A brand new kia or scion is gonna be faster out the gate and cheaper than a 4 year old cadillac.
But the cadillac wins on looks, power, durability, safety, fuel, utility, terrain/environmental performance, can hold more people and those new cars won't have interiors half as nice on their new models 4 years from now as today's 4 year old cadillac model does.
Oh and if the race is longer than 30-40 yards that caddie will catch up and smoke those cars with it's V8.
But the real improvement is battery life. Intel Haswell machines are lasting 10 to 16 hours now, and this number will only improve as Intel moves to 14nm and 10nm designs.
Computers aren't getting faster because no one cares about that. The majority of the design effort is now into battery life. A Dell Venue 8 Pro lasts 8+ hours on a single charge, on a tiny 20Whr battery (while being faster than the 4-year-old Macbook Pro). The 4-year-old Core2Duo Macbook Pros lasted only a couple of hours on behemoth 60Whr batteries.
Battery efficiency will matter when it comes down to lightness and style. Better battery efficiency will lead to thinner, sleeker, lighter designs. Generally speaking, the "progress" of modern computers is battery efficiency, leading to smaller batteries, leading to lighter and smaller computers.
Then get the $300 Asus Vivotab Note, instead of spending $60/month on a lease on a new laptop. Within 6 months, you'll have made your money back and then some (Especially since the $300 tablet can do everything a 4-year-old computer can do, while having superior battery life, significantly less weight, support of a Wacom Active Stylus and a touchscreen)
Yes, I have run Photoshop and Gimp on a $300 Baytrail Tablet. Yes, they work. I can personally verify that fact. On the other hand, I do notice significant performance increases when comparing these cheap, tiny computers against my beefy Desktop. Regardless, I speak from experience.
Benchmarks do not lie however, these $300 Baytrail tablets are faster than Macbook Pros from 4 years ago.
Regardless of how you slice it, computers depreciate significantly faster than cars. For those where "just enough" performance is good enough, you might as well buy these modern $300 netbooks / tablets than lease a top-of-the-line laptop for $60/month... unless you really throw away your laptops after less than 5 months of usage.
A brand new cheap computer is better than a top-of-the-line computer from 4 years ago. And for those who are chasing the top end, modern premium computers are released too often for this lease business model to make sense IMO.
You were downvoted for saying exactly what I was about to say: for most consumer use, my 2009 MBP does everything I need. It beats me at chess. A/V transcoding could be faster, but that's really an edge use case for me, and probably most people, even on HN.
What I do care about is ergonomics, specifically the keyboard, and I have yet to find a $300 (or $600) Windows or Android machine with a keyboard comparable to a Mac. If it exists, I hope someone will let me know in the comments.
This is a thread about how computers get better over the years. A modern Macbook Pro is leagues better than one 2 years ago (SSD, PCIe, Retina Screen, smaller), and the one 2-years-ago is leagues better than a 4-year-old Macbook Pro (Sandy Bridge vs C2D, GPU upgrades, etc. etc.).
I chose the Dell Venue 8 Pro because it is a cheap $300 machine to emphasize a point. Computers continue to make progress exponentially... to the point where a 4-year-old "premium computer" is specs-for-specs comparable to one of the trashiest, slowest modern computers of this time.
I'm a little pissed that I have to change my argument structure to cater to your fanboy mindset. I'm not taking a dig at Mac, I'm trying to make a point about technology and the rate at which it improves.
Long story short: the computer industry has always been about forward progress at an exponential rate. This will make it difficult for any "leasing" structure to work with computers. Depreciation of laptops happens too quickly.
I don't have to drive if I don't have to. If I want to drive I can lease a car for a few hours or a few weeks. I don't have to change the car's interior. I don't need to install new software to match my taste. I pick up the key, unlock the car and I am ready to go on the road. I put all my personal accessories under a bucket so when I return I know I have everything in the bucket and ready to go home.
I may need a spare laptop for a day or two. But I have to download the software over again and again. I use Firefox, but I also need Chrome. I need to download Adium as IRC client. I need thunderbird to be my email client. I need iterm2 to be my terminal. I need to set up a bunch of things. When I return I need to make sure I have the laptop restored to factory state. But I am paranoid some data maybe kept secret? What if the computer comes with malware already?
If I need a Mac computer to do testing, this business is great. When I am done testing I can return the machines.
One business model has worked for a long time and the other has failed a lot. Haha, maybe that statement itself is not very correct though considering the car industries recent history.
I think you've started a very interesting discussion here with you're comment. The 10x cost reference was a good point, but computers not dropping value over time also seems more feasible.
One of the big drivers for car leasing is tax policy. From my cursory understanding, you can generate bigger short-term, tax-deductible business expenses with a lease than a purchase.
Since computers presumably depreciate faster than cars, the benefit is probably smaller for computers.