It's very, very hard for me not give in to cynicism about the motives and priors of wealthy tech (and tech-adjacent) folks when the news that seems to move the commentariat to notice stagnant computing resources is that *Apple* is increasing prices.
In no calendar year across the past decade has Apple sold more than 20% of phones or more than 15% of desktop/laptop computers.
And yet.
The MAJORITY of computers that can load the web pages you make are relatively inexpensive, shockingly slow Androids that cost < $400 (new, unlocked) when they were sold in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Volume in the "budget" segment of the Android market has been CONSISTENTLY larger than the total Mac and PC market for a decade, and relatively inexpensive Androids are >= 50% in almost *every* market, save Dubai and Switzerland:
https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-2026/
Embedded in this year's network and device estimates is hopeful news about the trajectory of devices and networks. It has never been easier to deliver pages quickly, but we are not collectively hitting the mark. Indeed, the latest CrUX data shows not even half of origins have passing Core Web Vitals scores for mobile users. Browsers will need to provide stronger incentives. This will be unpopular, but it is clearly necessary.
Nothing about this situation is new.
A rational business attempting to maximise sales and market reach would have been *entirely* correct to throw out the slow and unusable prescriptions of the frameworkists every single year since 2015 (at the latest). Such a business would forbid React, Angular, Next, and a dozen other frameworkist totems from the premises and *would have been correct to do so up until this very day*.
Again and again and again, I've been gaslight and downplayed by frameworkists high on the fumes of always-false marketing claims by Facebook/VC-backed hucksters. We're a dozen+ years into the lost decade, and it absolutely guts me that I'm hearing folks in meetings still sell themselves and each other on the idea that the *next* great scheduling trick will fix a problem that boils down to 10 gallons of JavaScript bullshit in a 5 gallon hat.
The answer is (still) *less JavaScript*.
They have been able to downplay and divert attention away from these basic facts because the lie they were sold is one of endless computing abundance, and as long as that continued to be true at ~roughly the same price every year for them and their mates, the trick worked.
Mac price rises are popping the narrative, but do fuck-all to the situation on the ground. It has *always *been true that businesses couldn't afford to turn away customers who showed up with the "wrong" device.
You don't have to take my word for it!
WPO Stats has been on the beat forever: https://wpostats.com/
And here's Shopify from less than 2 months ago:
https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/blog/store-speed-conversion
Alex Russell
Alex Grant