Innovation or e-waste? Apple rumored to ditch headphone jack

[Apache]

Originally Posted by shalym

...except that cars from 9 years ago are still drivable with no issues at all--can you still use an original iPhone?

Shari

Cars from the '70s and earlier very rarely lasted 100,000 miles with having to rebuild the engines. Now it is nothing to get triple that without any major repairs.
Apache

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by ApK

It's very good. A must-read if you're a geek child of the '80s.
I recommend the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.
If for no other reason,

Spoiler:

it was fun to hear Wil Wheaton talk about Wil Wheaton when he's mentioned briefly in the story.

...

On my TBR list too, though I'd planned to go dead-tree on that one.

Now I'm reconsidering...

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by ApK

A couple quick comments following the slightly off-top tangents:
1. My car is a 2002 model. It's a approaching 200,000 miles, and I hope to keep it going as long as possible. Lately the trend seems to be encouraging people to buy new cars for reasons of financing, fashion, features, or fuel economy, not by artificially rendering previous models obsolete. That's fine.

2. Light bulbs: My biggest fear about the new, wonderful push toward LED lighting, is that, while the LEDs will last 10s or 100s of thousands of hours, manufactures will make the driver components and internal connections as cheaply as possible, ensuring that they fail long before the LEDs would, thereby undoing the best thing to happen to lighting since Edison.

We also drive a 2002 car. My hope is it will last until we no longer need to buy a car but Uber-like self-driving electric cars put an end to the automotive industry as we know it, and car ownership is a thing of the past.
As for electronics, I'm using a 10 year old Toshiba laptop to manage my ebooks. A 9 year old Dell desktop for printing. Both had upgrade-able ram and allowed for installing another operating system (Linux). The Cloud does much of the heavy computer lifting now, so if you have a working browser you are pretty much set except for a few specialty fields and for computer gamers. We don't need new tablets because 2-3 year old tablets still work fine. Phones could enter that same category of longer-life, not as long as a car, but cloud computing can and will make it possible, only if they are not made to where you cannot replace batteries or otherwise tweak the devices.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Apache

Cars from the '70s and earlier very rarely lasted 100,000 miles with having to rebuild the engines. Now it is nothing to get triple that without any major repairs.
Apache

Some laptops and desktops are now lasting far beyond what that class of machines lifespan used to be.

Perhaps cellular devices will follow the same trajectory.

[tubemonkey]

I have a Samsung flip-phone nearly 5 years old. It still works great, so I have no reason to upgrade it.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by ApK

It's very good. A must-read if you're a geek child of the '80s.
I recommend the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.
If for no other reason,

Spoiler:

it was fun to hear Wil Wheaton talk about Wil Wheaton when he's mentioned briefly in the story.

...

I can get that audiobook through Overdrive. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Shane R]

I loathe the disposable culture thats common today, but I save my wrath for shoddily made shoes, clothing, homes and home accessories. And books. Books with thin enough to be translucent paper pages bring out the volcano in me.

Electronics are a fun trifle.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I have a Samsung flip-phone nearly 5 years old. It still works great, so I have no reason to upgrade it.

My aunt is still using the Tracphone flip phone that we bought her in 2007. She called me from it just the other day. She only uses it for long distance calls and emergencies, and we (her nieces, nephews, and kids) add minutes as needed.

Shari

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by Shane R

I loathe the disposable culture thats common today, but I save my wrath for shoddily made shoes, clothing, homes and home accessories. And books. Books with thin enough to be translucent paper pages bring out the volcano in me.

Electronics are a fun trifle.

Print books really dropped in quality over the past two decades.
My wife was complaining yesterday that her shoes were falling apart. I told her to get rid of her 100 pair of crappy shoes and just buy 3-4 quality made shoes. Yeah, that will happen

[dickloraine]

I'm not into smartphones, but isn't the biggest factor for replacing them the 2 years phone contracts? And the hiding of the prices by monthly fees and that the phone companies make special deals for devices, if you choose a contract. Few people actually pay 600€ cash to buy a iphone. They get it with the contract and 20€ more a month.

[Katsunami]

I want to go back to the time where there was only one (1, as in 'not multiple') copies per book. Then you'd actually have to spend some effort to read THAT particular book, like traveling to another country, and because of it, you would be careful not to read crap.

Or.... maybe not

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

I'm not into smartphones, but isn't the biggest factor for replacing them the 2 years phone contracts? And the hiding of the prices by monthly fees and that the phone companies make special deals for devices, if you choose a contract. Few people actually pay 600€ cash to buy a iphone. They get it with the contract and 20€ more a month.

I pay up front. I had my iPhone 4 for over 5 years, and expect to keep my iPhone 6 for a similar length of time. I've always believed in buying high-quality kit and keeping it for a long time.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I pay up front. I had my iPhone 4 for over 5 years, and expect to keep my iPhone 6 for a similar length of time. I've always believed in buying high-quality kit and keeping it for a long time.

Same here. When I was even younger than I'm now, I'd upgrade my computer every two years. Now it's just a hassle, re-installing and setting up applications, and so on... so I buy a monster computer/laptop, and then keep it for 7+ years. The only upgrade could be to stick some more memory in it. I've thought about retiring this desktop I'm on now, but as my new laptop is down (broken SSD, awaiting replacement), I have decided to just keep the thing updated and current as a fallback. It has only 35% of the speed and half of the RAM of the new laptop, but in the end, it CAN do the same stuff.

It's not in the way under the desk, and the monitor, keyboard and mouse are in use with the laptop's docking station.

And my phone? I buy a high-end one, and then use it until it either breaks or at some point can't do something I want to do.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I had my iPhone 4 for over 5 years

I've always believed in buying high-quality kit and keeping it for a long time.

Trying to give the posters in this thread a heart attack?

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Same here. When I was even younger than I'm now, I'd upgrade my computer every two years. Now it's just a hassle, re-installing and setting up applications, and so on... so I buy a monster computer/laptop, and then keep it for 7+ years. The only upgrade could be to stick some more memory in it. I've thought about retiring this desktop I'm on now, but as my new laptop is down (broken SSD, awaiting replacement), I have decided to just keep the thing updated and current as a fallback. It has only 35% of the speed and half of the RAM of the new laptop, but in the end, it CAN do the same stuff.

It's not in the way under the desk, and the monitor, keyboard and mouse are in use with the laptop's docking station.

And my phone? I buy a high-end one, and then use it until it either breaks or at some point can't do something I want to do.

I think I may be done with laptops. Just one desktop with a huge monitor that will rarely get used - and a tablet.