What the heck happened in 2013?

[FNH15]

I have a couple Mid-2010 2.4Ghz White MacBooks and 13" Pros, and they are all completely usable (if not a little warm) for the modern web. Can't say the same for my 1.67Ghz PPC collection from only 7 years prior.

I remember even circa 2013/2014 a PowerMac G5 1.8 struggled browsing the web smoothly - we had one in high school running 10.5.8 (which I had clandestinely upgraded from 10.4) and QuarkXpress. Got to be painful at times.
Conversely even my 2008 White MacBook browses the web decently well (and there, the main limitation is the Mac OS version its capable of running).
My relatives are still using a Late ’09 C2D iMac for basic home office functions, though it is beginning to show its age...

 

[theluggage]

It's pretty wild to think of the amount of computer-sequenced music made on machines with less than 1/40th of the CPU or RAM of a base model M1 Air. IIRC apart from an Akai sampler, The Avalanches composed Since I Left You (which involved thousands of individual samples from different records layered throughout) entirely on a Beige G3!

Not sure about the track in question, but there’s a difference between composing “computer sequenced“ music - which started on 8-bit machines in the 80s - and the way a modern DAW can score, sequence, simulate instruments, record, add effects, mix and master a complete finished recording.

Still, for the last 30 years or so, the “aspiration” for computers has been video editing and 3D - which is computationally far more demanding than audio... and although someone will always find a use for mooooore tracks, once you could have a few dozen it was “diminishing returns”.

 

[ahurst]

Not sure about the track in question, but there’s a difference between composing “computer sequenced“ music - which started on 8-bit machines in the 80s - and the way a modern DAW can score, sequence, simulate instruments, record, add effects, mix and master a complete finished recording.

It's an album a bunch of Australian guys made by going out digging in the dollar bins at record stores, finding weird stuff to sample, and building it all into an hour-long work that sounds kind of like the 50's filtered through the late 90's. From what I can dig up, they used something called Opcode Studio Vision to piece it all together:

Apparently, one of the band members insisted on continuing to use the Beige G3 with Studio Vision up until 2014, which was a pain because they had to carry it everywhere when they went on tour and they were all terrified it'd break. Maybe that's part of why it took them 16 years after their 2000 debut to release their next album...

 

[leman]

if the RAM demands of the average user hadn't levelled off, would the industry have been able to keep that same exponential rate of RAM capacity growth, or are there technical challenges and limitations we've run into that would have made it difficult?

That is a really good question. Would be very curious to know an answer from someone who knows this stuff as wel...

Regarding mechanical hard drives though, the largest sizes you can buy may have increased, but it doesn't seem like the price per GB has changed much in the past 5 years. I got an 8 TB external SMR drive for backups in 2017 for ~$230 CAD, and it looks like the price is pretty much the same today. I remember reading something about us running into the physical limits of conventional hard drive capacity a while back, which is why so many newer drives are using SMR to fit more data despite its trade-offs. Is that accurate, or is there still technical room to grow if the demand was there?

Weren't there also some stories with some sort of economic drama and shortages that make HDD prices go up? And yes, you are right, the industry seems to have hit the wall with magnetic platter density...

I know what you mean. I have a 2013 iMac with an i7-4771 and it feels way newer and more usable after 8 years than my previous 2009 Core 2 Duo iMac did after 4!

Yeah, the large part of the last decade was characterised by great stagnation in semiconductor performance. Things just keep consuming more energy in a desperate attempt to generate more sales. There was some qualitative improvement with Zen3 and with Tiger Lake, plus now Alder Lake, but the power consumption of high-performance pieces nowadays is off the chart. Which is one of the reasons I like Apple: they don't degrade themselves by playing this energy inflation game.