

2000 iMac compared to the 2010 iPhone - jlangenauer
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1114049

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thunk
You even had to run unapproved software on the 2000 iMac! How far we've come.

~~~
henning
FruityLoops and Reason compete with Garage Band too closely, application
denied. Firefox competes with Safari, application delayed and then
withdrawn...

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superjohan
Yes, it is a damn shame that Apple imposes its crazy App Store rules on the
Mac as well.

(I get what you're trying to say, but that's hardly the point of the post)

~~~
superjohan
Downvotes? Uh, okay.

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modeless
Don't forget: GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, second microphone,
still/video camera, second still/video camera, flash/light, touchscreen,
proximity sensor, light sensor, and to top it all off an internal battery with
a minimum life of 6 hours.

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cstross
Apropos the prognostications about circa-2020 brain implants, when I was a
twenty-something, back in the mid-1980s, I read _Neuromancer_.

And I wanted to be the first guy on my block to have a cyberspace jack in his
skull.

Now I am middle-aged and cynical and slightly chewed-up by the dot-com 1.0
startup experience, I want to be the first guy on my block to have, for a
brain implant ... a firewall!

(One lesson I've drawn from 20 years of reading comp.risks is that the closer
we integrate software into our lives, the deadlier the consequences of
security exploits. Also? The exploit may be transient but the fallout from it
can potentially last for a lifetime.)

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adw
The guys behind it'll be the dealers. And given their record - basically-
irreversible Parkinsonism from one tainted shot of a designer drug
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPPP>, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP>),
_you first_.

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thought_alarm
1990: Mac LC

\- $2400

\- Mac OS System 6

\- Motorola 68020 @ 16 MHz

\- 40 MB Hard Drive

\- 2 to 10 MB RAM

\- 256 kB Graphics Memory

1980: Apple ///

\- $7800

\- Apple SOS

\- Synertec 6502A @ 2 MHz

\- 140 kB 5.25" floppy disk

\- 128 kB RAM

~~~
pvg
The Apple /// is a bit misleading - the typical entry-level Apple computer in
1980 was an Apple ][+, at about half the specs (memory and CPU performance)
and a cost of around $2k, with the monitor and floppy drive thrown in.

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petercooper
Taking another stride forward, your brain implant in 2020 will, then, be
faster than an i7, have 16GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and be able to re-render
the whole of Toy Story 3 in 10 minutes. Somehow, that doesn't even sound
surprising to me anymore.

~~~
martinkallstrom
Except that it will not be an implant because individual neurons in the brain
have an irritatingly low bandwidth of only a few bits per sec.

Instead it is much cheaper and hassle-free to use the firehose connection that
already exists into the brain: the eyes, for which even protocols for
communication are established. Screens in contact lenses are my bet on where
the future of computers are headed. That will with time largely remove the
need for physical objects that transfer information.

The interesting part is how Apple in 2020 will spin that they ten years
earlier named a display far to bulky to fit into your eye "Retina display".

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drx
It might be possible to connect the brain implant to the brain in a similar
way that the eyes are connected to it, thus creating an additional input
instead of using an existing one. Brains seem to have an uncanny ability to
adapt to new inputs.

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erikstarck
Mobile phones being roughly ten years after PCs which in turn are roughly ten
years after supercomputers has been a fairly consistent pattern for quite some
time. At least for the decade I've been working with mobile phones.

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InfinityX0
Hopefully in 2010 we can do this comparison with our physiological selves and
be amazed - the technology leaps don't even wow me anymore.

You can call me spoiled.

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zavulon
Very soon we won't need computers at all, just chips implanted in our skulls.

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barmstrong
Ray Kurzweil was right!

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borism
perhaps you meant Gordon Moore?

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borism
_Crazy to think my $200 phone is now more powerful than my $1200 desktop Mac
was only ten years ago._

same old fallacy again. iPhone total cost is much more than $1200.

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derefr
Your statement is more fallacious: the iPod Touch has the same hardware, but a
TCO exactly equivalent to its retail price. Similarly, you could buy an
unlocked iPhone and then just turn off the 3G radio. It would still be
strictly _more powerful_.

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cabacon
To pick nits, the iPod touch lacks the camera and GPS. An unlocked iPhone is
more expensive than a locked iPhone. None of that makes the grandparent post
correct, but it does bear pointing out that your alternatives are either
inferior or cost more than $200.

