In tech, there’s a reasonable expectation as a consumer that whatever the next version of the product will be, it will be better. Unfortunately, external factors can and do affect manufacturing possibilities and, by extension, the quality. Shortages started with GPU cryptocurrency mining a few years ago, where miners and scalpers would hoard components. That crisis led to price spikes, which never truly resolved as AI training took its place with more demands than just GPU usage. As of today, we can see this taking its toll, and it is visible. Several companies are abandoning 16GB of RAM for their mid-tier laptops and going back to 8. Meanwhile, gaming consoles are increasing in price rather than decreasing for the same hardware as during launch. So the question poses itself: is technology downgrading?
What’s happening
High-end hardware is more powerful than ever. While progress might have slowed down, it cannot entirely stop. Whether that progress is affordable is another topic. Every consumer hardware change, like removing audio jacks or not including chargers out of the box, can be seen as a push for less waste, often driven by affordability. From external cost-cutting, it looks like we’ve moved on to core performance cutting like CPU, GPU, and memory. It is possible that consumers seeking the best affordable performance might have to choose older models rather than new ones in the coming years.
It’s hard to imagine a positive side, yet hardware is not the only thing affecting performance. Software optimization does improve year by year. Better hardware management in newer models, like memory compression, thermal management, and cache hierarchies, can lead to better performance than something more powerful at baseline. In addition, those same AI features that are causing the price surge are positively contributing to this optimization.
Conclusion
Going back to the question, technology is not downgrading — far from it. However, affordable technology, due to component shortages and rising prices, is focusing on optimizing software rather than hardware. Still, you can only optimize older hardware up to a point, and there is no end to the shortages in sight. As a consumer, I would personally be very careful if I had to buy a device now. There is a reasonable hope that the next product will be better, but just to be safe, I would weigh my options.
Photo credit: The featured image is symbolic and has been taken by Nik Radzi.
Source: Andrew E. Freedman (Tom’s Hardware)
