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Comment by alexvoda | Hacker News Reader

Quite wrong. The market is efficient at solving simple issues.

On the other hand a smartphone has pages long list if specs. And users have divergent preferences for those specs.

The market is only able to find a common denominator that makes everyone equally unhappy. In doing so it transfers power to the few manufacturers who now make choices for the users. Even worse, manufacturers copy each other and follow fashion trends.

It is almost impossible to find a phone that has a replaceable battery. It is very hard to find small phones. It is very hard to find phones with headphone jacks. It is very hard to find phones without a punchhole or notch for the camera.

These are all things people desire, but either not strong enough or not enough people or both.

I like the iPhone mini but not enough to sacrifice the flexibility of Android.

I like displays without cutouts, but not enough to sacrifice the 4 years of updates Samsung offers.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

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> things people desire, but either not strong enough or not enough people or both

> I like […] but not enough

Sounds like the market has managed to understand perfectly the things people actually want in a phone versus the ones they are just paying lip service to.

Taking such a long list of specs with wildly contradictory requirements and create compromise products that satisfiy the most is an extremely complex issue and something the market is uniquely suited to do - I am not aware of another mechanism that can do that, maybe a future AI.

Getting updates and not having a notch are in no way contradictory requirements.

Maybe, but I would bet they both impact the device cost while their rank on most people's desired characteristics list is not very high.

Non-notched screen is cheaper.

Headphone jack is a minuscule cost (you still need the DAC for the speakers).

There are now magnetically attached Bluetooth devices that provide a headphone jack to an iPhone and make twice as thick.

This showcases perfectly that there is a market for an iPhone with a jack, but Apple has the power to decide for everyone.

A user has the options:

- use an old phone(for how long?)

- sacrifice the jack and stay on iOS (give up)

- sacrifice iOS, repurchase all apps (are they available? alternatives?) and other purchases, and find some phone that still has it (gradually all flagships other than Sony dropped it)

This is not a free market, it is a market with plenty of obstacles to entry (some natural some imposed).

And the following of fashion trends (mostly follow Apple) make the situation doubly toxic.

In a captive market it is sufficient for one player to demonstrate the market will accept a worse offer and other players will follow through.

This may sound like blasphemy, but capitalism is actually not compatible with the free market.

You're incorrect.

The simple fact is, unrestrained capitalism is ugly.

A company that has become wildly successful will equally hold a lot of financial power. The same company is often likely to engage in lobbying .. exchanging that fiscal power for actual political power.

Without regulations we end up living in world driven by the singular need to make more and more money.

These corporations are not able to factor the good of human kind into their plan because that's got nothing to do with their very reason for existence.

Regulation is the only way we can address this.

> A company that has become wildly successful will equally hold a lot of financial power.

The most successful and influential companies of today did not even exist 50 years ago.

> the good of human kind

Please define “the good of human kind”. Be specific.

Soviets did most of their crimes “for the betterment of all mankind”. It’s a wonderful cover.

Your first statement makes no difference to what I'm saying.

I've been clear enough in my initial comment. The fact you're asking this second question makes me feel you understand I have a point.

So since there's basically zero phones with physical keyboards that means no one actually wants them? I guess me and everyone else that have been angry about touchscreen only input for nearly the last decade just "dont want it enough"

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