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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

An 4K Apple ][ cost the equivalent of around $7K when released. A C64 cost the equivalent of around $2K when released. Both were fairly popular and vastly less useful than a computer today.

If the cheapest useful computer ends up costing $3K, it will still be purchased and will still be worth it at around $1/day of useful life.

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The C64 sold "between 12.5 and 17 million units" in its lifetime [0], vs. worldwide PC shipments of "71.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2025." (emphasis mine) [1] It's truly an apples (hehe) to oranges comparison, and in my opinion it only reinforces the point that "normal people" will no longer be able to purchase computers, just like the C64 was not a mainstream product.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160306232450/http://www.pageta... [1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-1-20...

> "normal people" will no longer be able to purchase computers,

Starbucks' revenue was almost $10B in the last quarter. Most people can clearly afford $1/day for something as useful as a computer.

That seems like a false equivalence to me, even if we ignore the fact that only 21% of that revenue came from non-US countries. There are enormous chunks of the world where the local equivalent of $1500 is a life-changing amount of money.

How do you not understand the difference between spending $5 once or twice a week and having to cough up $3k all at once.. or paying 20-30% interest if they can't afford to pay that.

It's extremely obvious from your flippant attitude that you are doing quite well financially and are completely out of touch with the financial realities of the vast majority of people. Congratulations on your financial success, but maybe lay off on thinking that everyone else can afford the luxuries that you can.

"Normal people" were not purchasing Apple II or C64 computers in the 70s and 80s.

What you're showing me is that you are completely out of touch with the financial realities the vast majority of people face.

There is a reason that the Macbook Neo has been a smashing success.

If the cheapest useful computer ends up costing $3k, then most people will simply no longer own a computer whenever their current computer dies unless their livelihood depends upon it, which for most people it does not.

It was nice, in the 90s and 00s when computing hardware's cost was just falling so rapidly. I think it was like what, 1.5x "stuff" each year? Like RAM going 1.5x bigger every 12 months, CPU frequencies increased by that much. Per-unit prices were falling.

Now, per unit costs is rising faster than inflation. The WD HDD I bought in 2017 for $65 real ($49 nominal) is now $95 real, 50% more expensive after inflation.

Trust me when I say my income has not increased by 50% post-inflation since then! (Also … I really should not have checked that number. Needless to say, it's not positive.)

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