I see this time and time again on Hacker News, and really don't understand why people seem to think that "pro" in any way equates to "developer" or to "someone

I see this time and time again on Hacker News, and really don't understand why people seem to think that "pro" in any way equates to "developer" or to "someone who needs a lot of computing horsepower". "Pro" means professional. The vast majority of working professionals, in the vast majority of professional fields, run Office, a mail client, a browser, and maybe a line-of-business app. Professionals regularly attend meetings, and like to be able to carry their laptop around without breaking their backs. The needs of professionals are generally largely in line with the needs of the average consumer. You can come up with 'professional' jobs that need more horsepower (people like traders who want to run 6 monitors, and software devs (although personally I don't understand why software devs really need more horsepower)) but those are most definitely the exception.