The end of owned hardware. In the glorious future, you will rent your hardware and you will like it.

We're already in a shortage (of RAM). Price increases should be a motivator to increase production. This is the system working.

More like a global economic depression

We're in a pretty big bubble predicated on the idea that AI is going to have a lot more value than it actually will. Not that it's not going to be useful, it just isn't going to be the incredible force multiplier the market thinks it is. This speculation, gas prices, tariffs, etc. are going to result in a 2009-ish bubble pop I'm guessing which will be triggered by particularly bad private credit default news (perhaps a sizable bank failing?) and or some major news triggering the reevaluation of the AI hype poking at some systemic banking issue or another.

When will then become now?

https://youtu.be/nRGCZh5A8T4?t=73

sometime in the past

Have things gotten this much more expensive at the same time that massive datacenters are harmonically distorting power delivery [0] to the point that it degrades the lifetime of your existing devices?

The AI datacenters are making things more expensive and at the same time destroying existing electronics. All this is happening at the same time that the major OS vendors are locking down their operating systems and creating device attestation frameworks.

Whether it is a coordinated effort behind the scenes is irrelevant, the real outcome of all of this is that the average home tech prosumer will not be able to afford to maintain personal hardware that remains compatible with mainstream services.

In light of the consumer market RAM shortages, all the consumer devices will transition to thin client architectures that offload all their real compute to the centralized cloud. You will not be allowed to modify these devices, and there will be nothing you can modify them to do. They will have no ports, using wireless charging and wireless connectivity, and likely even any UART will be left off the board, if you can get them open at all. Like the Apple Watch or Airpods, they will not be built to be openable, and opening them will be an irreversibly destructive act.

You will not be able to buy these devices, they will only be available on a subscription basis. You will own nothing and be told you should be happy.

Online major digital services will only be compatible with these devices, offering no endpoints for third party devices to connect.

[0]: https://archive.ph/f707o

8x more expensive? I doubt things have ever gotten anywhere remotely near this crazy this bought out this not for sale this fast.

I don't want an apple blob I want to pick specific components and run linux

They wouldn't blink twice pushing everyone into iPhone, iPad and watches.

The death of Mac was already a discussion topic a few years ago, they only need do XCode on iPadOS or iCloud, Android Studio style.

Trillion dollar companies like Apple will still be able to get their hands on whatever they need, albeit at worse prices. Individual consumers trying to buy those components directly probably won't.

You're acting like Apple wouldn't simply make hay in a world of thin client device subscriptions, where they can charge a subscription for the thin client device and the services that make it usable.

[dead]

Either the factories are gone or China controls them and takes most of the output for themselves. They've already been excluded from a good amount of the output!

Simple, they invade and TSMC blows up their factories. Or, the invasion is successful and they control the factories.

I didn't say it was likely, but one of these two outcomes is possible.

Wouldn't the rest of the world encourage ASML to keep supporting the fab because they want the chips to keep coming?

China is working hard on getting their own fabs. Then the have no need to keep TSMC operational.

They need regular chemical deliveries from japan as well.

If TSMC were to simply disappear, it would be a great day for Samsung/Intel but a godawful catastrophe for most HPC applications and consumer hardware. People aren't afraid of a fab takeover, they're afraid of TSMC disappearing altogether.

> China, who keeps undercutting ai prices (by training on model output) and producing things efficiently (with slave labor)?

Yeah, things are going great over there