[bryanlarsen]

IMO, that's more to do with Intel than to do with Microsoft and Apple. Sandy Bridge, released in 2011, was the last Intel processor that was more than 10% faster than previous generations. We used to see ~25% generational speedups from Intel. Since 2011 we've only seen 5-10% speedups.

[mjburgess]

People talk about the downsides of this. But it does mean all the tech you buy today is going to be useable in 10ys. That's quite a win.

[carlmr]

Capitalism hates it though if there's no reason to sell new devices. Although I think we still have a lot of headroom in terms of memory performance that will matter just as much as the previous CPU performance increases.

[bhauer]

> Capitalism hates it though if there's no reason to sell new devices.

"Capitalism" (the free market) is us. And I for one do "hate" that CPU performance is not increasing as rapidly as it did in the past. I would very much like to see a return of significant generational performance improvements. I would happily upgrade my PC more often if it resulted in the significant gains of yesteryear.

I find it a curious asceticism to cherish stagnant technology because it means my 5-year old PC is still relevant. Yeah, that's the silver lining. But let's be real: if you had a PC that was twice as fast in every performance dimension that I could afford today, I would buy it.

[felipeko]

Only the companies that sell the devices hate it. For every other entity it is a win as more money will be available to be spent on something else.

[simonh]

Companies that get a competitive advantage or can command a premium from selling long lived products don't hate it at all. It's the core of their business model.

[simonh]

If the longevity of a product is a selling point, can provide a competitive advantage or help capture a premium then Capitalism is absolutely fine with it.

[namelost]

The future is heterogeneous computing. Intel's chips already include a GPU, the next step will be FPGAs.

[Shikadi]

I can see it now: "Facebook now offers faster news feed rendering for PCs equipped with Intel 10 series FPGAs!"

Kidding of course, but I think the FPGA/CPU combos will be more relevant to servers than end users, at least initially. FPGA high level synthesis is miles away from being useful for consumer level application acceleration, and GPUs are much more accessible

[arximboldi]

Well, when I was using Windows more than 10 years ago... formatting your computer every 2 years was a good way to maintain performance, otherwise it would just slow down due to disk fragmentation + crapware accumulation. On Linux I could also just install the OS once and use it until I upgraded the machine... like in 6 years.

[bryanlarsen]

When I was using Linux more than 10 years ago I didn't even format my disks when upgrading my machine, I just moved the boot drive from the old machine to the new one.

OTOH, I've reformatted my 2012 Linux machine twice since I purchased it, which is twice more than I've formatted my Windows machine over the same period. Granted my Linux box is much more heavily used, but...

[Shikadi]

Sounds like you must be using Ubuntu :P

[bryanlarsen]

Got it in one.