> I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.
I'd normally agree, but the article's point is that this isn't happening with displays - we're stuck at 4K as the best available except for a handful of displays that are still expensive even years after introduction.
I bought my LG Ultrafine 5K in 2018, and it launched in 2016. There's still no real alternative - we seem to be in a monitor progress limbo.
I assume the desktop monitor business is so low margin that it’s barely worth investing in these days.
Or another example: 8 years ago I spent $320 on a 1080p 27" (massive pixels) monitor with horrible color reproduction and contrast. 4 years ago I upgraded to a new monitor and for $300 I was able to get 4k 27" with >100% sRGB.
And when you consider inflation, progress is even greater.
It's the same with GPUs, and to a lesser extent CPUs and memory and storage. Moores law is great in many ways, but as a buyer of high end technology it always stings to see the same thing be 30-50% cheaper a few years later.
Progress does seem to have slowed down within the past few years for monitors. I expect the pandemic is relevant there.
Apple took a large leap into giant monitors with high DPI. Most people don't care a lot about it, when you are not that close to the monitor, the retina effect is not worth, for mass market, the cost difference.
In the end, you are both correct. It is slow for the top of the line but super fast for everyone else upgranding mid-range monitors.
But a current $500 (MSRP) GPU thoroughly spanks a 5 year old $500 GPU. Even my 2 year old Radeon 5700xt is feeling out of date.
This unfortunately leads to a cycle of more mining, even if the card isn’t optimized for it, as no card is a net negative cash flow atm even factoring in energy costs.
This is very true. I just got a previous-generation top-of-the-line CPU and GPU. It's way more power than I will ever need and if I went for latest gen I could have afforded barely mid-level for the same price[1]. Even taking into account the fact that latest gen is faster, I still got better performance for dollar (20-30% better depending on benchmarks).
[1] With regards to the CPU I'm factoring in the saving of not having to buy a new motherboard.
A honing steel doesn't remove material, a sharpening steel does.
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OK, now: try to use it to do something. Anything. Something as simple as write a NOTEPAD note, or play one song from iTunes.
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Nope! You are surely getting screenfulls of information telling you, this Apple device has been locked and only the original owner can unlock it.
I suppose this is to prevent people from stealing Apple devices and reselling them to pawn shops or on eBay and Craigslist, and it must be working. All thieves everywhere must know by now, don't even bother to try to steal an Apple device or a Tesla car, for as soon as you do it gets bricked from all the satellites in space.
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I'm writing this because I bought a nine year old iPad on eBay and have spent the last two weeks trying to get through to AL-SUPPORT Activation Lock support at Apple, asking them to unlock it. And of course they don't care, I am not the original owner of the device, and unless I am, it is as useless as a digital brick. Battery life, screen quality, beautiful craftsmanship of the item itself, nothing matters. It just sits there telling me I'm practically a criminal for even owning this device.
No matter that the original owner gave up on it long ago, when even the simplest apps like YouTube and Gmail stopped working on it, by design, intentional planned-obsolescence coming down from Apple themselves. With the iOS getting relentlessly updated every year, all the apps get forcibly recompiled and anything old just doesn't work any more at all.
They don't care about this device any more. It was just a real-world dongle they used to get information from and about the original owner, information they've got stored in their giant database in the Cloud. They don't really care about me at all.
I imagine the universe is now littered with these devices, an Oort Cloud of them completely surrounding the planet, mentally bricked by annual iOS updates and physically bricked by Activation Locks, I'm a criminal for owning one, and were I to bring it to an Apple store to complain, they would have no useful help for me at all, "Buy a new one!" they'll tell me, "that's our company policy!"
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Who is causing the problem here --- me, or Apple?
If it was stolen from the original owner then you don't really own the device legally and this is the anti-theft part of activation lock functioning as designed. If you're an innocent third party to the original theft, your remedy is to get a full refund.
If it was just because the original owner forgot to disable activation lock, you should be chasing them to unlock it for you. If they refuse, your remedy is to get a full refund.
edit: reputable recycling places require you to have disabled activation lock on functional devices, or they don't pay out.
The device was old enough that I just heaved a sigh and gave it to Apple for recycling.
> What if I use two-factor authentication on a device running older software?
> If you use two-factor authentication with devices running older OS versions – such as an Apple TV (2nd or 3rd generation) – you may be asked to add your six-digit verification code to the end of your password when signing in. Get your verification code from a trusted device running iOS 9 and later or OS X El Capitan and later, or have it sent to your trusted phone number. Then type your password followed by the six-digit verification code directly into the password field.
I mean, you bought stolen goods. The law says you are culpable to some degree. If this was a legit sale, the original owner would be willing to do what's needed to make it useable.
Apologies if this sounds like victim blaming, it's not what I'm going for. Just trying to enlighten on how to avoid this in the future.
Scissors or a hand plane are decent "heirloom" items. Potentially you can retire with the same one you started with, or pass them down.
Electric drills start to lean toward consumable. Battery tech changes over the years and they do wear out in non-fixable ways.
Screen and computer tech advances so fast that 5 years is a "good" lifespan, and 10 years is exceptional.
So a 4k investment in scissors is a lifetime investment, while a 5k screen may be more like "1k / year for good monitor as a service" (plus 2k off your next refresh).
I think it can still make sense, but very often when people buy the premium in computers or displays they are getting the same thing everyone else gets 30-50% cheaper 1 year later.