"The original retail price of the computer with 4 KiB of RAM was US$1,298 (equivalent to $6,900 in 2025)[21] and with the maximum 48 KiB of RAM, it was US$2,638 (equivalent to $14,020 in 2025)"
Don't worry. Sooner or later this stuff will be mandatory and you'll be obligated to get your state-issued terminal. Social credits will do, if you have no money.
For the skeptical ones: Somewhere people are already being cut off from state and financial institutions without proprietary software with bundled security certificates, applications are bound to collect data on the environment they are used in (other apps) and organizations deliberately limit access to their services or cripple them without their applications (can't do things from a generic web-browser).
Jeff Bezos will be happy to let you rent one from him. He's said this is how he envisions the future of personal computing. You will own nothing, and so on.
I believe you're just supposed to stream your video and audio up through your Meta Glasses.
Or lease a laptop from Apple if faceputer's aren't as much your style.
I'm sure some enterprising company will find a way sell you a computer subsidized by your data usage or maybe by forfeiting your first born
Time to go dig an Apple II out of the landfill
From the "Apple II (original)" Wikipedia article:
"The original retail price of the computer with 4 KiB of RAM was US$1,298 (equivalent to $6,900 in 2025)[21] and with the maximum 48 KiB of RAM, it was US$2,638 (equivalent to $14,020 in 2025)"
Don't worry. Sooner or later this stuff will be mandatory and you'll be obligated to get your state-issued terminal. Social credits will do, if you have no money.
For the skeptical ones: Somewhere people are already being cut off from state and financial institutions without proprietary software with bundled security certificates, applications are bound to collect data on the environment they are used in (other apps) and organizations deliberately limit access to their services or cripple them without their applications (can't do things from a generic web-browser).
> For the skeptical ones
The words after this point make you less convincing, not more, as they only serve to confirm the egregious slippery slope of your reasoning.
Do you call any negative prognosis based on extrapolation of an observable downward trend a slippery slope?
Yes and if it's true it's usually downvoted or flagged on HN
Jeff Bezos will be happy to let you rent one from him. He's said this is how he envisions the future of personal computing. You will own nothing, and so on.