auxio

gatorguy said:

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates knew this over a decade ago. Even though they understood it, this was foisted on us anyway. 

To summarize what I said above for the TLDR crowd that needs a tagline:

The companies which profit most from knowing everything we do on our devices foisted this on us, not the device creators (who only profit from the sale of the device, not how much we use it).

gatorguy said:

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates knew this over a decade ago. Even though they understood it, this was foisted on us anyway. 

Profit above all. 

Thanks for a well-considered article to remind us of what we're doing to ourselves. 

I'd take the analysis a bit deeper than that and look at the purpose of the device.

The original vision for personal computing from pioneers like Doug Engelbart and Alan Kay was that of memory augmentation/near instant and intuitive access to information. Especially for the purpose of educating and elevating humanity. Steve Jobs held up those same ideals when he spoke of the computer being "a bicycle for the mind". Again, with personal computing technology being used to augment things humans aren't good at (rote, repetitive tasks) so that we can focus on what we are good at (creating/building).

Having computing power as seamlessly integrated in our lives as possible (portability being one step in that evolution) was always the dream. However, the "profit above all" you mention is when social media companies started utilizing human psychology to ensure that people spend as much time on their platforms as possible (maximizing their profit). Gone was the vision of computing power being used to augment and elevate our abilities, now it was being used to exploit our weaknesses (addiction, need for connection in an increasingly isolated world).

With the gold rush to harvest as much information about what we do on our devices as possible for profit, and device addiction maximizing the amount of information which can be harvested, it's even clearer how far we've strayed from those ideals. That scene from the Matrix where humans are being used for energy to power the machines (AI) isn't too far off. Just replace energy with information about what we do.

dewme said:

Lightning saved us from the scourge of micro USB long enough to move to a better option. If that’s all it ever gets credit for, that’s good enough for me. 

I still have to remind the people with memories of a hamster who ask why Apple didn't just use USB-C that it wasn't around when Lightning was created. So I do worry about social media history rewrites losing details like that.

foregoneconclusion said:

Unified memory IS more efficient than DDR. There’s no 1x1 comparison between the two. 

DDR (double data rate) is just the data throughput of RAM, which doesn't say anything about how much memory is required by applications.

However, the point about unified memory being more efficient (apps require less overall RAM) is correct. Without it apps which need to, for example, display an image on the screen need to store a copy of that image in both CPU memory (RAM) and GPU memory (VRAM). With unified memory they only need one copy because both the CPU and GPU can access the same memory. The same holds true for machine learning and the NPU (neural processing unit).

All that said, people without critical thinking skills (i.e. the majority of the population) simply follow the "bigger is better" logic. And so if Apple hopes to sell to such people, they'll have to bump the specs, even if those people will never need that extra memory.

zeus423 said:

I've never listened to a minute of Joe Rogan. I honestly don't care if someone does. It makes no difference in my life. 

I believe in free speech. To paraphrase George Carlin, if you don't like something, change the channel.

So what do you do when you realize you're surrounded by those who don't change the channel, and they've been convinced you're the enemy because you did?