Laptops Galore

Since 1991, laptop abundance has increased by a factor of six up to a factor of infinity.

In 1991 Apple introduced the PowerBook 100 priced at $2,500. Blue-collar hourly compensation at the time was $14.93, so the time price was around 168 hours. Today you can pick up a 13.3” MacBook Air for $999. With blue-collar hourly compensation around $36.50 today, the time price just over 27 hours. You get six MacBook Airs today for the time price of one PowerBook 100 in 1991.

The PowerBook 100 weighed 5.1 pounds and featured a 640 x 480 monochrome LED screen, 2 megabytes of memory, and 20 megabytes of storage. The battery was good for 3 hours. The MacBook Air has 13.3 times more pixels (in millions of colors), 4,000 times more memory and 12,800 times more storage, than the PowerBook 100. It weighs 45 percent less and the battery lasts 6 times longer. It has Wi-Fi, a 720p camera, stereo speakers and comes with 32 apps ranging from music programs to spreadsheets.

While it’s hard to make a direct comparison, a simple way to do an analysis is to ask MacBook Air users how many PowerBook 100s they would need to give up their one Air. Most users now think the PowerBook 100 now has negative value due to the disposal costs. That would make the MacBook Air infinitely more valuable. Thanks Apple.

We describe the process of transforming scarcities into abundances in our new book, Superabundance, available at Amazon. Jordan Peterson calls it a “profoundly optimistic book.” There has never been a better time to create more life.

Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress.