too literal...10bt, 100bt, 1gbe, 10gbe...unfortunately I've never used 100gbe before...

3g > the stuff that came before?

fiber last mile > adsl,whatever else at the time

adsl > dial up(esp if u skipped isdn?)

ssd > hdd

lcd vs crt wrt size n weight?

usb3 > usb2 > usb1

aes, avx n other extensions > without them?

gpu > cpu for btc mining n stuff

GPS and especially cameras on our smartphones are massive gamechangers

Love the thread idea. For me, it's gotta be:

* Smart phones. I felt this sense of immersion I never got before.

* Bullet trains (specifically the Shinkansen in Japan). Felt like I was flying at ground level.

* Electric cars. I rented a Model 3 once and more than the speed and responsiveness, it was the lack of noise when accelerating. Felt like the wind picked up all of sudden and everything is coming near very fast.

I have to say the IPad is pretty amazing. 20 years ago we had palm pilots, but those are no where near what the IPad has become.

Arduino for opening up a world of makers

Smart light bulbs in terms of daily usage (turning off lights from bed without standing again)

1/10x: usb-c, e-ink

Some early Apple stuff:

Powerbook 100 - first Mac notebook (still black & white)

QuickTake 100 - first Apple digital camera

Macintosh Quadra 840AV - first Mac with built-in video in / out

GoPros. I saw mountain biking videos from the 90s and the riders were wearing CAMCORDERS on their helmets.

my first mp3 player (2gb) after audio CDs - more songs - more playtime on a single AA battery - smaller size

3g to 4g good lord.

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