[VLM]

The article focuses almost entirely on hardware especially hardware prices.

Then there's the usual confusion about inflation. In a theoretical sense a $3K hard drive would be like spending $9K now, but with massive economic decline and income inequality the real comparison is in the 80s families could scare up $3K if they really wanted, but now people can only afford $1K phones with exotic high interest rate financing, so people were either three times richer back then or nine times richer back then. Either way times are not good now. The point of an ad for a $3K hard drive from the 80s is not that it would in some theoretical sense cost $9K now or would store a million times as much data now, but that short decades ago people could afford to spend $3K and now they're stressed at spending merely $300. Another few decades of permanent economic decline and we as a people will be stressed at spending only $30.

Most of the consumer-level ads try to link their product with success and intelligence, whereas all advertisements now focus on competitively showing off your former wealth or some variation on "We are woke so our products must be good" LOL. Tech ads in 2022 look a lot more like mechanical gold watch ads in the 70s or designer jeans ads from the 80s.

The other point missed in the article is computer mags from my youth were absolutely chock full of software advertisements for $1000 compilers and $500 word processor and spreadsheet software. When I was a little kid a nice C compiler cost about half my dad's car, then as a teen you could get a decent K+R compatible compiler for a hundred bucks from radio shack (I paid 50 on sale using money I saved) and as a young adult, development tools are all free and you download linux and emacs and start writing code for the cost of some bbs download time, and later internet download time. Most of the software that we take for granted as being free today in 2022 used to sell for at least hundreds of dollars in the 80s and at least $50 in the early 90s, then the internet hit and you just download gcc "for free".

[nonrandomstring]

What I remember of those early computer ads is they showed a smiling family all gathered around a computer, joining in with some wholesome activity.

Firstly, that never happened. The moment my ZX81 came into our house there were nightly fights for the television (early computers needed the telly as a display). The computer completely alienated my parents and siblings who were mainly grateful that my interest in electronics and hacking was a pacifier.

Secondly, the distance between those images of technology as a connecting force and today's reality could hardly be more striking. Personal computers are objects of radical individualism. Four member of the family each staring into their own 6 inch digital world, face lit from below in blueish light would be the right image.

So the question of "how far we've come" is more nuanced than kilobytes of RAM and megahertz of processing power.

[VLM]

> showed a smiling family all gathered around a computer

They were always so dressed up, like they were planning on attending a wedding and at the last minute decided to play Donkey Kong.

The real world looks as it always did, as I sit here "computing" in my gym shorts and a dirty tee shirt from changing the lawnmower oil this morning.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Coincidentally I just watched a 90 second clip from The Brady Bunch. I’d forgotten how formally everyone dressed on TV … even in their own homes with no guests visiting. The father is wearing slacks and a tie. The girls wear dresses. Not realistic.

[rufus_foreman]

Not going to make an argument for the realism of The Brady Bunch, but people did certainly dress more formally in previous decades.

At my first job bagging groceries and stocking shelves, we wore a dress shirt and a tie.

At my first corporate software job, it was only a year or two past the time they had to wear a suit and tie to work. By the end of the 90's people went to work at a corporate job dressed the way I dressed at the beginning of the 90's to go skateboarding.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Yeah, I agree. But I’m talking about at home. Not work.

[ghaff]

Depending on, for lack of a better word, class people did dress up more in general. My father didn't have a tie on at home. But we did dress up way more than today when we went out--and especially if we were traveling by air or going to a restaurant.

In business, I was just joking the other week that, in the course of my career, we've gone from business suits being the expected attire at industry events to jeans with T-shirts at least being perfectly acceptable.

[nonrandomstring]

> were planning on attending a wedding and at the last minute decided to play Donkey Kong.

lol. sweet.

[samatman]

One of my earlier memories was sitting on my Dad's lap playing some Infocom game on his brand-new PC-AT. I didn't get to go into the study that much so it was big deal.

I still have the F series keyboard from that computer, which ended up housing my first three motherboards as well.

[nonrandomstring]

> sitting on my Dad's lap playing some Infocom game

That's heartening. I'm also trying to do a good job as a dad, letting my daughter have positive experiences with computers, to learn to have fun, respect but also command them, to be in control.

[bombcar]

I wish more computer games had “helper” functionality like super Mario galaxy did - perfect to let kids help without having to be able to play the whole game.

[beezle]

My mid-80s starting salary out of college with a BA was $25K - pretty good at the time and order $70K today. That $3K in the 80s would be 1/8th of my annual salary. Most people would consider that a very large expenditure and not something they could find digging under the couch cushions and breaking piggy banks.

[VLM]

I don't disagree with any of that, none the less, they were selling at $3K then and have to cut price to $300 to sell now, so people are obviously 10x poorer now than in the 80s. Can't argue with actual historical economic activity.

Its worth pointing out that I was paying something ridiculous like $115 for health insurance around 1990 and its running about $1750 now for my wife and I, and that's with horrifying copays and stuff. Somebody with $70K is still getting $70K, they're just spending it on rent and medical expenses now instead of $3K hard drives.

On one hand, instead of life involving $3K hard drives, now we supposedly have better medical care and nicer houses. On the other hand, its not like lifespans are increasing, LOL.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> they were selling at $3K then and have to cut price to $300 to sell now, so people are obviously 10x poorer now than in the 80s

Can you explain this? I don’t understand your reasoning. Doesn’t the issue of “cheaper to manufacture” have anything to do with price?

[notahacker]

It's entirely due to cost of manufacture (and the result that hard drives are mass market product with a lot of competiton)

Here's a brand new sedan you could buy for under $5k during the same period. https://blog.consumerguide.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/20...

The sort of person that could afford to plonk $3k a few megabytes of storage without thinking about it too hard back then wasn't the sort of person that needs a payment plan to afford an iPhone today, it's the sort of person who's never needed to save for a new car.

[pixl97]

Eh, your economics have some issues here. Back then people were extremely stressed about spending that much. At least where I lived people could not spend that much, and a lot of computers that were bought were with financing.

On of the big things that has changed is the massive increase in housing costs and rents causing all kinds of economic issues.

[maestroia]

It sounds like we're roughly the same age, so I won't go completely into "get off my lawn" mode. But most families in the 80s could not scare up $3K easily, it was a boatload of money; and if they could, it was for emergencies.

It's easy to remember our youth, and think of how easy it was. And it may have been for us (well, I was working or in college most of the 80s), but not our parents who foot the bills.