You seem to assume a large portion of users are software engineers or tech people. You may consider a 16GB ‘bare minimum’, but not everyone needs that - nor can even afford that (or a laptop more than, say, new or used for $750).
That being said, my parents are perfectly happy using Google chrome on 2gb ram with a core 2 duo. And that's not with only a few tabs.
It may come as a shock to you but there exists a world outside of California/London/random-tech-hub
£670 is much more than people I know want to spend on a new machine. None of them have ever mentioned screen resolution when i've asked what they want in a laptop.
To me, the hardware report shows technology is quite stagnant on display resolution and memory. 1366x768 is a resolution from 2002 or thereabouts. 4GB was common in desktop computers in 2005. ~15 years have passed and consumers in the $750 price range are still hamstrung with 1366x768 and 4GB of memory? I would expect better from a $750 phone, let alone a computer.
I think we're actually talking about computers that are very old and have never been upgraded or new computers in the $200 to $400 range.
So yes, the innards of your 2017 MBA are very old. It has Broadwell generation (circa 2014) CPU/GPU, and one optimized for power draw at that (i.e. a slower one).
In 2002, the most common resolutions were 4:3, not 16:9, not only because notebooks were not mainstream yet.
> 4GB [RAM] was common in desktop computers in 2005.
That's the time when notebooks became mainstream iirc. I purchased a gaming notebook in 2006, it had 1 GB RAM. I also bought a midrange notebook in 2009 which also came with 1 GB. (I later upgraded to 2 GB aftermarket.)
Sure. I didn't really intend to get into fine-grained technical details, but yes, back then 4:3 was the predominant aspect ratio. In fact, some of the 17" LCD displays from the time were that awkward 5:4 resolution of 1280x1024.
But putting specifics aside, the broader point is that computing technology—at least with respect to the most popular display resolution and amount of memory—is stagnant. In this thread there are people arguing for technology asceticism and making the point that 4GB and 1366x768 are good enough. And maybe they are for some people. I am surprised there are so many who are satisfied with this particular flavor of "good enough." (Though I would like to see how well that correlates with mobile device technology asceticism.)
I want the hardware industry to do better, and I thought things had started improving a few years ago when 4K displays emerged and the shackles of "High Definition" (1920x1080) were cast aside. But this data shows adoption of 4K displays for computing is so low it's not even measured as such. That disappointed me, but it's unsurprising. What surprised me was realizing 1920x1080 isn't the top dog I thought it was—in fact, the situation is worse than I thought.
And to my mind, all of this feeds into the subject at hand: an operating system vendor getting stuck. The embrace of "good enough" is suffocating.
I think there's a huge disconnect between what's you think is "common" and what people actually have. Steam hardware survey from 2009[1] says only 10% of steam (gaming) users have ram greater or equal to 4GB. I'm going to estimate that in 2005, that figure is less than 5%. Saying 4GB is common in 2005 would be like saying 64GB today is "common".
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20090415225520/http://store.stea...
There's quite a lot of these, e.g. HP Stream; the Windows license is much cheaper for these systems because they have such low specs.
If anything it's worse now because the RAM is soldered in and they're using BGA ICs which makes it impossible for most people to upgrade.