Do you realize you have 100x the processor capbilities built in your phone ....

[OAITW r.2.0]

then the astronuats who landed on the moon in 1972? What a wonderously amazing and dangerous thing to possess.

[ret5hd]

1. Who knew cat videos and wordle were such...

technological marvels!

[Botany]

2. That is one small step for man but a giant leap for DU.

N/T

[regnaD kciN]

18. I was going to say "...a giant leap for cat memes."

[elleng]

3. Not in MY phone!!!

It's DUMB!

[BlueCheeseAgain]

4. A lot more computer power...

A lot less rocket power.

[OAITW r.2.0]

5. LOL

[unc70]

6. Not just on the moon, but everywhere

A modern iPhone has probably more power than all the NASA related computers in 1969 combined.

[OAITW r.2.0]

7. I was overly conservative on my computing power comparison.

More like 10,000 X.

[DavidDvorkin]

8. Never mind your phone. You have more computer power in your watch

than the Apollo onboard computers had.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. These kids today have it so easy

Why, when I was a boy aerospace engineer, we had to carve the rockets out of stone and chew trees to make pulp to form into punch cards.

[Thomas Hurt]

13. You didn't even have a slide rule?

[DavidDvorkin]

17. I had one that I kept in a drawer but never used

I built it from pieces of bark. Its accuracy left much to be desired.

[Retrograde]

10. In the mid 1990s

I bought a sewing machine that had more computing power than the Apollo astronauts had. Still runs fine. My newest machine has even more computing power - and WiFi capability!

[OAITW r.2.0]

11. Seriously, how does wifi connectivity enhance your sewing capabilities?

Interested in how that changes the sewing experience.

[jmowreader]

14. It's probably an embroidery machine

If it is, some of the new ones let you design on your computer and transfer stitch files to the sewing machine head over wi-fi.

[OAITW r.2.0]

16. Of course, that makes sense.

programable sewing machines.

[jmowreader]

21. Oh man, you have no idea

They’ve got sewing machines that can embroider a picture of Trump banging his tin cup against the bars of his cell if you have a picture like that. And if you REALLY want to get fancy you can get multineedle machines that’ll let you load many colors of thread: black and white for his striped uniform, orange for his face, pink for his underwear, yellow for his hair, light gray for his tin cup and dark gray for the bars. When you push go it’ll stitch them one right after the other.

[OAITW r.2.0]

23. I'm actually thinking about starting a businees on custom embroided denim shirts.

light blue and dark blue, plus red, yellow, and green. Black Pearl snaps on the lights and white on the darks. Plus embroidery logos /designs.

[jmowreader]

39. I've thought about that too, just different garments

What holds me back: do I really want to gamble $15,000 on an embroidery machine?

[MyOwnPeace]

33. "a picture of Trump banging his tin cup against the bars of his cell"

I KNOW Grandma would have done THAT one and had it hanging in the parlor!

[3Hotdogs]

12. How else, we gonna play Angry Birds?

[Happy Hoosier]

15. 100? Oh, it's way more than that! NT

[jmowreader]

19. And do you realize...

Ninety-nine percent of that capability is used for driving the interface and playing videos just like this one:

https://m.

Where this comparison falls apart is relative functionality. iPhones generally don’t have peripherals. A Saturn V rocket is 363 feet of them. It’s quite amazing what they were able to accomplish with the Apollo Guidance Computer…it had 11 machine language instructions, it was created before the microprocessor was invented, and it still got 33 people into outer space and put 24 of them within proximity of, if not on, the moon.

[OAITW r.2.0]

20. Only 11 machine language instructions?

But there must have been a lot of "if this than that" branches.

[jmowreader]

22. Not too many because you only have 2048 words of RAM

[Gore1FL]

25. The processing power, however, is what it is.

The iPhone was not designed to land a space ship. The components and related technology would be superior to those that did should someone decide to use them for such a purpose.

[SalamanderSleeps]

28. And do you realize...

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

[Gore1FL]

24. It takes less energy to power up than Apollo 13's computer.

Think about all of the heroic efforts to bring that up when now it would be pressing 2 buttons and waiting for the apple to appear.

[OAITW r.2.0]

29. Lithium Ion batteries, a solar cell wrap and a PC.. Pretty much good to go.

Last edited Mon Sep 19, 2022, 02:16 AM - Edit history (1)

Can you imagine having this tech in '69?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

26. You can have my sliderule when you can pry it from my cold, dead hand.

[SalamanderSleeps]

27. They got to the Moon with 64k computer the size of a microwave oven that just 4 years before was....

....the size of a refrigerator.

Amazing the things that can get done when you take 250,000+ really smart folks and point them in a good direction.

[Lunabell]

30. It's almost a tricorder.

Getting there, anyways.

[pecosbob]

31. God, I hope so...my phone is freaking stupid

My desktop is another issue altogether...probably smarter than I am.

[Demovictory9]

32. More processing power than my first computer ..a 286 or 386..something like that

At work..to say " my computer is a 486" gave you status. Lol

[EYESORE 9001]

34. A bit later, any mention of Pentium

was accompanied by a disembodied, angelic choir and the brilliance of heavenly light.

[Demovictory9]

41. Then pentium 2. Lol

[jmowreader]

40. You bring back bad memories

I was on leave from the Field Station when the public library my mother ran was buying its first computer. The grant they were given was to implement a computerized card catalog called LaserCat, which (don’t laugh) required a PC with three CD-ROM drives. This was for interlibrary loans, which are critical in Idaho. The grantor had given them enough money to buy a 386 tower. Naturally my mom, being the cheapest person on the face of the fucking planet, didn’t want to spend the money.

Side note: on the day she died, we went to the funeral home to set up her cremation. The counselor we had - a very nice and quite attractive young lady - started showing us all these pretty urns they offer. I spoke up: “Ma’am, you can stop now. We want the cheapest fucking urn you can get your hands on even if it’s a corn flakes box. She would have wanted it that way.” My two sisters just broke out laughing and we started telling this lady stories of what an absolute skinflint my mother was. Fortunately for us, the cheapest fucking urn they could get their hands on was this little black enameled wooden box which actually looks okay and not a corn flakes box. This is the urn the state uses on indigents who die in prison; she’d never had anyone voluntarily ask for one in the three years she’d been in the bereavement industry.

Okay. So back to the computer. I told her the best thing she could do for the library was to spend the entire grant on the heaviest duty computer the money can buy. Oh no, she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Any excess funds had to be returned so I’m like, “They want you to buy a good computer. They told you what computer they wanted. It isn’t your money and they want you to spend it. If you buy the cheapest machine you’ll need to replace it in a year out of the library’s money.” Her response was to tell me not to recommend a machine like the Army uses, which brought forth a “there aren’t enough zeroes in this grant for that” response from me.

So, she bought a 12MHz 286 and…it turned out I was wrong - they had to replace it in five months when the next update needed a 386.

[Johnny2X2X]

35. It's actually 100,000 times

https://psmag.com/social-justice/ground-control-to-major-tim-cook

[harumph]

36. Many of us drive vehicles rated at over 200 Horsepower.

Imagine that. 200 horses.

[llmart]

37. You know what you could use your phone for right now?

To look up what year they landed on the moon.

[cbdo2007]

38. Believe it or not the Roman Empire took over half the world with no technology at all.

They didn't even have automobiles or telescopes.