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I know it's at least a little irrational, but I am indescribably angry with the pricing trajectory of personal computing. I'm not all that young and for pretty

I know it's at least a little irrational, but I am indescribably angry with the pricing trajectory of personal computing. I'm not all that young and for pretty much all my life the computers you as a random person could buy have consistently become massively more performant and massively cheaper over time. Even when the exponential performance increases started to taper off, every few years you could buy or build a new computer that was either cheaper or faster than the one you already had. That trend of the last several decades has been completely destroyed in the last year or so. Sure you can buy a new computer that might be slightly better than one a few years old, but it will be significantly more expensive to the point where an upgrade is almost certainly not worth it unless money is no object. Even replacing a computer from the pre-AI era would be virtually impossible at anywhere near what it cost you to buy it new unless it was verging on truly ancient by computer standards. Computers have always been a counterpoint to inflation everywhere else, but now that seems to be not only no longer true, but computer costs are inflating significantly worse than other goods. I find myself increasingly in favor of the movement against data centers. Not because I think data centers are bad on their own, but because of the hording of computing resources they represent and the impact that has on people trying to buy any sort of computing device for their personal use. The PC I built 2 years ago is basically irreplaceable at anywhere near the price I paid for it. That's a truly unacceptable state of affairs in personal computing.

api 22d ago
Isn’t this just inflation? We are in a highly inflationary environment. Everything is going up in nominal terms.
- KennyBlanken 22d ago
  Inflation is a few percent a year roughly. Prices for hardware have skyrocketed. Ram has jumped anywhere from 2-4x in cost. NVMe drives are still going for 2-3x what they cost about 2 years ago. Just go look at one of the amazon price trackers to see how bad it is. TSMC, plus flash and memory manufacturers with their own facilities, have dramatically cut production of almost anything that isn't in demand for AI, plus Macs were just about the only way to get more than 16GB of 'VRAM' without spending multiple thousands of dollars, so Mac Minis and Studios with more than about 24GB of ram have been under months-long backorders, which is unprecedented. Tim Apple made is name in supply chain logistics. Even he can't logistic his way out of this. Making things worse, the RAM that Macs use is really fast stuff, nearly the speed of high end desktop GPUs. Supply for anything that isn't exactly what NVIDIA, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and MS want has pretty much evaporated. And even that stuff has skyrocketed in cost because, essentially, the race has turned into who can hoard the most of TSMC's and NVIDIA's production capacity in a particular year. The pathetic thing is that it isn't even actual purchases in some cases. In some cases, it's OpenAI or Anthropic merely "promising" they will buy X% of a memory manufacturer's capacity. I can't wait for all of this to come crashing down.For all this hardware that is useless for anything else because of its density and power consumption - to absolutely crater in price and become e-waste.
  - deleted 22d ago
    [deleted]
  - hulitu 21d ago
    > Inflation is a few percent a year roughly The official one. The reality is a bit worse. A trip to the supermarket was 50 Euros some years ago, now it is 150 - 200 50 Euros. That is not "a few percent".
- II2II 22d ago
  I think their point is that computers used to defy inflation. Across the decades, computers were getting cheaper in an absolute sense (i.e. not factoring in inflation) and astonishingly cheaper in terms of dollars per unit of performance. Even when the cost of the cheapest computers bottomed out, it likely had more to do with lower prices not making sense. At a certain point, the cost of things that encapsulate the computer and I/O (like the enclosure and screen) end up overwhelming the cost of the actual compute.
- NamlchakKhandro 22d ago
  lmfao ... inflation. are you trolling sir?
- hatsix 22d ago
  no, inflation is the cost of goods rising because money is worth less. This is capitalism, as demand increases, so does price, regardless of the cogs.
  - true_religion 22d ago
    No, this is market economics. Capitalism is simply where private individuals own the "means of production" (factories, tools, land) and operate them to accumulate profit. That is private as in not lords, guilds, cartels, governmental authorities, tribal leaderships, etc. There's a lot of stuff people conflate with capitalism like free market economics, currency, share based companies, free mobility of labor, or debt instruments of any kind. Capitalism does require a market so goods can be exchanged, that's all it requires, and there's enough flavors of capitalism thanks to the different countries in the world that this distinction isn't superfluous.
- rc5150 22d ago
  [flagged]
  - pylotlight 22d ago
    more like %1000 for some components.
  - api 22d ago
    My previous post sucked because I didn’t say the second part. I’m worried that this is a harbinger of dollar collapse. Inflation doesn’t show up evenly everywhere. It shows up in assets and hot areas first.
EvanAnderson 22d ago
I don't think it's an accident that the market is on a trajectory toward personal computer (and particularly storage) rental being the only economically viable game. There are significant players who will profit directly. Indirectly it helps companies for whom end users owning general purpose computers and storage threaten their business models. The industry has little incentive to fix this problem and as the market shrinks so does the incentive. We lived thru the PC revolution. It looks over now to me.
- pjmlp 22d ago
  Indeed, also to note something that younger folks keep missing, the PC revolution only happened due IBM's mistake, everyone else was vertically integrated, even with something like CP/M.
  - AnthonyMouse 22d ago
    > the PC revolution only happened due IBM's mistake, everyone else was vertically integrated IBM was extremely vertically integrated. What actually happened was that Compaq reverse engineered their BIOS and made a compatible system and the courts said it was okay. The thing destroying the modern world is DMCA 1201. Adversarial interoperability is fundamental.
    - pjmlp 22d ago
      That was the mistake, using common components for a cheaper computer versus previous ones, and not being able to take down Compaq's achievement. Rest assured there would be no IBM PC compatibles otherwise, in fact PS/2 and MCA architecture was a failed attempt to regain control.
      - AnthonyMouse 21d ago
        The common components are irrelevant. Even Apple still has components manufactured by Foxconn, buys RAM and flash from the same vendors as anyone else, uses ARM's ISA, etc. The phones made by Xiaomi et al are perfectly capable of running the same apps as Apple's from a hardware perspective. The difference is that now if someone wants to make a competing store for iOS apps, or a competing client app for Reddit or Twitter, the incumbents use the DMCA and remote attestation and similar anti-competitive levers to lock those competitors out of the market and governments have been letting them get away with it.
tqi 22d ago
I feel like we are basically reliving the COVID era supply chain crunch, that it's basically inevitable that in 18-36 months more capacity will come online and prices will crash back to earth. Whether OEMs like Apple pass these savings along to consumers is tbd though.
- fpoling 22d ago
  Memory orders for the whole 2027 were already reserved. There is little indication that in 2028 situation will be any better unless something drastic happens like AI crash. And then the opposite can happen like an unknown drone with 100 kg warhead striking memory production facility.
  - poincareball 22d ago
    Yeah… “unknown”. As if we don’t know any countries seeking to end democracy in Taiwan…
    - sirtaj 21d ago
      Is China any less dependent on Taiwanese semiconductors than the rest of us?
      - hulitu 21d ago
        Yes. They make their own processors.
        sirtaj 21d ago
        They are Taiwan's largest buyer, by a significant margin.
    - fpoling 21d ago
      It can be Russia to limit availability of AI heavy drones for Ukraine. Or it can be a small private organization using the strike as a mean to manipulate market.
ninjalanternshk 22d ago
“It costs a lot to buy a new computer better than the one I have” is another way of saying “computers aren’t going obsolete as fast” which sounds like a great thing.
- arcanemachiner 22d ago
  It also costs more to buy the same computer you already have, which is not a great thing.
strawhatguy 22d ago
Please. Yes the pricing sucks, but that means more capacity to build more computers will develop. It will equalize at some point. Crashing the data center boom in a vain attempt to get a cheaper pc is a) short-sighted and selfish and b) counterproductive, bans on data centers would almost guarantee permanent high prices, or lower performing parts.

api 22d ago

Isn’t this just inflation? We are in a highly inflationary environment. Everything is going up in nominal terms.

KennyBlanken 22d ago
Inflation is a few percent a year roughly. Prices for hardware have skyrocketed. Ram has jumped anywhere from 2-4x in cost. NVMe drives are still going for 2-3x what they cost about 2 years ago. Just go look at one of the amazon price trackers to see how bad it is. TSMC, plus flash and memory manufacturers with their own facilities, have dramatically cut production of almost anything that isn't in demand for AI, plus Macs were just about the only way to get more than 16GB of 'VRAM' without spending multiple thousands of dollars, so Mac Minis and Studios with more than about 24GB of ram have been under months-long backorders, which is unprecedented. Tim Apple made is name in supply chain logistics. Even he can't logistic his way out of this. Making things worse, the RAM that Macs use is really fast stuff, nearly the speed of high end desktop GPUs. Supply for anything that isn't exactly what NVIDIA, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and MS want has pretty much evaporated. And even that stuff has skyrocketed in cost because, essentially, the race has turned into who can hoard the most of TSMC's and NVIDIA's production capacity in a particular year. The pathetic thing is that it isn't even actual purchases in some cases. In some cases, it's OpenAI or Anthropic merely "promising" they will buy X% of a memory manufacturer's capacity. I can't wait for all of this to come crashing down.For all this hardware that is useless for anything else because of its density and power consumption - to absolutely crater in price and become e-waste.
- deleted 22d ago
  [deleted]
- hulitu 21d ago
  > Inflation is a few percent a year roughly The official one. The reality is a bit worse. A trip to the supermarket was 50 Euros some years ago, now it is 150 - 200 50 Euros. That is not "a few percent".
II2II 22d ago
I think their point is that computers used to defy inflation. Across the decades, computers were getting cheaper in an absolute sense (i.e. not factoring in inflation) and astonishingly cheaper in terms of dollars per unit of performance. Even when the cost of the cheapest computers bottomed out, it likely had more to do with lower prices not making sense. At a certain point, the cost of things that encapsulate the computer and I/O (like the enclosure and screen) end up overwhelming the cost of the actual compute.
NamlchakKhandro 22d ago
lmfao ... inflation. are you trolling sir?
hatsix 22d ago
no, inflation is the cost of goods rising because money is worth less. This is capitalism, as demand increases, so does price, regardless of the cogs.
- true_religion 22d ago
  No, this is market economics. Capitalism is simply where private individuals own the "means of production" (factories, tools, land) and operate them to accumulate profit. That is private as in not lords, guilds, cartels, governmental authorities, tribal leaderships, etc. There's a lot of stuff people conflate with capitalism like free market economics, currency, share based companies, free mobility of labor, or debt instruments of any kind. Capitalism does require a market so goods can be exchanged, that's all it requires, and there's enough flavors of capitalism thanks to the different countries in the world that this distinction isn't superfluous.
rc5150 22d ago
[flagged]
- pylotlight 22d ago
  more like %1000 for some components.
- api 22d ago
  My previous post sucked because I didn’t say the second part. I’m worried that this is a harbinger of dollar collapse. Inflation doesn’t show up evenly everywhere. It shows up in assets and hot areas first.

EvanAnderson 22d ago

I don't think it's an accident that the market is on a trajectory toward personal computer (and particularly storage) rental being the only economically viable game. There are significant players who will profit directly. Indirectly it helps companies for whom end users owning general purpose computers and storage threaten their business models. The industry has little incentive to fix this problem and as the market shrinks so does the incentive. We lived thru the PC revolution. It looks over now to me.

pjmlp 22d ago
Indeed, also to note something that younger folks keep missing, the PC revolution only happened due IBM's mistake, everyone else was vertically integrated, even with something like CP/M.
- AnthonyMouse 22d ago
  > the PC revolution only happened due IBM's mistake, everyone else was vertically integrated IBM was extremely vertically integrated. What actually happened was that Compaq reverse engineered their BIOS and made a compatible system and the courts said it was okay. The thing destroying the modern world is DMCA 1201. Adversarial interoperability is fundamental.
  - pjmlp 22d ago
    That was the mistake, using common components for a cheaper computer versus previous ones, and not being able to take down Compaq's achievement. Rest assured there would be no IBM PC compatibles otherwise, in fact PS/2 and MCA architecture was a failed attempt to regain control.
    - AnthonyMouse 21d ago
      The common components are irrelevant. Even Apple still has components manufactured by Foxconn, buys RAM and flash from the same vendors as anyone else, uses ARM's ISA, etc. The phones made by Xiaomi et al are perfectly capable of running the same apps as Apple's from a hardware perspective. The difference is that now if someone wants to make a competing store for iOS apps, or a competing client app for Reddit or Twitter, the incumbents use the DMCA and remote attestation and similar anti-competitive levers to lock those competitors out of the market and governments have been letting them get away with it.

tqi 22d ago

I feel like we are basically reliving the COVID era supply chain crunch, that it's basically inevitable that in 18-36 months more capacity will come online and prices will crash back to earth. Whether OEMs like Apple pass these savings along to consumers is tbd though.

fpoling 22d ago
Memory orders for the whole 2027 were already reserved. There is little indication that in 2028 situation will be any better unless something drastic happens like AI crash. And then the opposite can happen like an unknown drone with 100 kg warhead striking memory production facility.
- poincareball 22d ago
  Yeah… “unknown”. As if we don’t know any countries seeking to end democracy in Taiwan…
  - sirtaj 21d ago
    Is China any less dependent on Taiwanese semiconductors than the rest of us?
    - hulitu 21d ago
      Yes. They make their own processors.
      - sirtaj 21d ago
        They are Taiwan's largest buyer, by a significant margin.
  - fpoling 21d ago
    It can be Russia to limit availability of AI heavy drones for Ukraine. Or it can be a small private organization using the strike as a mean to manipulate market.

ninjalanternshk 22d ago

“It costs a lot to buy a new computer better than the one I have” is another way of saying “computers aren’t going obsolete as fast” which sounds like a great thing.

arcanemachiner 22d ago
It also costs more to buy the same computer you already have, which is not a great thing.

strawhatguy 22d ago

Please. Yes the pricing sucks, but that means more capacity to build more computers will develop. It will equalize at some point. Crashing the data center boom in a vain attempt to get a cheaper pc is a) short-sighted and selfish and b) counterproductive, bans on data centers would almost guarantee permanent high prices, or lower performing parts.