4 ms·

I recently started looking for a new(er) laptop, because it often felt slow. But I started looking at when it was slow, and it was mostly when using things like

by wkjagt 11mo ago

I recently started looking for a new(er) laptop, because it often felt slow. But I started looking at when it was slow, and it was mostly when using things like GMail. I guess my feeling was "if my laptop isn't even fast enough for email, it's time to upgrade". But doing things I actually care about (coding, compiling) it's actually totally fine, so I'm going to hold on to it a bit longer.

Sanygeek 11mo ago
This is the exact feeling I had. My 2019 intel MacBook Pro has 12 cores, 32gb ram and a 1TB hard drive. Yet, most consumer web apps like Gmail, Outlook and Teams are excruciatingly slow. What is surprising is that a few years ago, these apps weren’t so terrible on this exact hardware. I’m convinced that there’s an enormous amount of bloat right at the application framework level. I finally caved and bought a new M series Mac and the apps are much snappier. But this is simply because the hardware is wicked fast and not because the software got any better. I really wish consumer apps cared less about user retention and focused more on user empowerment.
- iknowstuff 11mo ago
  All it would take is forcing an artificial CPU slowdown to something like a 5 year old CPU when testing/dogfooding apps for developers to start caring about performance more.
  - small_scombrus 11mo ago
    > All it would take is forcing an artificial CPU slowdown Technically, yes. But for many large tech companies it would require a large organisational mindset shift to go from more features is more promotions is more money to good, stable product with well maintained codebase is better and THAT would require a dramatic shift away from line must go up to something more sustainable and less investor/stock obsessed.
- rayiner 11mo ago
  The software bloat is starting to outpace the hardware folks' best efforts. iOS 27 runs like ass on my year-old iPhone 16 Pro.

by wkjagt 11mo ago

Sanygeek 11mo ago

This is the exact feeling I had. My 2019 intel MacBook Pro has 12 cores, 32gb ram and a 1TB hard drive. Yet, most consumer web apps like Gmail, Outlook and Teams are excruciatingly slow. What is surprising is that a few years ago, these apps weren’t so terrible on this exact hardware. I’m convinced that there’s an enormous amount of bloat right at the application framework level. I finally caved and bought a new M series Mac and the apps are much snappier. But this is simply because the hardware is wicked fast and not because the software got any better. I really wish consumer apps cared less about user retention and focused more on user empowerment.

iknowstuff 11mo ago
All it would take is forcing an artificial CPU slowdown to something like a 5 year old CPU when testing/dogfooding apps for developers to start caring about performance more.
- small_scombrus 11mo ago
  > All it would take is forcing an artificial CPU slowdown Technically, yes. But for many large tech companies it would require a large organisational mindset shift to go from more features is more promotions is more money to good, stable product with well maintained codebase is better and THAT would require a dramatic shift away from line must go up to something more sustainable and less investor/stock obsessed.
rayiner 11mo ago
The software bloat is starting to outpace the hardware folks' best efforts. iOS 27 runs like ass on my year-old iPhone 16 Pro.