I can run a full virtual music studio on my Mac, with tens of channels, each with a collection of plugins, and multiple samples and audio files streaming off SSD at the same time.
None of that is GPU accelerated - except maybe the UI, which is split across three 4k monitors
On Windows 95 I could barely play a single WAV at once, and a dual monitor system was an exotic luxury.
Hardware has gotten a lot faster, and the software can do more without crashing. (Mostly.)
The real problem has been the move to browser+cloud for productivity applications. The OS is a front end for the browser, which is a front end for remote compute. This is hugely slow and inefficient compared to making everything work locally, and perhaps including some cloud-ish hooks for sharing.
I can run a full virtual music studio on my Mac, with tens of channels, each with a collection of plugins, and multiple samples and audio files streaming off SSD at the same time.
None of that is GPU accelerated - except maybe the UI, which is split across three 4k monitors
On Windows 95 I could barely play a single WAV at once, and a dual monitor system was an exotic luxury.
Hardware has gotten a lot faster, and the software can do more without crashing. (Mostly.)
The real problem has been the move to browser+cloud for productivity applications. The OS is a front end for the browser, which is a front end for remote compute. This is hugely slow and inefficient compared to making everything work locally, and perhaps including some cloud-ish hooks for sharing.