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| Early adopters of the first Apple had to pay $666 |
Paul Terrell, the founder of The Byte Shop - one of the very first computer stores on the planet - give Steve Jobs a purchase order in 1976 for 50 Apple-1 units at the price of US$666. It had a 1.0 Mhz Motorola MOS 6502 CPU, 4k RAM, composite video output at 280 x 192 resolution, and interfaces for keyboard and cassette storage.
Today the Raspberry Pi is available from Sim Lim Tower at S$55. It is a credit card sized computer with an ARM1176JZFS CPU running at 700Mhz, a Videocore 4 GPU capable of 1080p video playback, 512 MB RAM, USB and Ethernet ports, and SD card slot for storage and OS.
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| single-board computer developed in the UK by Raspberry Pi Foundation |
Innovation and productivity makes it possible to be cheaper, faster and better.
According to one account, Lee Kuan Yew's salary in 1970 was $42,000 a year. Today a full minister like Grace Fu is drawing about $935,000 (her new pay grade after Gerald Ee's Ministerial Salary Review Committee recommended 37% pay cuts in 2012). To avoid embarrassing Barack Obama, courtesy demands that Lee Hsien Loong's remuneration will not be quoted.
Today, everything (houses, cars, education, health care) is more expensive, slower (queue for a flat, wait for a bus, appointment for a medical appointment) and worse off (over crowding, dilution of nation core, cost of living).
Asked by Lally Weymouth of The Washington Post to comment on the key issues for Singapore, Lee said, "We have to negotiate a major change in our phase of development, from a rapidly changing phase to slower growth" because, "we can’t just expand our workforce without limit and constraint." He also said, "Previously, everything was orderly and predictable. Now there are many more voices, views and interests . . . ", an indirect jibe at the inroads made by social media in highlighting the many instances of misgovernance. Surely one can't blame social media for the 30.6 % plunge in non-oil exports reported today. So why are things not "Cheaper, Better, Faster (CBF)" as promised by labour chief Lim Swee Say in October 2009? It's not just the failings of innovation and productivity, the key is what Lee also said, "For a long time, we fought in principle against casinos. Finally, we were persuaded it’s big business..." When you forsake principles, the endgame can only be desultory.