Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Economics, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Macbook And IPhone Upgrades

December 17, 2016 Rand Simberg 19 Comments

For the first time in my life, I decided to sit out an upgrade cycle and buy the older model, now being sold at a discount like day-old bread.

I won’t say that the discount played no role in my decision. But in previous years, I’d have swallowed hard and handed over the money, because I am, in the laptop world, a hardcore power user. I game on my laptop. I frequently have a dozen or so applications open, two or three of which are browsers with many tabs open. Faster processors, more memory — these things are sufficiently valuable that I’m willing to pay for them, because they make me more productive.

The trouble is, the upgrade cycle is no longer delivering those things. The processors in the latest model were marginally faster than in the previous one, but you couldn’t add memory, which I needed more. Instead, Apple is focusing on things I care about a lot less, like making the laptop thin — even though that meant losing USB and SD card ports that I still use, and losing a lot of “play” from the keyboard. As a friend pointed out to me, Apple has become obsessed with thinness to the point of anorexia.

But my decision is not primarily evidence of Apple making poor design decisions. Instead, it’s a lesson in the limits of the form — and the way that’s affecting upgrade cycles, and very probably, Apple’s future revenue.

…My 4.5 years is actually on the low side for replacing a computer; the average now is nearly six years, which of course means that a substantial number of users are waiting longer than that. For replacing mobile devices, too, consumers are waiting longer, in part because phone companies are no longer subsidizing the phones to get you to invest in a contract, but also, I suspect, because devices are just not getting better as fast as they once were. We used to upgrade our phones every two years because the new operating systems ran on old phones as if they’d been given high doses of valium. Now we’ll wait until the batteries won’t hold a charge — and if it were possible to replace the batteries, we might wait even longer than that, because I’m not willing to pay hundreds of dollars to get a better camera while losing my headphone jack.

I replaced my slider Droid 2 Global a couple years ago, when it started to flake out, with a used Droid 4, because it was the newest phone in which I could still get a mechanical keyboard. The Droid 2 could do a battery swap in ten seconds; Motorola says not to replace the battery in the 4, but it was on its last legs when I bought it, and they could be purchased at Amazon, and didn’t really require any special tools other than a #5 Torx driver, so now the battery is fine. I don’t know when I’ll upgrade the phone, but then, I only use it when traveling, because I hate cell phones in general, and work at home with a land line, that they’ll take away from my cold dead fingers.

And I’ll stick to my desktop for now as well. I buy a cheap laptop for traveling, but to the degree I’m a power user, I prefer to have something easy/cheap to upgrade (I’ll probably double my RAM to 32G for Christmas). My next laptop, which may come soon, because mine is starting to have problems (occasional non-responsive keys, and lines in the display) will probably be a foldable two in one, that will be much easier to use on a plane.

As she says, it is a problem with marginal utility as we approach the end of Moore’s law, and the limits of the physical human interface.

But it’s not just that. I’ve never used Apple products, and things like this insane obsession with “thin” to the exclusion of all else is one of the reasons. My sense is that Apple’s response to consumer demand is similar to Twitter’s:

“Hey, we’re going to improve the product!”

“Great, want to know what we want?”

“Absolutely not.”

Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Racist Roots Of “Progressivism”

December 12, 2016 Rand Simberg 6 Comments

Virginia Postrel:

In the early 20th century, most progressives viewed as cutting-edge science what today looks like simple bigotry. “Eugenics and race science were not pseudosciences in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” Leonard emphasizes. “They were sciences,” supported by research laboratories and scholarly journals and promoted by professors at the country’s most prestigious universities.

While some socialists and conservatives also embraced them, Leonard argues, eugenics and scientific racism fit particularly well with progressive thought: “Eugenics was anti-individualistic; it promised efficiency; it required expertise, and it was founded on the authority of science.” Equally important, “biological ideas,” Leonard writes, gave progressive reformers “a conceptual scheme capable of accommodating the great contradiction at the heart of Progressive Era reform — its view of the poor as victims deserving state uplift and as threats requiring state restraint.” They could feel sorry for impoverished Americans while trying to restrict their influence and limit their numbers.

Know what else is “founded on the authority of science”? The war on the fossil-fuel industry, and the desire to control all aspects of our lives in the name of “saving the planet.”

In addition to restricting immigration, throwing people out of work with a minimum wage, and keeping blacks and other inferiors out of the job market, she could have also pointed out that gun control (another “progressive” idea) was traditionally intended to keep those inferior disarmed.

And nothing has changed. Accusations of “racism” against actual liberals by “progressives” remain, as with accusations of “hate,” and “violence,” and “ignorance,” psychological projection.

[Update a few minutes later]

How to get “progressive” students to understand the minimum wage:

When I get to the words “parasites,” I am aware that my tone of voice and demeanor are showing signs of disgust. They are disgusting sentiments, not easily read aloud to a classroom of students.

I think this is useful pedagogically for several reasons. First, it teaches students in political economy to carefully distinguish positive analysis from normative evaluation. By building this in early in the course, I find it easier to teach more difficult concepts like Coase and externalities. Second, it poses a striking challenge to students’ priors that good intentions lead to good policy. I use the opportunity to emphasize that economists judge policies by their outcomes, not the intentions behind them. Third, the example demonstrates the value of knowing something about the history of ideas and economic thought. It enriches their knowledge of both of the historical and contemporary debates and they remember it (I think). Fourth, the discussion invites a consideration of what values, views, and policies are consistent with their own normative positions. And finally, it is a powerful illustration of how ideas have consequences.

Yes. I wish that more teachers did this. But of course, too many of them are “progressives.”

Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Space, Space History, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Abandoned Frontier

December 10, 2016 Rand Simberg 27 Comments

Mark Steyn reflects on the passing of John Glenn. I don’t agree entirely, and I think he misses some key points, one of which was that Apollo was a battle in the Cold War that didn’t have much to do with space. With regard to Charlton, anyone who thinks we’re in technological decline, and unable to do great things any more hasn’t been paying attention to what’s been happening in microelectronics, microbiology, and yes, spaceflight. I’d suggest that Mark read my recent essay on the need to get over Apolloism.

[Update a while later]

Henry Vanderbilt weighs in over at Arocket:

Apollo was amazing, yes. But it did things the brute-force, massively-expensive way. Just look at the size of a Saturn 5 ready for liftoff, versus how much came back. Multiply that by the size of the payroll for the hundreds of thousands building and operating it, spread over a handful of missions a year. That’s a lot of expensive aerospace talent and hardware spent on every mission – billions worth.

Of course, they had no choice but to do it that way. They had an urgent national goal, a tight deadline, an effectively unlimited budget – and a 1962 technology base. One example: The computer that flew a Saturn 5 weighed as much as a small car – and was less powerful than the chips we put in toasters.

Two things happened after Apollo, one immediately bad, one eventually good.

The bad thing is that in the seventies, bureaucrats took over, and did what bureaucrats do: They carved into stone doing things the Apollo way. Shuttle resulted: gorgeous, yes, but only somewhat less expendable and slightly less labor-intensive than Saturn 5. And, alas, somewhat more fragile.

For decades this bureaucracy defended their billions-per-mission turf and defeated all efforts to do things less expensively. (In fact it’s still trying, with a MANY-billions-per-mission bastard offspring of Shuttle and Saturn 5 called “Space Launch System”.)

But the other thing that happened is, back in the eighties a few of us saw this bureaucratic logjam forming, and looked into whether space really had to cost billions per mission. We concluded it didn’t. We began pushing the different approaches it’d take to get costs down to where all the useful things we might do in space begin to be affordable.

It took a lot longer than we hoped getting into this. But thirty years later, commercial space companies are doing things at a tenth of traditional NASA costs. And that’s even before the really radical new technologies kick in, like the reusable flyback boosters just entering test in the last couple of years.

I won’t defend the wasted decades. (It wasn’t us wasting them, though at a number of points we could have been less naive about how ruthlessly the bureaucrats would defend their turf.)

But at this point, despair over the wasted decades is obsolete. Costs are coming down fast, huge possibilities are opening up. We could still blow it, yes. But compared to even just five or ten years ago, right now the future’s so bright I gotta wear shades.

Henry Vanderbilt
Space Access Society
(founded in 1992 with the intent of being no longer needed and disposed of in five years. yeah well.)

As I said on the Space Show the other week, the future for human spaceflight has never been more exciting.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!