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Comment by caddybox | Hacker News Reader

I think it is unfair to label a platform with a two hundred dollar entry barrier as an equalizer. VoIP and allied technologies are the real enablers and ad-supported platforms like WhatsApp et al. have been true equalizers by allowing anyone to communicate with anyone at marginal costs. The ease of picking up the phone and calling somebody with no consideration of cost has enabled so many people to connect and communicate on a more frequent basis.

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Certainly, equality is an overloaded term, so it's useful to note the context. He's not talking about economic equality. He's talking about bringing a simplified interface to an otherwise complex and confusing process, particularly for his elderly relative. Different people will suffer from the existence of different barriers. It doesn't have to be a competition.

What Apple does to simplify things (prioritize simplicity and accessibility, obsessively remove or hide options, make reasonable defaults, broaden the happy-path) can be replicated on more affordable platforms.

That said, I've struggled to teach my elderly mother how to even answer her iPhone -- she finds it overly complicated. If she could get over the technical hurdle, she could stay in better touch with remote family and friends who now prefer texting and video calls to snail mail and begin to alleviate her loneliness.

The cost of entry should be expressed as the difference between lower cost or used iPhones and iPads vs similar android devices. Even though there is a cost premium for iOS devices the proven longer longevity of arguably makes them cheaper for most people, especially light users who are happy sticking with a device for 5-8 years. The family members who do tech support for them can mostly rest happy with automatic security updates turned on.

> I think it is unfair to label a platform with a two hundred dollar entry barrier as an equalizer.

Even in poor areas, lots of people are walking around with iPhones. $200-500 gadgets are not out of the range of poor people. That works out to less than a dollar a day.

One time amortized expenses aren't that much of a barrier, from what I've seen. The real barriers the poor face are things like high rents, high medical cost, high cost of education, etc.

About a quarter of the world's population lives on less than $3.20 per day. [1] $200-500 is a lot of money to billions of people.

[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/n...

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