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Comment by uniqueuid | Hacker News Reader

All true, but why is the culture and aesthetic of computers inherently trashy?

Look at all the fields where superior quality is a completely natural criterion (whether it exists may be another question): Watches, cars, pens, paper notebooks, furniture, fashion, jewellery, architecture, bikes, coffee machines ...

What's more - if you look at the visual representations of computers - i.e. marketing material, art, illustrations, unix porn etc - all that highly values aesthetics and beauty. But the actual products are a disgrace to all of that!

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I think you just answered the question: All of the categories you note have both high-end and, sadly, mostly low-end options. What is surprising is that, in the world of computing, there is very little at the high end (Apple -- from going by this original thread), and almost all of it is at the low end. I guess some company could make an amazing PC that ran Windows, but the, you'd have an amazing piece of hardware that... ran Windows.

But you only need Windows to run the real paragon of Microsoft software development, Excel.

I think you also answered your own question.

We buy computers by comparing sets of numbers. Your GHz and Mb are bigger than my GHz and Mb? And the $ are lower?

But luxury items are some times about the feel. And if you have a nice computer running Windows. Well, the primary way in which we interact with the machine is budget so why bother with the rest of it?

> We buy computers by comparing sets of numbers. Your GHz and Mb are bigger than my GHz and Mb? And the $ are lower?

Anytime "normies" ask me to help them buy a laptop, this is not at all what they ask. The only thing they want to know is "is it fine for my needs?" and the only thing I really need to do is check "min GHz, min Mb", and find the cheapest option in the bucket with a decent support contract and then pick the cheapest option.

And in my circle, the cheapest option is not really anyone's concern (they budget 1k, 2k, and are fairly agnostic within like +-$300); in near any other subject, it'd be preceded by look & feel, but they all look and feel the same (inoffensive, at best), so cost is all you've got.

No "normie" I know has high expectations of computers, both by their own failure but mostly by failure of the machine itself, and its largely because computers do not have high expectations of themselves.

The Carbon starts at 1400 USD. Is that low end for you?

> All true, but why is the culture and aesthetic of computers inherently trashy?

Because it needs to be affordable to the masses as a whole, and not just the upper middle class and up.

I find it very sad to think that masses cannot have style.

Some old Swiss everyday products are affordable yet beautiful; I am convinced both is possible.

Apple and companies in general need to make a profit.

Those same "old Swiss everyday products" are most likely no longer affordable based on the modern cost of labor and materials.

The price of, say, a basic victorinox Swiss Army knife or a simple Caran d‘ache ball pen is still around one hourly wage in Western Europe and perhaps 2 to 5 in Eastern Europe.

Are they made with the same quality of materials as older, more reliable versions? I would guess no. It's also a poor comparison because both are low tech products.

You many be surprised, but ball pens or even pencils are not really low-tech products. Their production needs precision equipment and cutting-edge supply chain. You can´t make a pencil in your basement.

side note: "caran d'ache" actually means pencil in Russian which in turn borrowed the name from Turkic, where cara(n) means black and ache is stone. The company is Swiss, but it was set up by a Russian cartoonist that fled the 1917 revolution, worked in Paris and settled in Switzerland inbetween the world wars.

Sure, pen and pencil factories may need complicated factory equipment to manufacture, but they are still extremely low tech products compared to computer chips and other silicon related components which are still evolving relatively fast compared to pen and pencil products. The related manufacturing process for chips is also a lot more complex and advanced compared to the manufacturing process for pens and pencils. It's still a poor comparison.

Actually, if I may, Caran d'Ache was the "nom de plume" of a French satirist, who died in 1909 (before the russian revolution), but the Swiss company was inspired by his name and his life, as he was one of the first to create what would become (sort of) newspaper comic strips.

Because computers are supposed to be practical first. We're still making significant enough improvements in the performance of them that they outweigh things such as aesthetics. The things you mentioned have negligible improvements year after year and the way they differentiate between each other is the looks.

This is also why good computers are affordable by almost everybody, but things like good bicycles, furniture, watches, coffee machines etc are not.

You can buy a decent computer for the same money as one chair.

> Because computers are supposed to be practical first. We're still making significant enough improvements in the performance of them that they outweigh things such as aesthetics.

Sometimes aesthetics is part of practicality: how many doors does one run into with a "push" or "pull" sign because otherwise it's not possible to tell in which direction things work?

Computer design aesthetics are a relatively new concept and not one that’s deeply explored or appreciated, and certainly not at the level of other physical designs (cars, watches, clothing, so on).

I think many of us here really appreciate the beauty of Cray Mainframes and Apple hardware, but computers are so associated with work and utilitarianism, I think they’ve often been overlooked for their value as design pieces. I mean, brutalist architecture is a thing, so it’s probably just a matter of time.

Aesthetics vs utility if a perfectly fine debate to have. Everyone is going to fall at different places.

The question is why you don’t seem to have a choice of quality. It’s basically seems to be quite high (Apple), or somewhere between crap and acceptable.

Where are the very high PCs? The nice PCs? The good PCs? There aren’t many, they’re basically niche.

I don’t have much experience with recent PCs. Most of it has been quite bad. Even the relatively well spec’ed Windows laptops at work are sad (despite decent reviews).

Trashy is paying extra for needless aesthetics. Function over fashion forever, in my earnest opinion.

Trashy aesthetics is what you get by default when you buy a PC.

Cheapest PC mech keyboard will get you blinking RGB.

Cheap PC case with front mesh airflow. Most likely will come with RGB fans. If it's real cheap you won't be able to even turn it off.

Same with cheapish mouse with decent sensor.

Needless aesthetics is almost unavoidable on the budget end. Unless you specifically go out of your way to pay extra to get models without RGB.

There definitely is a lot of pointless garbage in PC culture eh. Like touch bars, notches and aluminum unibodies, glass backs in devices that will definitely crack, single button mice, limited IO for devices... The list goes on and on.

Also the treadmill of computer progress means that keeping devices for multiple years has significant costs in performance compared to replacing it regularly.

A good watch can be passed down through generations. A computer passed on from my father would likely just be a storage and disposal cost instead of any real use.

Outside of specialist enthusiasts and collectors, I suppose. But for every working Apple 1 there's thousands of c64s that no longer function quite right.

That's a very good point, thank you.

Conversely, nowadays that is less and true though. Currently, getting a latest Ryzen 5000 APU laptop can very easily last you 10 years or more -- until something physically breaks inside. The machines themselves are very energy-efficient and fast enough for everything except special work niches.

So I suspect we're witnessing a culture shock: what used to be the best strategy no longer is, and the players (the producers) haven't adapted yet.

> Currently, getting a latest Ryzen 5000 APU laptop can very easily last you 10 years or more

You never know. I have an AMD TR 1900X CPU (launched in August 2017) in a box, since Windows 11 doesn't run on it.

Ah. I definitely mean on Linux.

This sounds so wrong tbh, first that you would get a 1900X which was the smallest Threadripper, and that you would then use it in an application which doesn't use all of its PCIe lanes, which is what differentiated it from the 8-core Ryzens.

May I ask, why you need to run Windows 11?

I didn't need many cores; but I needed the PCIe lanes. 1900X was perfect for that. I don't follow, how did you figure that my application doesn't use all of its PCIe lanes?

Another thing was, that since there were less cores and the thermal capacity was the same as the bigger siblings, the cores were clocked slightly higher (3.8 GHz base frequency).

Eventually, I got one of last 2920X for a good price. I got more, but slower cores and it still works in the X399 board I used with 1900X.

---

I actually do not need to run 11 yet. But eventually, it will come.

Now is your chance to “I run arch btw”.

" Also the treadmill of computer progress means that keeping devices for multiple years has significant costs in performance compared to replacing it regularly."

The interval of replacement due to performance is getting longer through. A 10-year old high-end laptop is still pretty good for average user today, especially with an SSD. Most people need just something that can run web-apps and stream HD videos via browser. Buying a new laptop solely for performance is getting harder and harder to justify. I guess that's why Macbooks are attractive, they offer more than just performance.

As long as they're made to be disposable there's an upper limit. No one would buy a macbook for 50k knowing they'll be able to use it their whole life then resell it likely for a profit but they would a Rolex.

I mean, it's not unreasonable for a painter to not really give s** what her brushes look like, as long as they work?

No, on the contrary. In my experience, the professional artists and craftsmen that I know are rather choosy about their tools.

A bit of creakiness and flakiness is tolerable when you’re a home gamer and only have to deal with it for a couple of hours at a time during the weekend, but when it’s a full time job it gets old fast.

On the contrary of the contrary :)

That's why I said "look like." Sometimes good tools look good, and sometimes they don't.

For computers these days, especially true. It may have been true that the aesthetics of a Mac strongly correlated with quality, but that's far from certain now.

Because computers are disposable. In a few years it's going to be obsolete or broken so I'll have to buy a new one. I'm not wealthy so it's hard to justify spending extra on style for something that won't last.

This is also true of several of the categories they named. Cars, bikes, kitchen appliances, notebooks: none of those are heirlooms, most won't last more than a few years of regular use. But all of those domains value aesthetics a lot more than computer hardware. Another explanation is necessary.

I usually keep my cars, bikes, and kitchen appliances significantly longer than my laptops. Nothing lasts forever, but computers are a lot closer to the disposable end of the spectrum.

Because the prevailing engineering culture is of maximum savings, and they even see it as a virtue ("Anyone can overengineer, it takes true master to design precisely to spec etc..").

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