Laptops from the 2010s represented a peak in design and performance, but since then, it feels like we’ve seen consistent downsizing and downgrades. Take the latest Intel CPUs, for instance—it’s as if the marketing pitch is, ‘It may not be very powerful, but at least it’s energy-efficient.’ It’s almost as though manufacturers are catering to a market they perceive as indifferent, and we, as consumers, continue to accept diminishing returns while paying increasingly higher prices. This trend reflects a broader issue in life today: settling for less while being charged more.
This picture captures the essence of that realization, and it is truly heart-wrenching.
I’m by no means an apple fan boy (I only have an air) but the apple m processors are getting faster every gen. My m1 air is fast, has a nice design, great battery life, nice screen, etc. idk what else I would want in a laptop. Obviously not a cheap but it should last me a lot longer than whatever pc I would have gotten for half the price.
I don’t follow the laptop industry closely though so maybe I’m being ripped off without realizing it?
I’m usually happy with increased efficiency as it represents an increase in performance in the future. Cost is something that seems much more inevitable to go down than performance is to go up, so the two metrics I look for in the state of the CPU market are peak single core performance and performance per watt. Of course, this only applies to observing the industry from outside, I’m sure if I was actually in the market for a new CPU right now I’d probably be happier with a worse performance per watt chip as long as it was cheaper.
Laptops from the 2010s represented a peak in design and performance, but since then, it feels like we’ve seen consistent downsizing and downgrades. Take the latest Intel CPUs, for instance—it’s as if the marketing pitch is, ‘It may not be very powerful, but at least it’s energy-efficient.’ It’s almost as though manufacturers are catering to a market they perceive as indifferent, and we, as consumers, continue to accept diminishing returns while paying increasingly higher prices. This trend reflects a broader issue in life today: settling for less while being charged more.
This picture captures the essence of that realization, and it is truly heart-wrenching.
I’m by no means an apple fan boy (I only have an air) but the apple m processors are getting faster every gen. My m1 air is fast, has a nice design, great battery life, nice screen, etc. idk what else I would want in a laptop. Obviously not a cheap but it should last me a lot longer than whatever pc I would have gotten for half the price.
I don’t follow the laptop industry closely though so maybe I’m being ripped off without realizing it?
I’m usually happy with increased efficiency as it represents an increase in performance in the future. Cost is something that seems much more inevitable to go down than performance is to go up, so the two metrics I look for in the state of the CPU market are peak single core performance and performance per watt. Of course, this only applies to observing the industry from outside, I’m sure if I was actually in the market for a new CPU right now I’d probably be happier with a worse performance per watt chip as long as it was cheaper.