That’s just a gross simplification of the things modern devices need to do today.
Simple stuff like encrypted handshakes used to be a significant performance consideration, and they are now a necessity for doing basic tasks like banking.
Modern software isn’t just bloated for no good reason and it’s such a tired trope among nerdy circles.
Sure, a phone from 2012 is powerful enough to do that specific task, but I am just using encryption as a pretty good example of how at some point you just need newer hardware in order to exist in the modern device ecosystem. No efficiency of software will make a commodore64 a usable device to use SSL in 2025.
And nobody is forcing you to exist in that system anyway. You can just physically go to the bank like my parents do. You can write checks like my parents do. This whole article is about needing technology to make a last minute payment that was highly predictable and should have been planned ahead of time.
It's not that extreme -- I had to get a new phone recently and it has 12 GB.
There is such a thing as reasonable upgrades and necessary replacements. But long-term FAANG software projects are built like sedimentary rock -- layers upon layers. This bloat has a real cost in performance but hardware upgrades help defer the problem and users pay for it.
You call it deferment of the problem but I call it elimination of the problem.
Yeah, a $500 phone comes with 12GB of RAM (Pixel 9).
A $150 GB phone comes with 6GB of RAM. Still quite a healthy amount and less than my last grocery bill. That’s cheaper than two iPhone battery replacements for an entire new phone.
This is before the devices have depreciated on the used/refurbished market. I can buy last year’s Pixel 8 for $230 and it has 12GB of RAM.
It’s totally fine to not want software bloat but at some point it is better economics to improve the hardware.
