It occured to me yesterday that when it comes to performance, I have never owned a really cutting-edge computer. Even the first PC I bought myself, and used mainly for gaming for many years, was at most reasonably current when I got it. Half an hour or so later, it was of course helplessly old, this being the later part of the PC heyday where things still got faster almost by the month. I wanted jaw-droppingly beautiful and fast games, but budget of course got in the way.
Then, just as I started to make decent money of my own, I drifted out of games and jumped over to the Apple side. I have really loved all the Apple computers I have bought, and they have all served for ridiculous numbers of years. For my uses, they have been great all the time, but they were never top of the line performance-wise even to begin with. Whenever I try to run a game it becomes abundantly clear how far behind they are (and, perhaps to some extent, how behind Macos is as a gaming platform?)
As an interesting contrast, my current mobile devices are just outrageously powerful. They are small, have fantastic screens, push around stupid amount of pixels and run some very shiny games (which I do not ask them to do often enough) very, very fast. I keep wondering how many apps actually use all that performance, but I love that they keep pushing forward and hope apps will catch up and do even more fantastic stuff.
I look at this power gap, and I wonder why I can not use those mobile devices as full computer replacements yet.
"Because I do not want to" is of course a major reason. I enjoy doing some things better on a computer, I do not feel like re-learning a bunch of things, changing a bunch of habits and so on. The other big one is "Because of ergonomy." I can compute better for longer using my computers, especially when I take a bit of care with my positioning.
A part of me wishes I would gain a real need for a seriously powerful computer. That part wonders what kind of machine it would be, and what the need would be.
Another part of me thinks I should learn to use all the power I already have around me even more. Like putting those mobile things to more use, and perhaps try to find some new ways of doing things with them.
Is this going anywhere? Not really, but as I write this, tapping away on my ancient keyboard, I feel pretty happy with my tools. Both the underpowered ones I use to their full potential, and the powerful ones full of promises waiting to be realized.