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It might be a racket, like the software/hardware market. Intel and OS/Software manufacturers are in cahoots to constantly design apps that require beefier hardware so that people have to constantly upgrade.

The same might go for cell phone manufacturers. They intentionally leave a market for accessories so that their partners can make more money and to ensure support/staying quiet.

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I don't really believe that software developers intentionally write bloated code. It's just that most dev shops only fix performance issues when they become apparent on current-gen hardware.

As hardware gets better and better, the bar for "ok, this is too slow, let's go back to the drawing board optimize it" gets higher and higher.

Skype on my 4-year old phone is laughably slow, but I bet it'd be a lot faster if the devs did not have the latest and greatest in hardware.

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