On balance, it would appear to be the case.

I respect many of those comedians for their satire, but not getting news from newspapers is a recipie for idiocracy.

So say we all.

Apple is its own thing. It is not fully inconceivable that the feds (and therefore everyone else) would switch to MacOS if Windows became [even more] unsupportable, but I doubt Microsoft can provide Office at even the sad level it achieves on Windows and it would take Apple time to ramp up supply.

Linux is an easy sell unless people are hooked on some application or game that doesn't run on it, then it's hard. The interface is familiar enough now (especially with KDE, but there are some other basically credible options) that they won't have a lot of room to complain so long as they don't have problems. That part is going to depend on the hardware, and IME they will have the fewest problems with AMD CPU and GPU now. If they have Intel it might or might not be OK; if they've got Nvidia they're likely to have a bad time at least sometimes.

Business is increasingly using web-based tools for everything, which is not itselft a bad thing- if only more of them were self-hosted. But either way, this decreases the dependence on Windows. I've worked where there's a few Windows machines for clerical staff, or where there's a Mac for the graphics department. That can be Windows' fate again.

They have to also have the balls to have a winning formula, like put the nerds with successful histories in charge and let them make decisions and spend money. Instead they want to design everything by committee, and everyone wants to have the biggest piece of the pie. The more companies you combine the less successful it is likely to be. See: Every fucking project like this ever between any of the principals you named here.

Do you need high performance or only compatibility? If the latter, you can at least stuff Windows into a VM for your own protection. Only the graphics performance is poor, but the graphics functionality is also poor.

I believe the OS uses less RAM, but that doesn't change application memory use overall. If applications make inefficient use of resources, there's only so much the OS can do to improve that. It's not like iOS where it's on lock, developers are free to do things not-the-Apple-way.

That's a part of it anything anyone makes to "compete with the Neo" has to take into account.

To me though, I think what's impressive about the Neo is the entire package works together to minimize the impact of the cheaper parts of the system. So, the Neo combines memory within the same package to speed up what would otherwise be a mediocre CPU. The hard limits on how much memory you can do that with are made up for by having an operating system (and, these days, more important) web browser that doesn't need 16Gb of RAM to get out of bed in the morning. And so on.

If Intel wants to compete, what it probably needs to do is create two things:

1. Fork Firefox or Chrome and produce a memory efficient version.
2. Do the CPU-memory trick Apple is doing.

And... given how these chips might be perfect for a Chromebook as well as a budget Windows machine, I wonder if they could get help from Google on this front. Indeed, I wonder if Google is looking at Apple right now and asking itself where it went wrong, producing a memory hog of a scriptable rich-text-viewer when the computers it itself produces have only 4Gb of RAM. They might want to work directly with Intel on it.

The chips Intel are announcing really aren't answering any questions that Apple answered.

Wow - that page reads like a step-by-step guide on how to violate the Robinson-Patman Act. Too bad we haven't had any real consumer protection enforcement in the US since the 1970s.

"but labor is so insane"

I gather this is your fault

This is one AC that deserves to be modded up. I already commented, so I can't.

You are aware of what happened Oct 7, 2023, right?

Actually, islamic fundamentalists qualify for that statement in absolutely every way. So at the absolute minimum you'll have to concede that there are two fascist sides.

For sufficiently gracious definitions of "working". Iran was quite busy building up conventional weapons including delivery systems that could be re-purposed for nukes as well as moving towards nuclear weapons. There is no civilian use for 60% enriched uranium. Moreover, the number "60%" is misleading. The work to enrich isn't linear. When you have 60%, you're not 60% of the way from raw to weapons-grade, you're 95% of the way.

To put into context just how insane any claim that they had 60% for any peaceful purposes is: Most nuclear reactors use uranium enriched to 3% to 5%. 60% isn't "a bit more than usual". It's a fuckton more than any non-weapons use can reasonably explain.

Iran didn't need a reason. We all know the reason they already had: Wiping out Israel.

And no strike or other interruption has ever made them learn that JIT isn't all flowers and happiness and moving your warehouse to the road has more consequences than cost savings.

I do have a system I run Linux on successfully with only 8GB, but all I run on it is a browser, and sometimes CHIRP.

My desktop has 64GB and it is what I want a desktop to be, I can run lots of things without swap.

My MiniPC has 32GB and it is adequate. But I can't just run whatever I want. I don't use swap because I use SSDs and I don't want to reduce their lifespans if my system goes nuts.

16GB is a reasonable minimum for someone who wants to do more than run a browser.