I am 48 years old, which means I grew up during the greatest period of technological change in human history.

That may sound dramatic, but think about it.

When I was born, most families did not own a computer. By the time I was a teenager, some of us had one sitting in the house. By the time I became an adult, we were getting on the internet through a telephone line and listening to a modem make noises that sounded like two robots arguing inside a garbage disposal.

Today, I carry a computer in my pocket that can recognize my face, translate foreign languages, edit professional video, communicate with satellites, give me turn-by-turn directions, answer questions using artificial intelligence and store hundreds of thousands of photographs.

Most of those photographs are useless, of course.

I have approximately 40 pictures of the same fish, 70 screenshots I do not remember taking and enough accidental photographs of the inside of my pocket to host an abstract art exhibit.

But the power is there.

Apple's current iPhone 17 Pro Max contains an A19 Pro chip with a six-core CPU, six-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine. It can be ordered with as much as two terabytes of storage. Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy and includes dedicated hardware for artificial-intelligence processing.

Those specifications are impressive, but they do not mean much until you compare them with the computers we once considered incredible.

So let us forget about obscure government supercomputers that filled buildings.

Let us talk about the computers we actually remember.

The Apple II.

The Commodore 64.

The IBM PC.

The Tandy 1000.

The original Macintosh.

The brightly colored iMac.

These were the machines that introduced regular people to computers. They were expensive, exciting and, at the time, nearly unbelievable.

Today, the phone covered in fingerprints and sitting beside your truck keys makes most of them look like a calculator with a drinking problem.

A Few Things Before the Computer Nerds Attack

Comparing a modern phone with a 40-year-old computer is not completely straightforward.

Processor speed is not the whole story. A one-gigahertz processor is not automatically ten times as powerful as a 100-megahertz processor. Modern chips accomplish more work during every clock cycle, contain multiple processing cores and include separate hardware for graphics, photography, video and artificial intelligence.

Memory and storage are also different.

RAM is the temporary workspace a computer uses while it is operating. Storage is where it keeps programs, photographs, documents and the 11 versions of the same file you saved because you could not remember which one was final.

We will compare both when possible.

I am also including original prices and approximate prices adjusted for inflation into 2026 dollars. The inflation calculations use the Consumer Price Index, so treat them as useful estimates rather than numbers carved into stone tablets. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses CPI-U to compare changes in consumer purchasing power over time.

Now let us go back to the beginning.

The 1970s: The Apple II Brings the Computer Home

The Apple II — 1977

The Apple II was one of the first computers that looked like something a normal person might actually keep in the house.

That is using the term "normal person" loosely because anyone buying a home computer in 1977 was probably the kind of person who could explain electricity to you using words you did not understand.

The original Apple II used a MOS Technology 6502 processor running at approximately 1 megahertz. The entry model came with four kilobytes of RAM, although it could be configured with as much as 48 kilobytes. Programs and information could initially be saved to cassette tapes, and the computer could be connected to a television for its display.

Its starting price was $1,298 in 1977.

That equals approximately $7,150 in 2026 dollars.

And that was for the four-kilobyte version. The 48-kilobyte model cost $2,638, which would be roughly $14,500 today.

Four kilobytes of memory sounds like a typo now.

It is not.

A modern flagship Samsung phone generally has memory measured in gigabytes. One gigabyte contains more than one million kilobytes.

A phone with 12 gigabytes of RAM has roughly three million times as much working memory as the original four-kilobyte Apple II.

That does not mean the phone is exactly three million times faster. Computer performance does not work that neatly.

But the memory comparison is real.

The Apple II started with enough working memory to hold about four thousand characters of basic text. A modern phone can keep an operating system, several applications, high-resolution photographs, streaming video and artificial-intelligence tools operating at the same time.

The Apple II ran at roughly one megahertz.

Modern mobile processors operate in the gigahertz range and contain multiple processor cores. One gigahertz equals one thousand megahertz, but modern processors also perform far more work during each cycle.

The Apple II was an amazing machine.

It helped put personal computing on the map.

But your phone could store the contents of an enormous collection of Apple II computers and still have plenty of room left for videos of people falling off boats.

What Could the Apple II Do?

It could run educational software, play games, perform calculations and help businesses with early spreadsheet and database programs.

That was revolutionary.

Today, your phone can do all of that while simultaneously receiving a video call, tracking your location, playing music through your truck stereo and informing you that somebody has commented "prayers" beneath a Facebook post without actually reading what happened.

The Apple II helped introduce us to personal computing.

The modern phone has made computing so personal that it knows where we are, what we buy, what we watch and apparently what kind of fishing lure we discussed within hearing distance of the microphone.

That last part may be a coincidence.

I do not believe it is.

The 1980s: Computers Invade the Living Room

The 1980s were when computers started showing up in regular homes.

Not every home had one. Most did not.

But people had heard of them. Schools were buying them. Businesses were using them. RadioShack had them sitting in the store, and children were beginning to understand that computers could be used for something more important than accounting.

They could play games.

The IBM PC — 1981

When IBM entered the personal-computer market, people paid attention.

IBM was not viewed as a little startup operating out of somebody's garage. IBM was serious business. It was the kind of company people imagined had men in dark suits walking down hallways carrying folders marked "CONFIDENTIAL."

The original IBM Personal Computer, known as the Model 5150, was introduced in 1981.

Its processor was an Intel 8088 running at 4.77 megahertz. The entry-level system came with 16 kilobytes of RAM and could be expanded. The absolute base configuration did not include a disk drive or monitor.

The starting price was $1,565 in 1981.

That equals approximately $5,750 in 2026 dollars.

A more useful 64-kilobyte configuration with a floppy-disk drive cost around $2,880, or approximately $10,600 today. A heavily equipped system with more memory and color graphics could approach $6,000 — more than $22,000 in today's money.

Imagine walking into a store today and paying $22,000 for a home computer with a black screen, blinking cursor and no internet.

It would not even come with Minesweeper because Minesweeper had not been invented yet.

The IBM PC's processor ran at 4.77 megahertz. Today's phone processors run at thousands of megahertz and contain several cores working together.

The IBM might have had 16 or 64 kilobytes of RAM.

A phone with 12 gigabytes contains approximately 187,500 times as much RAM as a 64-kilobyte IBM PC.

Storage was another matter.

Many early IBM PCs did not contain a hard drive at all. They used floppy disks that held only a fraction of one megabyte.

A two-terabyte iPhone contains approximately five million times the storage capacity of a 400-kilobyte disk.

The IBM PC changed business and established the basic design that influenced personal computers for decades.

Your phone is dramatically more powerful, but it still owes part of its family tree to that big beige box.

The Commodore 64 — 1982

If you grew up in the 1980s, this is probably one of the names you remember.

The Commodore 64 was introduced in 1982 with 64 kilobytes of RAM.

That is how it got its name.

It used a processor running at approximately one megahertz, displayed 16 colors and included a sound chip that was surprisingly advanced for its day. It became one of the most successful home computers ever sold.

The original price was $595 in 1982.

That works out to approximately $2,060 in 2026 dollars.

For its time, that was an aggressive price. Commodore was offering 64 kilobytes of memory for less than many competing computers with half as much.

The Commodore 64 was a computer, game system and educational machine all rolled into one brown keyboard-shaped box.

You connected it to a television.

You could save programs to cassette tapes or floppy disks.

You could type in lines of BASIC code from a magazine, spend an hour checking the code for mistakes and then discover that you had typed a zero where you needed the letter O.

That was entertainment in the 1980s.

A modern phone with 12 gigabytes of RAM contains approximately 187,500 times the working memory of the Commodore 64.

A single photograph from a modern smartphone can be dozens or even hundreds of times larger than the Commodore's entire memory.

A short 4K video recorded on your phone may contain more data than thousands of Commodore 64 floppy disks.

That is remarkable.

It is also a little embarrassing because the Commodore 64 taught children to program while our modern phones have taught grown adults to stare at 15-second videos until two hours disappear.

The Tandy 1000 — 1984

The Tandy 1000 was sold by Tandy Corporation, the company behind RadioShack.

For younger people, RadioShack was a magical little store where you could buy a computer, a telephone cord, a remote-control car, a package of resistors and six batteries with names nobody has used since 1993.

The original Tandy 1000 was introduced in 1984 as a lower-cost computer compatible with much of the software made for the IBM PC.

It used an Intel 8088 processor running at 4.77 megahertz and came with 128 kilobytes of RAM. It also offered better graphics and sound than many standard IBM-compatible computers of the time.

The original price was approximately $1,200 in 1984.

That equals roughly $3,850 in 2026 dollars.

For that money, you received the computer itself. Depending on the package, you might still need a monitor, printer and other accessories.

The Tandy 1000 was a legitimate home computer. Families used it for schoolwork, business applications and games.

A modern phone is not just more powerful than the Tandy.

It replaces nearly every accessory connected to it.

The phone is the computer.

The screen is built in.

The speakers are built in.

The modem is built in.

The camera is built in.

The microphone is built in.

The storage is built in.

The battery backup is built in.

It connects to printers wirelessly and communicates with computers on the other side of the planet.

The Tandy 1000 occupied most of a desk.

The phone occupies the space where I used to keep loose change.

The Original Macintosh — 1984

The original Macintosh arrived in 1984 and introduced many ordinary consumers to the mouse and graphical user interface.

Instead of typing every command, you could point at pictures, open windows and click icons.

That may seem obvious today, but it was a huge change.

The first Macintosh had a Motorola 68000 processor running at eight megahertz, 128 kilobytes of RAM, a nine-inch black-and-white screen and a 400-kilobyte floppy-disk drive. It did not include an internal hard drive.

Its original price was $2,495 in 1984.

That is approximately $8,000 in 2026 dollars.

Eight thousand dollars.

For 128 kilobytes of memory.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199 and can be ordered with two terabytes of storage.

The original Macintosh cost nearly seven times as much in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Yet the modern phone has a high-resolution color touchscreen, several cameras, wireless internet, cellular service, satellite communication, GPS, biometric security, artificial intelligence and enough storage to hold the equivalent of millions of Macintosh floppy disks.

The Macintosh's 400-kilobyte disk could hold the operating system, an application and some documents, but owners often had to swap disks in and out while working.

Today, we become irritated when a phone takes three seconds to download an application larger than the total storage capacity of every computer in our childhood school.

We have become spoiled beyond recognition.

The 1990s: The Computer Becomes Normal

By the 1990s, personal computers were no longer mysterious.

They were still expensive, but they were becoming normal household equipment.

Families bought Packard Bells, Gateways, Compaqs, IBMs and increasingly powerful Macintosh computers. The family computer usually sat in a common room because nobody trusted teenagers enough to put one behind a closed bedroom door.

That turned out to be one of the smarter parenting decisions of the twentieth century.

A Typical Early-1990s Home Computer

A decent early-1990s home computer might have operated at 25 or 33 megahertz, carried two to four megabytes of RAM and included a hard drive holding somewhere between 40 and 200 megabytes.

At the time, that felt enormous.

A 100-megabyte hard drive seemed like something you could never fill.

Today, one minute of high-quality phone video can consume more storage than that entire hard drive.

A modern two-terabyte phone has 20,000 times the storage capacity of a 100-megabyte computer.

And the phone does not require you to type:

C:\>

Although part of me misses that.

There was something satisfying about a computer waiting patiently for instructions instead of sending you 47 notifications about things you did not ask to know.

The Power Macintosh G3 — 1997

By the late 1990s, Apple's Power Macintosh G3 represented a major step forward.

The G3 line began with processors running from 233 megahertz upward. A common configuration included 32 megabytes of RAM and a four-gigabyte hard drive. Entry pricing began around $1,599 in 1997, depending on the model and configuration.

That would be approximately $3,300 in 2026 dollars.

Thirty-two megabytes of RAM sounded impressive in 1997.

A phone with 12 gigabytes has approximately 375 times as much working memory.

The G3's four-gigabyte hard drive could store a lot of documents and software for the period.

A two-terabyte phone has 500 times that storage.

The Power Mac G3 was a serious desktop computer used for graphic design, publishing and other professional work.

Today, a phone can edit photographs, produce videos, create graphics, record music and publish finished work directly to the internet without ever touching a desktop computer.

That does not mean I would choose to design a 50-page website on my phone.

I am saying it could be done.

I could also field-dress a deer with a butter knife, but having the ability does not make it a good decision.

The Original iMac — 1998

The original iMac arrived in 1998 looking like no other computer on the market.

Most computers were beige boxes designed with all the imagination of a filing cabinet.

Then Apple released a translucent blue computer that looked like a television from the future.

The original Bondi Blue iMac used a 233-megahertz PowerPC G3 processor. It came with 32 megabytes of RAM, a four-gigabyte hard drive, a built-in 15-inch display, a CD-ROM drive and a modem.

Its original price was $1,299 in 1998.

That equals approximately $2,660 in 2026 dollars.

That price included the monitor, which made the iMac a fairly good value for the period.

Still, consider the comparison.

The iMac had 32 megabytes of RAM.

Today's flagship phones have memory measured in gigabytes.

The iMac had a four-gigabyte hard drive.

A two-terabyte phone holds 500 times as much.

The iMac weighed around 40 pounds.

A modern flagship phone weighs approximately half a pound.

The iMac needed a desk and a wall outlet.

The phone operates all day on a battery and can communicate over cellular networks from a boat, deer stand, football stadium or Home Depot parking lot.

The iMac had a 0.3-megapixel camera.

Actually, it did not have a camera at all.

We had not yet decided that every electronic device needed to look at us.

The First Ten Years of the 2000s: Computers Get Fast

The first decade of the 2000s may be the most interesting comparison.

These computers do not feel ancient to me.

I was an adult.

I was working.

I was building websites.

I remember thinking these machines were genuinely fast.

That is the danger of getting older. The technology from your childhood feels historic, but the technology from your twenties feels like it happened about six Thursdays ago.

The iMac G5 — 2004

The iMac G5 was released in 2004.

It placed the entire computer behind a flat-panel display, creating the basic all-in-one shape Apple still uses today.

The entry model included a 1.6-gigahertz PowerPC G5 processor, 256 megabytes of RAM and an 80-gigabyte hard drive. Pricing started at $1,299 in 2004.

That equals approximately $2,300 in 2026 dollars.

Now we have finally reached the gigahertz era.

That makes the comparison sound closer, but clock speed still does not tell the full story.

The iMac G5 had one main processor core. Current phone chips contain multiple CPU cores, advanced graphics processors and specialized neural-processing hardware.

The iMac came with 256 megabytes of RAM.

A phone with 12 gigabytes has approximately 48 times as much working memory.

The iMac had an 80-gigabyte hard drive.

A two-terabyte phone has 25 times as much storage.

And the phone fits in your pocket.

The iMac G5 could browse the internet, send email, edit photographs, play music and work with digital video.

Your phone does all those things faster while also serving as a GPS, high-resolution camera, video camera, wallet, boarding pass, flashlight, compass, scanner, television, radio, level, calculator and artificial-intelligence assistant.

The iMac cost the modern equivalent of about $2,300.

Today's flagship phones cost around half that amount.

The Computers We Used Around 2008

By the end of the decade, a good home computer might have included a dual-core processor running between two and three gigahertz, two to four gigabytes of RAM and a hard drive containing several hundred gigabytes.

Those machines were genuinely capable.

Some could still perform certain sustained tasks better than phones because desktop computers had more electrical power, better cooling and room for larger components.

But today's flagship phones are operating in the same general world of performance — and surpass those older computers in many areas.

A current phone may have three to six times as much RAM as a 2008 home computer.

It may have several times as much storage.

Its graphics system can render advanced three-dimensional games.

Its camera-processing hardware performs billions of calculations every time you take a photograph.

Its neural processor handles tasks that personal computers from 2008 were never designed to perform.

And unlike the 2008 computer, the phone knows exactly where it is.

That is either incredibly useful or slightly terrifying, depending on whether you are trying to find a restaurant or hide from the federal government.

The Price Comparison

Here is what some of these familiar machines cost when they were introduced.

Computer	Original Price	Approximate 2026 Value
Apple II with 4KB RAM, 1977	$1,298	$7,150
Apple II with 48KB RAM, 1977	$2,638	$14,500
IBM PC entry model, 1981	$1,565	$5,750
IBM PC usable configuration, 1981	$2,880	$10,600
Commodore 64, 1982	$595	$2,060
Tandy 1000, 1984	$1,200	$3,850
Original Macintosh, 1984	$2,495	$8,000
Power Macintosh G3, 1997	$1,599	$3,300
Original iMac, 1998	$1,299	$2,660
Entry iMac G5, 2004	$1,299	$2,300
iPhone 17 Pro Max, 2026	$1,199	$1,199
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, 2026	About $1,300	About $1,300

A modern flagship phone is expensive.

I am not arguing that $1,200 or $1,300 is pocket change.

For that price, the phone ought to answer every call, take beautiful pictures and occasionally tell me I am doing a fine job.

But compared with the computers we purchased in earlier decades, modern phones are remarkably inexpensive.

The original Macintosh cost the modern equivalent of approximately $8,000.

A well-equipped IBM PC could cost the modern equivalent of $10,000 to $22,000.

Even the famously affordable Commodore 64 cost the equivalent of around $2,000 before adding a monitor, disk drive or printer.

Today, a flagship phone costs less than most of those computers did after inflation.

It also replaces the computer, monitor, modem, camera, video camera, answering machine, telephone, stereo, GPS, calculator and photo album.

We used to spend thousands of dollars on a computer and then buy everything else separately.

Today, all of it is stuffed inside one little glass rectangle that we will absolutely lose our minds over if we cannot find it for 30 seconds.

Memory: From Kilobytes to Gigabytes

The growth in memory may be the easiest part to understand.

The Apple II began with four kilobytes of RAM.

The IBM PC began with 16 kilobytes.

The Commodore 64 had 64 kilobytes.

The Tandy 1000 had 128 kilobytes.

The original Macintosh had 128 kilobytes.

The original iMac had 32 megabytes.

The iMac G5 had 256 megabytes.

Today's flagship Samsung phone may contain around 12 gigabytes of RAM.

That means a modern phone has approximately:

• Three million times the RAM of the entry-level Apple II.
• 750,000 times the RAM of the entry-level IBM PC.
• 187,500 times the RAM of the Commodore 64.
• 93,750 times the RAM of the original Macintosh.
• 375 times the RAM of the original iMac.
• 48 times the RAM of the entry-level iMac G5.

Those numbers are almost too large to understand.

Computers once measured memory in thousands of bytes.

Today, we measure it in billions.

Storage: From Floppy Disks to Two Terabytes

The storage comparison is even more entertaining.

The original Macintosh used 400-kilobyte floppy disks.

The original iMac had a four-gigabyte hard drive.

The iMac G5 had an 80-gigabyte hard drive.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max can be ordered with as much as two terabytes of storage.

Two terabytes equals:

• Two million megabytes.
• Two billion kilobytes.
• About five million 400-kilobyte Macintosh floppy disks.
• About 500 original iMac hard drives.
• About 25 entry-level iMac G5 hard drives.

Five million floppy disks.

If each disk were about one-eighth of an inch thick, that stack would be almost ten miles tall.

All of that theoretical storage now fits inside a phone less than nine millimeters thick.

Meanwhile, I still cannot find the picture I took last Tuesday.

Speed: The Numbers Do Not Tell the Whole Story

The Apple II and Commodore 64 operated at approximately one megahertz.

The IBM PC and Tandy 1000 ran at 4.77 megahertz.

The original Macintosh ran at eight megahertz.

The original iMac ran at 233 megahertz.

The iMac G5 ran at 1.6 gigahertz.

Today's mobile processors run at several gigahertz and contain several CPU cores, graphics cores and neural-processing units.

But the phone is not simply a faster version of an old computer.

It is performing jobs those machines could not have imagined.

Every time you take a picture, the phone may combine information from several exposures, recognize faces, adjust colors, reduce noise, sharpen details and decide which portion of the image should be in focus.

It does all of that before you can look at the photograph and decide your stomach appears larger than it did in the mirror.

When you ask an AI assistant a question, the phone may process speech, understand language, communicate with servers, organize information and display an answer in seconds.

The old computers waited for us to tell them exactly what to do.

Modern phones are increasingly attempting to figure out what we meant.

That is an enormous change.

The Really Amazing Part Is That We Are Not Amazed

When the Apple II arrived, it was revolutionary.

When IBM introduced the PC, it changed business.

When the Commodore 64 arrived, families discovered that home computers could be affordable and fun.

When the Macintosh appeared, pointing and clicking felt futuristic.

When the iMac came out, connecting to the internet without an engineering degree seemed like a miracle.

Today, we carry more computing power than any of those machines could approach, and we barely notice it.

We complain when a webpage takes two seconds to load.

We become angry when a video pauses.

We replace a phone because the new one has a slightly better camera and a processor that completes an invisible task one-tenth of a second faster.

We are carrying technology that would have stunned every computer engineer of the 1970s and 1980s.

And what do we do with it?

We watch a stranger organize his refrigerator.

We argue about politics with someone named "BassMaster1776."

We take photographs of our meals.

We send our spouses text messages from different rooms in the same house.

The problem is no longer the power of the machine.

The problem is what we choose to do with it.

Artificial Intelligence Changes the Comparison Again

The Apple II required you to learn its language.

The Commodore 64 required you to type commands.

The IBM PC expected you to understand files, disks and directories.

Modern AI is reversing that relationship.

Instead of learning how to speak to the computer, we are teaching the computer how to understand us.

You can now talk to your phone in regular English.

You can ask it to summarize a document, improve an email, translate a conversation, identify an object in a photograph, generate an image, create a schedule or explain a complicated subject.

That does not mean the computer is always correct.

AI can make mistakes with an impressive amount of confidence, which is a trait it apparently learned from middle-aged men.

But the direction is clear.

Computers are no longer merely tools that wait for precise instructions.

They are becoming assistants capable of understanding requests and helping complete complicated jobs.

That capability sits in your pocket.

We Have Run Out of Excuses

For most of human history, information was difficult to obtain.

You needed access to a library, a school, an expert or an expensive set of books.

When I was growing up, if we wanted to know something, we looked through an encyclopedia. If the answer was not there, we either went to the library or accepted that we might never know.

Today, you can ask your phone almost anything.

You can learn how to repair a lawn mower.

You can study another language.

You can build a website.

You can take an online course.

You can market a business.

You can manage your finances.

You can record and publish a video.

You can communicate with customers anywhere in the world.

You can carry more information in your pocket than the greatest libraries of earlier generations could hold.

We used to be limited by access to technology.

That is no longer the main limitation.

Our limitation is attention.

We possess the most powerful personal technology ever available, but we often hand our attention over to whichever application can distract us the longest.

That is like owning a brand-new four-wheel-drive truck and using it exclusively to sit in the driveway and listen to the radio.

The machine has more potential than the owner is using.

The Most Powerful Computer You Own

The phone in your pocket is not just a telephone.

It is the direct descendant of the Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Tandy 1000, Macintosh and every other home computer that came before it.

Those machines cost thousands of dollars in today's money.

They had tiny amounts of memory.

They stored information on cassette tapes and floppy disks.

They occupied entire desks.

They required separate monitors, modems, cameras, printers and speakers.

Your phone combines all of those devices into something small enough to carry everywhere.

It contains millions of times more memory than the earliest home computers.

It stores the equivalent of millions of floppy disks.

It performs billions and trillions of specialized operations.

It can connect you to nearly anyone and teach you almost anything.

And now it has artificial intelligence.

The engineers who created those early computers would be blown away by what we carry around every day.

They would probably ask what we use it for.

I am not sure I would have the heart to tell them.

So before you spend another hour scrolling through nonsense, stop for a moment and consider what is sitting in your hand.

It is more powerful than the computers that introduced the world to the digital age.

It costs less than most of them did after inflation.

It connects to nearly all recorded human knowledge.

And it can help you learn, create, communicate and build almost anything.

Use it for something worthwhile.

Then call your mother.

You have more computing power than IBM could have imagined, but apparently you still cannot remember to call her back.