> Consumers in the PC segment expect high performance across a wide range of applications

It seems there is a persistent rift between what hardware designers think users want and what users are asking for, only recently being addressed by major OEMs with products such as the MacBook Neo.

Nobody I personally know wants a faster CPU; they want competent, faster, native feeling software and more power efficient hardware. CPUs have been plenty fast for at least a decade now, for anything the majority of users and even gamers are doing. I'm playing through the new and notoriously demanding LEGO Batman game on an RTX 2080 and an i7-4790k, a CPU from 2013 that even the base M1 easily beats. The game runs fine. Most people I am confident do not need better than the M1.

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yjftsjthsd-h an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I was under the impression that race-to-idle made "fast" a significant factor in "power efficient"? Obviously needs software to not be terrible and needs to be able to scale the back down, but still.

	▲	cwzwarich 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That may be true at iso-voltage/frequency, but there are definitely places on that curve where it is better to be at a lower voltage (and thus frequency) than to run at a higher voltage just so you can race to idle.

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pjmlp 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

MacBook Neo certainly does not address my needs with a 8 GB and 512 SSD for 900 euros.

Additionally people shipping Electron crap also don't address my needs at all, everything that is Web based I already have an installed browser for it.

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aleph_minus_one an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> It seems there is a persistent rift between what hardware designers think users want and what users are asking for

> Nobody I personally know wants a faster CPU; they want competent, faster, native feeling software and more power efficient hardware.

I think you miss the point: what you claim that users want is not something that hardware designers have a lot of influence on (except for the aspect that the IC should be (more) power-efficient): these are rather problems that software developers are there to solve. So, hardware designers are simply the wrong persons to ask if you have such wishes.

	▲	layer8 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That’s right, but power efficiency is an important factor, one of the main points where Intel is lagging behind ARM. And it’s also correct to point out that the main issue for end users is software, even if hardware designers can’t do much about it.