Technology

Good.

29 months is a long time?

I've had this one since 2019

Kevin Williams, the author of this article is a very special breed of stupid.

Why would that hurt the economy? If you want people to spend money, make things affordable and useful. They make things shittier and more expensive and then wonder why people aren't buying

Oh look, it's the consumers who threaten the economy, not the fucking ghouls in the C suite, killing jobs and cutting wages. How dare they not having enough money? How DARE they?

lol nice economy

have had my phone for close to 5 years now. it could use a battery replacement, but other than that it’s perfectly fine, so im gonna keep it for as long as i can

and if that makes tim cook cry… so be it lol

"Companies aren't innovating anymore and it's costing the economy" is what it should say. When late stage capitalism leads to consolidation and cost cutting, stock buybacks, and other short term profit when competition is no longer necessary, that's what kills the economy. That's why monopolies and anticompetitive behaviors are bad, but the US doesn't punish that anymore.

People are returning to normal device lifecycles and the greed can't cope

What a load of bullshit. Maybe I misread it but it says that German companies would be 101% more productive if they bought newer laptops and phones (American ones no doubt). They also claim that businesses are trying to use old hardware for modern workloads. Apparently a six year old laptop can’t handle Outlook and Word.

Jesus Christ what a dumb take. But at least they didn't say that millennials are killing the cell phone industry. I guess that doesn't make for good clickbait anymore.

Reminds me if the parable of the broken window, in which French economist Frédéric Bastiat explains the painfully-obvious truth that breaking windows is generally a bad thing, even though it drums up business for the glass maker.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen."

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

Oh no, we're being so selfish. Why not buy a 10% performance upgrade every two years for $1000 while wages stagnate? Oh, and carriers don't subsidize the cost at all anymore. They call it "free" then lock you into their most expensive plan so you spend thousands more on the plan than if you could have afforded to just buy the phone outright.

Fuck this out of touch reporting.

Costing the economy..... hahahahahaha

capitalist propaganda

Think about how many additional phones you could buy each year if you cancelled your Netflix subscription and didn't eat as much avocado on toast.

please continue to "device hoard" folks

This is almost a textbook example of the broken window fallacy.

At this point my phone from 2022 is way overpowered for every use case I have for it. So why upgrade? It was a bit different years ago, when new phones actually did exciting new things older phones couldn't do. But now the technology has pretty much matured, and upgrades are incremental at best.

That's not even 3 years, gotta get those rookie numbers up

I don't like to comment twice, but holy fuck ... what the hell did I just read?

The framing here puts the Louvre to shame (they've currently got their own problems). Perhaps the purest perversion of capitalism is the idea that sufficient is never enough.

Look: Phones are commodities at this point. You only need a new one when the old one breaks. You don't call a plumber to replace your pipes every two years; it's generally because something shitty happens. Sometimes literally.

This feels like the pendulum swinging back, to the alarm of capital. I'm old enough to remember appliances being expected to last 20 years. Fridge, oven, TV, washer and dryer: All were expected to be single-time replacements over the course of a 30-year mortgage.

Hence growing up with a fridge in almond and a Kenmore set of laundry machines in mustard yellow. And a console Sony TV that made it through my entire console gaming time.

I got a new phone about a week ago. My old one was wildly overpowered for my use case, but ... I accidentally sat on it briefly, and the screen was never the same. I went from a Pixel 6 Pro to a 9a, and ... yeah, the screen seemed slightly smaller for a couple of days, but otherwise, it's faster than a device twice the price in 2021.

As with computers, we've hit "good enough" with phones for the most part. If you know why you need GPU cycles, that of course is another story, but for basic compute, we've nailed it. Hell, I'd still be running my i7-3770K -- a processor I bought in 2012 -- had my motherboard not died.

Things get shitty in terms of margins at the top of any technological S-curve.

I spent $500 on a phone that will get nearly seven years of updates, as I didn't buy it release day. Assuming I don't sit on it, that's a remaining 78 months at $6.41/month. My service is $15/month.

There's no money here anymore.