Cost of a computer over time.

[Warped9]

Around 2001 or so I bought an Indigo G3 iMac for about $1199 CAN + tax. In mid 2011 I bought a 21.5 iMac for about $1199 CAN + tax. Today a M1 iMac costs $1599 CAN.

Adjusting for inflation the 2001 iMac cost me about $1836 CAN in 2022 dollars.
Adjusting for inflation the 2011 iMac cost me about $1499 CAN in 2022 dollars.

Each subsequent computer was distinctly superior to the previous purchase. And each, adjusted for inflation, cost less than the previous purchase.

The current iMac is slightly more than the 2011 model, but it is not just distinctly better than the 2011 it is vastly better. The current baseline iMac’s performance is more comparable to a spec’d out 27in. Intel iMac which would have cost maybe about $4000 CAN. In that light the current iMac is a helluva lot cheaper.

This thinking was prompted by something a friend shared on Facebook.




Adjusted for inflation $5995 in 1977 is about $27,000 in 2022. Today’s $600-$900 laptop is like unimaginably advanced alien technology in comparison.

And people think computers today are expensive. 😆

 

[JPack]

Most people expect technology prices to fall with greater adoption and Moore's law.

Nobody says, "The first commercially available microwave oven cost over $60,000! I'm so lucky to pay $2,000 today!"

 

[ahurst]

I actually ran the data on this a while back in another thread, since I had a big dataset containing the specs and prices for each individual Mac SKU since 1984. Note that this doesn’t include the Mac Studio or M2 Air since they weren’t released yet when this was made:

Basically, Mac desktop prices have been pretty stable for the past 15 years, laptop prices have trended steadily downwards, and only Workstation Macs (the Mac Pro and iMac Pro in the modern era, PowerMacs and Quadras before that) have gotten increasingly pricey (presumably because it costs a lot more to differentiate “workstation” hardware from increasingly capable desktop hardware).

Most people expect technology prices to fall with greater adoption and Moore's law.

Nobody says, "The first commercially available microwave oven cost over $60,000! I'm so lucky to pay $2,000 today!"

I’m not sure a microwave is the best analogy, because a microwave from today isn’t several orders of magnitude more powerful than one from 20 years ago. You can get a computer as fast and capable as a 15/20 year old one for only 30-50$ (Raspberry Pi and similar), but that’s not what most people are after.

 

[Warped9]

Early computers were massive, almost room sized, nightmares that were unimaginatively expensive that required specialists to use and could do mostly only pretty simplistic functions. Today we have affordable powerful computers we can hold in our hands (smartphone and tablet) that practically no one back then could have envisioned.

Indeed modern computers, no matter the form, can do vastly more than most of their owners can imagine.

A key distinction is that early computers were relegated strictly to government and big business. The idea of personal computers was pure science fiction or futurist speculation until the 1980s and ‘90s.

My essential point is that mainstream computers today give you more power and capability for less cost than those which preceded them.

 

[mi7chy]

Storage and memory were ultra expensive back then. The equivalent competing S100 system, MITS Altair 8800, started at $439 plus accessories. My first computer was $1800 Apple IIe but there's no denying the Commodore 64 that started as low as $389 had better graphics and sound.

 

[Juicy Box]

I think the difference in pricing probably somewhat correlates with the year to year performance gains.

The year to year performance improvements were a lot better in the 90's and 2000's. During the early 2010's, about 2012-2013 for Macs, the year to year improvements slowed a lot.

Meaning, the higher inflation-adjusted price of the 90's and 2000's, consumers were getting a bigger "bang for the buck" for the new device compared to previous year's. As performance improvements slowed, the difference in price reflected the lack of performance improvements.

So, Moore's law.