Yeah, sadly everything has to sound fancy. Imo this is partially to blame on consumers, but I do wonder how much of it is basic psychology vs induced demand that could be reversed if a company would stick with sensible product names for a while.
Instead of basic they could also go with something like "essential" or "home" that maybe have slightly less negative associations.
hardware unboxed for example did some benchmarks on the topic a few days ago. The issue wasn't noticed at launch, where everyone tested with high end processors to eliminate any bottlenecks, but has recently been discovered.
I would say a 8700k is maybe lower midrange considering its been a while since it was released? Not sure if someone else tested it with older Intel CPUs, since here it is mostly with AMD stuff, but the problem still applies.
The problem with the B580 is the huge issue with driver overhead leading to worse performance when paired with lower or even midrange CPUs. Which is exactly what you'd usually pair it with
In fairness to Intel, every modern semi design house has that same issue: a chip is designed and laid out for a specific node, so this isn’t really a failing so much as a how-it-works.
I thought i read somewhere that either their design was particularly tailored towards a specific node or that following that they made it a higher priority to be less bound to one. But i can't find a source for it, so i might be mistaken.
Trying to do 10nm without EUV was a forgivable error
How so? Literally no one uses EUV for 10nm and this wasn't the problem. Isn't SMCI even pushing DUV toproducing 5nm?
My limited understanding is that they were too ambitious with e.g. using cobalt interconnects and at the same time had the issue that they tied their chip designs to specific nodes. Meaning that when the process side slipped they couldnt just take the design and use it on a different node without a lot of effort.
Also I think they were always going to lose apple at some point. With better products they might have delayed it further. But apple fundamentally has an interest in vertical integration and control. And they were already designing processors for their phones and tablets.
Isn't this the same architecture that is also in their iGPUs? That should help keep them motivated to improve drivers even if they lose interest in dGPUs.
Yeah, I guess it depends on what kind of work. I thought that for demanding office stuff the 8gb RAM might end up mattering after all.
But your $700 with warranty are an amazing deal that make this irrelevant. That really only leaves the single external monitor (without using workarounds) as downside.
Where I am in Europe however I don't think I could find the better specced models anywhere close to that price
Honestly agreed. For the majority of users that just do light office work and browsing it is a great piece of technology. Although i would say it is less about performance (because those people would be fine with even less) and more about build quality, battery life, fanless design and good screen.
The one issue i have with it is the 256gb non-removable storage. More actually than the 8gb RAM, which tbh for many people is enough for casual use.
I am still waiting for anyone not named apple to release a similarly priced fanless laptop with good build quality. With lunar lake it should finally be possible imo.
For me the bigger value is not in the quality difference between the two platforms. And don't get me wrong, i agree that BlueSky is a lot better than Elon's Twitter, but not as good as a decentralised Fediverse Platform.
The real positive is in the act of migration itself, because it shows that is still a possibility. So hopefully it proves sustainable.
Is YouTube doing it with small creators actually in mind? Who knows, other than them?
I am pretty confident in guessing that they are not doing it for selfless reasons. Imo the reason is that the less information they give the user, the more you are beholden to the algorithm choosing for you.
But depending how they hide it it actually might not just be users, but also companies that e.g. buy ads from them. The less information they get, the more they need to trust whatever metric google offers them
The concept you are describing is called Innovator's Dilemma and imo the most recent example for it happening is with legacy car manufacturers missing the ev transition, because it would eat into their margins from ICE. But i am not sure if this is a good example for it.
However imo it seems like a great example for what Steve Jobs describes in this video about the failure of Xerox. Namely that in a monopoly position marketing people drive product people out of the decision making forums. Which seems exactly the case here where the concerns of an engineer were overruled by the higher ups, because it didn't fit within their product segmentation.
Imo this kind of shows the basic problem with the xps line. As I understand it it was basically the premium consumer line, not something meant for business use. Meaning it had the nice specs on paper, but not the durability you'd need in a setting with extensive use and where downtime means serious money. But as you demonstrate this distinction was too blurry.