Look up the Osborne 1, the first "portable" (i.e. luggable) computer. They went out of business not only because they lost money on each unit, but because of how many they sold. Then they pre-announced their next model, which killed all demand for the existing one, and they were toast.

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ssl-3 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a fascinating story, but is it really related?

IIRC, they were making decent-enough profits with the Osborne 1 at the beginning. It was never intended to be a loss-leader.

It was only after the Osborne 2 was announced (way too early) that existing orders got cancelled, and inventory was sold at fire-sale prices in sheer desperation to generate any value from the well they'd accidentally poisoned.

(For those who don't know, the company imploded before the Osborne 2 was finished.)

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yabutlivnWoods 8 hours ago | parent [-]

IMO Yes it is related. Anthropic and OAI, etc, announced "AGI" and "super intelligence" way too early.

Before the SaaS model teams can release Grand Opus and Really-This-Time-It's-AGI-Promise! GPT, local models and optimized hardware will obsolete them.

The lag from design of manufacturing adjustments needed to shipped hardware is 6-7 years. Still 3-5 more years for first gen hardware influenced by the post-GPT launch era. Right now we're just getting the early tweaks as models keep developing, providing feedback in a sense to where to take hardware.

Everyone will not see it coming as they fetishize every little thing to do with the circus intentionally erected around OAI and company to keep them relevant. We’ll have another All You Need Is Attention and ChatGPT release moment and SaaS models are hosed.

It's orders of magnitude more difficult than the era of the Osborne 2 so the timelines are longer but from inside the hardware industry, can say that is indeed the goal.

	▲	ssl-3 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> IMO Yes it is related. Anthropic and OAI, etc, announced "AGI" and "super intelligence" way too early. So this announcement is causing people to cancel orders of the existing product, and for OpenAI to sell products at a loss?