> R&D was required not only to create initial versions, but also to increase scale.

Not to increase scale, but to reduce the cost of the device while maintaining 99% of the previous version, IOW, enshittification of the product.

> how would the affordable versions exist today?

Not all "affordability" comes from the producer of the said stuff. Many things are made from commodity materials, and producers of these commodity materials want to increase their profits, hence trying to produce "cheaper" versions of them, not for the customers, but for themselves.

Affordability comes from this cost reduction, again enshittification. Only a few companies I see produce lower priced versions of their past items which also surpasses them in functionality and quality.

e.g. I have Sony WH-CH510 wireless headphones, which has way higher resolution than some wired headphones paired with decent-ish amps, this is because Sony is an audiovisual company, and takes pride in what they do. On the other end of the spectrum is tons of other brands which doesn't sell for much cheaper, but get way worse sound quality and feature set, not because they can't do it as good as Sony, but want to get a small pie of the said market and earn some free money, basically.

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ryao 6 days ago | parent [-]

Can you honestly tell me that modern cellphones are worse than the original cell phones:

https://cdn.britannica.com/93/172793-050-33278C86/Cell-phone...

As for your wireless headphones, if you compare them to early wireless headphones, you should find that prices have decreased, while quality has increased.

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bayindirh 6 days ago | parent [-]

I used phones similar to this (a Nokia 2110 to be precise), BTW.

I can argue, from some aspects, yes. Given that you provide the infrastructure for these devices, they'll work exactly as they are designed today. On the other hand, a modern smartphone has a way shorter life span. OLED screens die, batteries, swell, electronics degrade.

Ni-Cad batteries, while being finicky and toxic, are much more longer lasting than Li-ion and Li-Poly batteries. If we want to talk Li-Poly batteries, my old Sony power bank (advertising 1000 recharge cycles with a proprietary Sony battery tech) is keeping its promise, capacity and shape 11 years after its stamped manufacturing date.

Can you give me an example of another battery/power pack which is built today and can continue operating for 11 years without degrading?

As electronics shrink, the number of atoms per gate decreases, and this also reduces the life of the things. My 35 y/o amplifier works pretty well, even today, but modern processors visibly degrade. A processor degrading to a limit of losing performance and stability was unthinkable a decade ago.

> you will find that prices have decreased, while quality has increased.

This is not primarily driven by the desire to create better products. First, cheaper and worse ones come, and somebody decides to use the design headroom to improve things later on, and put a way higher price tag.

Today, in most cases, speakers' quality has not improved, but the signal processed by DSP makes them appear sound better. This is cheaper, and OK for most people. IOW, enshittification, again. Psychoacoustics is what makes this possible, not better sounding drivers.

The last car I rented has a "sound focus mode" under its DSP settings. If you're the only one in the car, you can set it to focus to driver, and it "moves" the speakers around you. Otherwise, you select "everyone", and it "improves" sound stage. Digital (black) magic. In either case, that car does not sound better than my 25 year old car, made by the same manufacturer.

You want genuinely better sounding drivers, you'll pay top dollar in most cases.

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ryao 6 days ago | parent [-]

> Can you give me an example of another battery/power pack which is built today and can continue operating for 11 years without degrading?

I have LiFePo4 batteries from K2 Energy that will be 13 years old in a few months. They were designed as replacements for SLA batteries. Just the other day, I had put two of them into a UPS that needed a battery replacement. They had outlived the UPS units where I had them previously.

I have heard of Nickel Iron batteries around 100 years old that still work, although the only current modern manufacturers are in China. The last US manufacturer went out of business in 2023.

> You want genuinely better sounding drivers, you'll pay top dollar in most cases.

I do not doubt that, but if the signal processing improves things, I would consider that to be a quality improvement.

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bayindirh 6 days ago | parent [-]

> The last US manufacturer went out of business in 2023.

Interesting, but they are not manufactured more, but way less, as you can see. So, quality doesn't drive the market. Monies do.

> I do not doubt that, but if the signal processing improves things, I would consider that to be a quality improvement.

Depends on the "improvement" you are looking for. If you are a casual listener hunting for an enjoyable pair while at a run or gym, you can argue that's an improvement.

But if you're looking for resolution increases, they're not there. I occasionally put one of my favorite albums on, get a tea, and listen to that album for the sake of listening to it. It's sadly not possible on all gear I have. You don't need to pay $1MM, but you need to select the parts correctly. You still need a good class AB or an exceptional class D amplifier to get good sound from a good pair of speakers.

This "apparent" improvement which is not there drives me nuts actually. Yes, we're better from some aspects (you can get hooked to feeds instead of drugs and get the same harm for free), but don't get distracted, the aim is to make numbers and line go up.

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ryao 6 days ago | parent [-]

> Interesting, but they are not manufactured more, but way less, as you can see. So, quality doesn't drive the market. Monies do.

They were always really expensive, heavy and had low energy density (both by weight and by volume). Power density was lower than lead acid batteries. Furthermore, they would cause a hydrolysis reaction in their electrolyte, consuming water and producing a mix of oxygen and hydrogen gas, which could cause explosions if not properly vented. This required periodic addition of water to the electrolyte. They also had issues operating at lower temperatures.

They were only higher quality if you looked at longevity and nothing else. I had long thought about getting them for home energy storage, but I decided against them in favor of waiting for LiFePo4 based solutions to mature.

By the way, I did a bit more digging. It turns out that US production of NiFe batteries ended before 2023, as the company that was supposed to make them had outsourced production to China:

https://www.terravolt.net/iron-edison

	▲	bayindirh 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		> They were always really expensive, heavy and had low energy density (both by weight and by volume). Sorry, I misread your comment. I thought you were talking about LiFePo4 production ending in 2023, not NiFe. I know that NiFe batteries are not suitable (or possible to be precise) to be miniaturized. :) I still wish market does research on longevity as much as charge speed and capacity, but it seems companies are happy to have batteries with shorter and shorter life spans to keep up with their version of the razor and blades model. Also, this is why regulation is necessary in some areas.