“We want it to really confuse people, but also really make people happy”

Waterluvian•about 1 hour ago

Playdate feels like a Louis Vuitton bag in that you buy it not because you need a bag but because you want a fancy luxury good that feels good for you to own. I’m not criticizing it, though. I celebrate that we have options. When I got my kid a Scratch + JS game dev handheld I found a dozen options with varying pros and cons.

But the petty, small part of me has this itch where I’m unnecessarily concerned that Playdate might actually believe it’s not just a Louis Vuitton bag and that it actually is a sensibly practical purchase. I think I’m sensitive to the desire for things to be honest about what they are.

jonathanlydall•20 minutes ago

From a purely utilitarian point of view, the price of a Louis Vuitton bag is unjustifiable.

But from a social signalling perspective the price makes sense, it’s a way to show that you have lots of money.

Anyone who would need to “save up” to buy such an overpriced item (even if it’s “pretty”) is merely trying to fake being in the “I’m very rich club” which if they aren’t really, they could probably do with spending their money a bit more wisely.

For a Playdate, the cost is high for what it does, probably because it doesn’t have economy of scale compared to more popular hardware, but it’s still at a price point that’s affordable to an average professional, compared to a Louis Vuitton bag which is not.

Waterluvian•17 minutes ago

But isn’t the scale not really relevant? There’s entire classes of luxury that are exactly the same thing to people who can own an LV bag. Saving up to buy a faberge helicopter or whatever it is.

I’m not fully sure how to articulate the thought. But it’s that looking at specific instance details distract from looking at the pattern in the abstract. Or that the first order costs don’t really tell the story. It’s the second order: percent markup for practical vs. prestige that tells a story.

steveBK123•about 1 hour ago

There's a big difference in level of Veblen between a silly $200 gadget and a $3k handbag.

FLeXMurphy•about 1 hour ago

To whom?

johnnyanmac•44 minutes ago

well the signals are completely reversed. A playdate is $230. a PS5 is what? $600 dollars now? Playdate games range from $5-20 (and most will usually fall around $10), your typical console game will be $30-80+, before including expansion packs.

A louis Vitton bag is partially a "I'm rich with good taste" signal. Is a Playdate supposed to be an "I'm poor but have good taste" signal?

righthand•about 1 hour ago

The same could be said for an Apple laptop.

xyzzy_plugh•about 1 hour ago

This line in the closing epilogue really resonates with me:

> It’s one thing to revisit those old machines just to relive your own years of (likely imagined) glory, but yet another to see people see them as inspiration: to encounter computers that were simpler, unencumbered, unenshittified, and with software you could understand, remix, and own.

I feel as though we have strayed so far from this in modern times and yet it seems to be beyond nostalgia, but firming up to actually be ideal. The idea that your personal computing experience is truly malleable.

We're at a crossroads and where we end up a few years from now, either a personal computing dystopia or utopia, is really up in the air.

We're long overdue for an explosion of new forms of truly liberated personal computing.

lukan•about 1 hour ago

"I feel as though we have strayed so far from this in modern times"

I don't know, some years ago I just accepted the system level UI problem's as they are and at most made a suggestion somewhere - and now I can just point claude towards it and achieve more or less exactly what I want that same day. So I am closer to a system that is personalised to my needs.

steveBK123•about 1 hour ago

The Big AI Lab LLM Industrial Complex does seem a pull back to the era of thin clients & thick servers. You will own nothing.

“We want it to really confuse people, but also really make people happy”

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