This, fast processors in smartphones are more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.
If it is fast enough, who cares about the rest?
Sorry but I'm not going to do CFD simulations on my phone, and something mid range is more than enough to serve as the communication hub+DAP+GPS that I need. In any case, limit performance and give me better battery life FFS! Or use the extra free power to give me a better amp to use harder to drive headphones!
"How to convince myself that I can continue to consume from known bad companies."
Man, as someone who did tons of computer repair and support in my early years, the hoops and loops people go to keep buying stuff from apple, as maybe a bit of an extreme example, is just amazing!
I see it with stuff from amazon, nvidia and ea too, specially frustrating when there are clear less evil alternatives!
I think you already made the main argument clear. It is a cost cutting measure, and a very effective one at that!
Today's hardware is powerful enough that an APU is "enough" and again the Steam Deck is the most impressive of all of the examples.
But for a more premium product, there are 3 main pluses for CPU+dGPU, first, disparity in needed performance, if I'm gaming most of the power I need is GPU based, but if I'm doing CAD or CFD I'm suddenly CPU bound (ST for CAD, MT for CFD), and if I'm buying a 1.5k€ system, I do prefer it to be optimised for my use case and being able to choose CPU and GPU deparatedly allows for that, while for APU it'd become a skew nightmare! Second, upgradeability, as we have seen with things like 4th gen Intel processors keeping up until practically 3rd gen Ryzen took over as still relevant for gaming, where the main upgrade needed was the GPU, for a more premium product I do consider it important. And third, repairability, even if in some categories like laptops dGPU vs iGPU is not the main bottleneck for it, there is a big amount of computers I've rescued with a GPU swap, for sure.
I think you already made the main argument clear. It is a cost cutting measure, and a very effective one at that!
Today's hardware is powerful enough that an APU is "enough" and again the Steam Deck is the most impressive of all of the examples.
But for a more premium product, there are 3 main pluses for CPU+dGPU, first, disparity in needed performance, if I'm gaming most of the power I need is GPU based, but if I'm doing CAD or CFD I'm suddenly CPU bound (ST for CAD, MT for CFD), and if I'm buying a 1.5k€ system, I do prefer it to be optimised for my use case and being able to choose CPU and GPU deparatedly allows for that, while for APU it'd become a skew nightmare! Second, upgradeability, as we have seen with things like 4th gen Intel processors keeping up until practically 3rd gen Ryzen took over as still relevant for gaming, where the main upgrade needed was the GPU, for a more premium product I do consider it important. And third, repairability, even if in some categories like laptops dGPU vs iGPU is not the main bottleneck for it, there is a big amount of computers I've rescued with a GPU swap, for sure.
I think there are dbrand skins for the FW13