Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Until now Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades. That's one human generation, and it is also the span of time between when something first hits and when it sees its first retro revival. That isn't a coincidence.

I'm starting to get a little excited! This is going to be quite a decade.

View on HN

> Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades

What a wild take. I guess that explains the massive and growing popularity of iOS over that same time period.

> What a wild take. I guess that explains the massive and growing popularity of iOS over that same time period.

Wild take, indeed.

I seem to recall something about Apple releasing a sub-$600 laptop so popular that weeks after it was announced it's backordered for more than 30 days.

Something something MacBook Neue or other…

> Until now Apple hasn't addressed the mass market in nearly two decades.

Going back to 2008:

> But the most fun on the conference call came when he parried analysts’ questions about new product areas that Apple might or might not enter. A recurring question among Apple watchers for decades has been, “When is Apple going to introduce a low-cost computer?

> Mr. Jobs answered that decades-old complaint by stating, “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.” He argued instead that the company’s mission was to add more value for customers at current price points.

* https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/2...

USD(2008) 500 = USD(2026) 760:

* https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

which is about what the Neo costs.

There is more to it than just accounting for inflation. Apple has done a number of other things in the meantime, including designing and manufacturing their own chips, that have changed the economies of this. Until the very recent RAM price explosion, a sub $500 computer in 2008 was probably more like a sub $350 computer today.

Inflation goes up - someone who could buy a $500 computer in 2008 should be able to buy a $766 or so computer today (cite: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com)

But today, if you can finagle the EDU discount, you can get a MacBook Neo for $499 ($600 without) which apparently isn't really compromised in any major way.

> Inflation goes up - someone who could buy a $500 computer in 2008 should be able to buy a $766 or so computer today

It should also be noted that technological advances tend to be deflationary in general: regardless of real or nominal dollars, the chips/storage/etc you can buy today were sometimes not even available in the past at any price.

Edit: e.g., see 1991 Radio Shack add:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161816

True, a high-end 386 would have cost upwards of $10k when it first came out, but a MacBook Neo probably beats the pants off a supercomputer from the same era.

An old Radio Shack ad from 1991 that often makes the rounds is illustrative:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45161816

Yes, I'm aware how inflation works, you missed my point. Many technology things have effectively gotten cheaper over time, when you account for overall performance/specs/capabilities/etc. The "we don't know how to make a $500 computer that doesn't suck" statement of today would be more like "we don't know how to make a $350 computer that doesn't suck".

They're now building the best cheap laptop ever made. That feels mass market to me.

People want another "iphone"-level impact. I would bet there never will be. A device that does everything that we carry with us will also be like an evolution of the smart phone.

The only possibility I can imagine is a home robot that takes off.

The iPhone was basically the apotheosis of the Internet. I don’t think we will ever see another consumer product able to have an impact like that unless there is some other kind of “substructure” technology with a vast amount of untapped potential lying around.

Even other transformational technological advancements, like home robotics, I don’t think will be encompassed by a single device the way smartphones could. Home robots will be scattered across a bunch of different robotic devices doing independent activities. You’ll have purpose-built laundry robots, vacuum robots, cooking robots, driving robots, etc. but not a single company doing a single thing.

2.5 bn iOS installed base, clearly a niche market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com