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We've gotten more pixels and bytes and flops, that's it. We haven't got more battery life, or faster computers, which is strange because they have orders of mag

We've gotten more pixels and bytes and flops, that's it. We haven't got more battery life, or faster computers, which is strange because they have orders of magnitude more flops in them. Casey Muratori showing off the speed of visual studio 6 on a Pentium something after ranting about it: Jump to 36:08 in https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U

autoexec 9mo ago
Every time we get faster computers we get much much slower software. We get larger hard drives, so software bloats until it takes GBs
the_pwner224 9mo ago
> We haven't got more battery life 15 years ago even the high end smartphones could barely make it half the day before dying. Now all-day battery life is the norm, and the Chinese phones with the latest battery tech can easily last 2 days (Samsung, Google, Apple are very behind here). Laptop battery life isn't even comparable to what it was 20 years ago. And software getting slower doesn't change the fact that our material goods (pixels, bytes, flops) have improved orders of magnitude while getting cheaper.
- decimalenough 9mo ago
  Back in the Nokia brick days you could easily go a full week between charges. Of course it's an apples to oranges comparison since a modern smartphone has infinitely more functionality, but in this one thing modern phones remain objectively worse.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    Does it, though? Unless you go back so far you're talking about fixed–layout b&w LCD screens, the next era after that had games and the internet — what's actually new since that time? Multitasking yes, what else?
  - charcircuit 9mo ago
    You can still go a week on a modern phone if you restrict your usage to what you would do on a Nokia brick phone.
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      I got a new phone but didn't set it up immediately. The battery lasted about two weeks. Once I installed my apps and SIM card it dropped to about one day. Once my old phone had no SIM card and was sitting permanently in flight mode with no apps running, its battery life rose from about one day to about two weeks.
  - jryle70 9mo ago
    You have to compare the old Nokia phone with the new Nokia dump phone. I doubt that the old phone's battery lasts longer than that of a new Nokia 2720 Flip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_2720_Flip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_2720_Flip The new dump phone likely has more functionality and uses a much more robust wireless network.

autoexec 9mo ago

Every time we get faster computers we get much much slower software. We get larger hard drives, so software bloats until it takes GBs

the_pwner224 9mo ago

> We haven't got more battery life 15 years ago even the high end smartphones could barely make it half the day before dying. Now all-day battery life is the norm, and the Chinese phones with the latest battery tech can easily last 2 days (Samsung, Google, Apple are very behind here). Laptop battery life isn't even comparable to what it was 20 years ago. And software getting slower doesn't change the fact that our material goods (pixels, bytes, flops) have improved orders of magnitude while getting cheaper.

decimalenough 9mo ago
Back in the Nokia brick days you could easily go a full week between charges. Of course it's an apples to oranges comparison since a modern smartphone has infinitely more functionality, but in this one thing modern phones remain objectively worse.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Does it, though? Unless you go back so far you're talking about fixed–layout b&w LCD screens, the next era after that had games and the internet — what's actually new since that time? Multitasking yes, what else?
- charcircuit 9mo ago
  You can still go a week on a modern phone if you restrict your usage to what you would do on a Nokia brick phone.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    I got a new phone but didn't set it up immediately. The battery lasted about two weeks. Once I installed my apps and SIM card it dropped to about one day. Once my old phone had no SIM card and was sitting permanently in flight mode with no apps running, its battery life rose from about one day to about two weeks.
- jryle70 9mo ago
  You have to compare the old Nokia phone with the new Nokia dump phone. I doubt that the old phone's battery lasts longer than that of a new Nokia 2720 Flip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_2720_Flip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_2720_Flip The new dump phone likely has more functionality and uses a much more robust wireless network.