3 ms·

Definitely for worse in many cases. Every time I buy a new phone with better specs, I expect that things will be that much better, but they never are. Instead,

Definitely for worse in many cases. Every time I buy a new phone with better specs, I expect that things will be that much better, but they never are. Instead, the power is wasted on useless things like animation, apps that I can't shut off running in the background, etc.

microcolonel 9y ago
> animation, apps that I can't shut off running in the background, etc. The greatest performance issues stem from the attitude of the implementers. If you assume you have more memory than you'll ever need, chances are you'll need more than you'll ever have. Also, somehow no matter how much better our collective and public knowledge of cache-aware programming gets, we manage to make the data so much larger that it doesn't matter how cache aware we are. disregarding "apps that I can't shut off running in the background", there is no good reason that animations, even the currently selected ones, should account for nearly as much power consumption as they do.
grkvlt 9y ago
People often claim this, but I've never really found it to be the case. Faster processors and more memory let me run the same software much faster, or better software the same speed as the old, in general. So, perhaps you are seeing the second factor happening more, but don't want or need the improvements?
- microcolonel 9y ago
  I think he's lamenting that the new hardware tends to come with (or mandate) the newer software, which is generally slower, but trades this slowness for nothing of value. That is, there is no legitimate reason that the same tasks should take longer on faster hardware; but (usually) the exact same software will tend to run faster. I don't have this problem on my workstations (generally) except when I browse the web, though recently I've had to make the practical tradeoff of owning a smartphone, where this problem is rampant. Worse than things not getting faster, the same product tends to get slower because the software designed for the new hardware is the only maintained branch, and the versions for older hardware are just backports from future hardware.
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  Software changes for newer hardware, often unnecessarily.
pmontra 9y ago
Smartphones were solved back in 2011 with the iPhone 4s and the Galaxy S2. I still see some around, especially the iPhones. Next iterations are obviously better and faster but they are more about to keep funnelling money out of our pockets and to power (maybe not purposely) the ever increasing complexity of tracking and marketing tools.

microcolonel 9y ago

> animation, apps that I can't shut off running in the background, etc. The greatest performance issues stem from the attitude of the implementers. If you assume you have more memory than you'll ever need, chances are you'll need more than you'll ever have. Also, somehow no matter how much better our collective and public knowledge of cache-aware programming gets, we manage to make the data so much larger that it doesn't matter how cache aware we are. disregarding "apps that I can't shut off running in the background", there is no good reason that animations, even the currently selected ones, should account for nearly as much power consumption as they do.

grkvlt 9y ago

People often claim this, but I've never really found it to be the case. Faster processors and more memory let me run the same software much faster, or better software the same speed as the old, in general. So, perhaps you are seeing the second factor happening more, but don't want or need the improvements?

microcolonel 9y ago
I think he's lamenting that the new hardware tends to come with (or mandate) the newer software, which is generally slower, but trades this slowness for nothing of value. That is, there is no legitimate reason that the same tasks should take longer on faster hardware; but (usually) the exact same software will tend to run faster. I don't have this problem on my workstations (generally) except when I browse the web, though recently I've had to make the practical tradeoff of owning a smartphone, where this problem is rampant. Worse than things not getting faster, the same product tends to get slower because the software designed for the new hardware is the only maintained branch, and the versions for older hardware are just backports from future hardware.
JoshMnem 9y ago
Software changes for newer hardware, often unnecessarily.

pmontra 9y ago

Smartphones were solved back in 2011 with the iPhone 4s and the Galaxy S2. I still see some around, especially the iPhones. Next iterations are obviously better and faster but they are more about to keep funnelling money out of our pockets and to power (maybe not purposely) the ever increasing complexity of tracking and marketing tools.