Comment by jmull
20 hours ago
AI Doomer: AI is going to rise up and destroy humanity!
AI Optimist: AI is going usher in an era of unparalleled productivity and achievement
The reality: RAM/Chip prices are way, way up. The starter iPad mini is $700.
20 hours ago
AI Doomer: AI is going to rise up and destroy humanity!
AI Optimist: AI is going usher in an era of unparalleled productivity and achievement
The reality: RAM/Chip prices are way, way up. The starter iPad mini is $700.
The cheapest configuration of the original model was $329 in 2012 [0]. Even when corrected for inflation, that would still be less than $500 in today's money -- so quite a bit less than $700!
Is the comparison unfair because today's model is much more powerful than the one from 14 years ago? Perhaps. But perhaps it shouldn't be compared to the past, but to its relative competitors?
[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2012/10/23Apple-Introduces-iP...
In 2012, that iPad mini ran YouTube videos at the same resolution as today but without ads!
…progress?
Oh I long for the days when every 2 years prices for compute FELL.
On the plus side, devices are designed to last longer, be more repairable and be updated for longer than they were in 2012.
The upfront cost of a device is less important than the total cost of ownership, which highly depends on the lifespan of the device. An ipad that lasts 2.5 years needs to be half the price of one that lasts 5 years.
Not really unfair, as the basic use case is still the same for either model.
A toilet from a hundred years ago in the same product tier serves the same function as one today. Old models were also more expensive when adjusted for inflation, but today's toilets can tackle more turds with less water.
The alternative approach leads to those "costs have dropped by 7 orders of magnitude in the last 50 years" style of deceptive graphs popular among people with an agenda to insist AI memory price inflation isn't a real problem.
[dead]
> RAM/Chip prices are way, way up
So that cloud providers can have servers and GPUs sitting unpowered in warehouses and datacenters.
Right. The prices are up for Nvidia’s benefit (and Micron, Sandisk by extension).
I know it’s now a trope to say “an incoming Democratic Congress should…” but there are really serious questions to ask about the means by which Nvidia is securing such a radically high value buy-and-hold strategy, and whether it amounts to deceptive channel stuffing.
The whole tech industry is using apparent demand for Blackwell GPUs as a proxy for AI demand, when this is a wholly broken metric because Nvidia seems to be gaming it, and everyone (consumer and business alike) is paying more as a result.
The whole supply demand spherical cow model of capitalism really breaks down when suppliers decide they'd collectively use their cartel to not engage in demand and instead gouge prices.
It doesn't, capitalism is the free association without coercsion. When the government can mandate that you cannot sell certain GPUs to customers in specific areas or that your model is too scary and you must shut it down and can give or take government contracts that are work hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and the federal reserve will bail out the banks If they make mistakes, you have a crony capitalist environment that has very little to do with the free market.
How does AI explain the mini being $250 more expensive than the regular 11-inch iPad?
> How does AI explain
The iPad mini is not a mini version of the base model iPad. It's more or less a scaled down iPad Air.
Sure, but that tells you that the upgraded specs and pricing is a conscious decision made by Apple, not something forced by AI. Making an entry-level small screen equivalent of the 11-inch iPad is always an option. They’re choosing not to take it.
1 reply →
When did Apple last refresh that? (not a rhetorical question sorry!)
It got a price bump 3 months ago.
> The reality: RAM/Chip prices are way, way up. The starter iPad mini is $700.
This has tiny 128 GB of storage and unknown but obviously not too high amount of RAM. At best 16, but probably less.
That's just Apple beeing greedy as usual.
Apple was "greedy" before too and were able to sell it cheaper. So obviously they're being impacted by increased storage/memory/whatever prices.
More like they were not able to find a pretext to sell it for more.
I can open my local store and will see shitty 8/128 Android tablets for less than 150 euro. If memorypocalypse was the main reason for pricing new ipad mini as it is, the budget tablet segment would be completely dead because manufacturers just wouldn't be able to afford memory at all.
1 reply →