AndrewMar 2

As much as I'm all in favour of blaming AI bros for the RAM shortage, there was always going to be a squeeze on RAM prices for some reason eventually, and we really did make sure it would be maximally painful for ourselves when we started treating RAM as functionally free.

RAM prices in 2026 are about the same as they were in 2008 when the original MacBook Air launched. It had 2GB of RAM and it ran like a goddamn dream. There is absolutely zero technical reason we couldn't ship an even better computer with 2GB RAM today — except everything these days is a JavaScript app running in a dedicated Chromium instance and needs at least its own gigabyte to run around in.

That said, it's probably pretty safe to blame AI bros for everything being a Chromium instance — I'm willing to bet it's largely the same people trying to ship something that just about works with the absolute minimum of time and effort now as it was then

Show threadIswyrm
@andrewt I fear the hidden issue remains the US/China trade war. AI tech is around from a while, like in Nvidia gpu for the DLSS (AI frame generation), the latest year boom isn't so unexpected for who really worked inside the tech. Yet, is like producers didn't upgraded much their production line.
I think they are feared that some sudden US or China policy could make collapse side of the international trade and put at risk these investments, and the risk is very high.
Mar 2 at 4:26pmWeb