>Apple sold the the base model M1 Macbook Air through Walmart for $600 between when they stopped selling it directly up to early this year.
I took advantage of this after the fact. I bought a pristine open box M1 from VIPoutlet (Walmart's closeout brand, as I understand it) on Walmart last month for ~$350 as a backup computer.[1] The Neo reinforced the wisdom of my purchase, as M1 has slightly better specs for less money.
[1] If the M4 Pro MacBook I am typing this on needs repair, I will use the M1 with a bootable clone of the M4's drive made with SuperDuper!.
> We spent our entire days in SuperCalc 3 and dBase III, and some of the fancier staff actually got to use 1-2-3. I think we used both because 1-2-3 had copy protection and SuperCalc didn't? But 1-2-3 was clearly better.
At that time I don't think I was using either spreadsheet program at a level where I would have needed advanced features. I remember using both, and looking now at old screenshots of the splash screens, I think we did eventually upgrade to SuperCalc 4, probably because of better 1-2-3 compatibility.
There was a "red carpet area" in the office where the high-ups worked, and I remember they all used 1-2-3 and we had to support them sometimes... But we pions were using SuperCalc. More than that I don't remember, it's just been too long.
This shortage in 2026 is more consequential across the board and impacts consumer electronics as a whole and the fact it's going to last years means that many low cost manufacturers are going to close up shop because they won't be profitable.
I'm pretty sure there were more DRAM manufacturers back then, and spinning up a new fab probably didn't require as much know-how, capital or even time.
Ditto. Though, I fixed my M1. I have an M4 max for work; the nano screen is a win. The perf is better, but it's really marginal unless actually doing stuff with the GPU, then it's super slow compared to a decent GPU anyway (i.e. h100, gb etc)
Relevant: TIL that ATMs are robbed with explosives. Criminals fill machines with propane or acetylene then ignite the gas, or use external bombs. Germany (where 60% of attacks succeed) is Europe's #1 target; landlords don't like to lease to banks with ATMs, because blowing them up endangers other tenants. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1im37e4/til_t...>
>By 1993, PC games required much more memory than other software, often consuming all of conventional memory, while device drivers could go into upper memory with DOS memory managers. Players found modifying `CONFIG.SYS` and `AUTOEXEC.BAT` files for memory management cumbersome and confusing, and each game needed a different configuration. (The game Les Manley in: Lost in L.A. satirizes this by depicting two beautiful women exhaust the hero in bed, by requesting that he again explain the difference between extended and expanded memory.)
I took advantage of this after the fact. I bought a pristine open box M1 from VIPoutlet (Walmart's closeout brand, as I understand it) on Walmart last month for ~$350 as a backup computer.[1] The Neo reinforced the wisdom of my purchase, as M1 has slightly better specs for less money.
[1] If the M4 Pro MacBook I am typing this on needs repair, I will use the M1 with a bootable clone of the M4's drive made with SuperDuper!.
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