<![CDATA[HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two".]]>HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two".

Moore's Law is coming to an end. The Macbook Neo says "why choose?"

Nobody needs a laptop with a 40 hour battery life. Nor does anybody needs 200 cpu threads and an AI coprocessor and 256Gb of RAM and 8Tb of SSD. So we're finally seeing the sweet spot in the phase diagram drift inexorably towards the corner labelled "cheap".

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/b32493da-dcca-4bdc-92d5-e0b49755a28f/hypothesis-while-moore-s-law-dominated-performance-in-laptops-the-rule-was-cheap-fast-low-power-pick-any-two-.RSS for NodeMon, 06 Apr 2026 07:57:12 GMTTue, 24 Mar 2026 20:58:46 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:37:55 GMT]]>@cstross

Got a cheap notebook from 'reward points' at work. I named it 'cromulence'; everything about it is (just) acceptable.

CPU is okay, screen is meh, battery life is good enough. RAM and storage were barely sufficient, but I was easily able to open it up and add RAM and a better NVME I had lying around. Of course I put Linux on it. (Those last three are not common, of course...)

That was before the Neo, which has much better specs - except I can't bump up the RAM or storage on it. 🤷

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://bookstodon.com/users/ringles/statuses/116286310032735909https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://bookstodon.com/users/ringles/statuses/116286310032735909Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:37:55 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:26:16 GMT]]>@ebooksyearn Yes. As it happens I have a ~$500 machine from 2 years ago. Intel N100 cpu, 12Gb RAM, same size SSD: runs Linux Mint nicely, but the flip side is the battery life is about 2h30m instead of 16h. A deal-breaker, that.

Apple *somehow* squared the circle.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/cstross/statuses/116286264215281674https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/cstross/statuses/116286264215281674Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:26:16 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:23:35 GMT]]>@cstross
So, which business models are obsoleted now that compute is a commodity?

Is it maybe the folks that scream you need AI in everything, so that more datacenters need to be build? Cant allow people to be happy on decade old hardware because that is dampening demand.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.tchncs.de/ap/users/116082355106939231/statuses/116286253651438532https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.tchncs.de/ap/users/116082355106939231/statuses/116286253651438532Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:23:35 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:20:22 GMT]]>@cstross I'm curious what's going to happen now that 90% or more of computer users can do everything they want with a $500 laptop. That same level of machine would have struggled with 10 browser tabs just a minute ago

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://thepit.social/users/ebooksyearn/statuses/116286241025955564https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://thepit.social/users/ebooksyearn/statuses/116286241025955564Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:20:22 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:19:28 GMT]]>@davidgerard It does, and I've got Apple Intelligence firmly switched off.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/cstross/statuses/116286237503754283https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://wandering.shop/users/cstross/statuses/116286237503754283Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:19:28 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:15:48 GMT]]>@cstross I did wonder what Apple was going to do with the “our base CPU is more powerful than most people need it to be” problem besides render the UI through a VFX pipeline.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mas.to/users/kmck/statuses/116286223041307517https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mas.to/users/kmck/statuses/116286223041307517Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:15:48 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:13:36 GMT]]>@cstross 8GB RAM definitely still feels like it could be a limiting factor, though. Although to be fair iOS handles it pretty well.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.nz/users/Salty/statuses/116286214396474254https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.nz/users/Salty/statuses/116286214396474254Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:13:36 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:11:49 GMT]]>@cstross I believe it does have the AI coprocessor

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://circumstances.run/users/davidgerard/statuses/116286207376829726https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://circumstances.run/users/davidgerard/statuses/116286207376829726Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:11:49 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:09:25 GMT]]>@cstross It’s probably the first instance of what will turn out to become _A Laptop_ (no further qualifications necessary, because it does everything everybody expects and needs. Edge cases and niche applications need not apply.)

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.tchncs.de/users/hmwilker/statuses/116286197950760561https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.tchncs.de/users/hmwilker/statuses/116286197950760561Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:09:25 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two". on Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:00:39 GMT]]>@cstross it nails the “most people’s use cases” in a price point and feature set that’s really hard to argue with

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/BabblingGeek/statuses/116286163498230144https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/BabblingGeek/statuses/116286163498230144Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:00:39 GMT