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The Mile Markers of Moore's Law Are Meaningless
szotz writes "Keeping up the pace of Moore's Law is hard, but you wouldn't know it from the way chipmakers name their technology. The semiconductor industry's names for chip generations (Intel's 22nm, TSMC's 28nm, etc) have very little to do with actual physical sizes, says IEEE Spectrum. And the disconnect is only getting bigger. For the first time, the "pay us to make your chip" foundries are offering a new process (with a smaller-sounding name) that will produce chips that are no denser than their forbears. The move is not a popular one."
While I'm not a fan of Steve or Apple, Apple PCs are still superior PCs. It's just not in "geeky" stuff like processor speed or 3D performance which Apple has no control over, it's in some tangibles like quality and some other things that I personally don't give a shit about ("Design", "Form Factor").
I have several Mac Pro's in my home, they have been in service for 5+ years without a single need to get tech support (and I won't pay for apple care or any such thing), compared to the other name brand (Dell/HP) and no-name (new egg ala cart) options which always seem to be blowing something, usually with respect to power delivery (PSU usually, caps occasionally) or BIOS compatibility with anything modern.
The tribalism has two edges, on one hand people rant and rave over things that are probably imaginary, on the other hand to maintain that tribalism, one has to deliver a product that the tribe wants to stand behind. If our overpriced Mac's started to behave as shitty HP or Dell laptops (or god help us, Asus and points east), then that tribe would dissolve.