Isn't this backwards?
Try doing the math here. How much cheaper would a netbook get if every single developer coordinated to reduce RAM and CPU usage? $5? Maybe $10? Looking at market prices, old RAM and CPUs are cheap. They consume basically the same physical resources as new RAM and CPUs, so price competition for not-the-best hardware is fierce.
Now ask those people if they'd pay $5 or $10 more for assorted new software features. Any features they can think of. And keep in mind that in that price range, people are paying $10 more to pick the color of their computer.
So sure, it offends me a little, because I like optimizing the things I pay attention to, like RAM usage. But if instead I optimize for the sorts of the things users care about, especially as reflected by what they'll actually pay for it becomes pretty clear: users don't care about the things I do.
So then the moral question becomes for me: who am I to impose my aesthetic choices on the people I'm trying to serve?
This is especially true as people are promoting everyone moving to a platform that is substantially worse.
How about getting more performance and battery life out of the same machine which effects more than netbook users.
You may have noticed that we are in the technology industry. That means the final measure of our work is economic. The final judges of our work are our customers.
If you believe that X is better in our industry, you must be able to demonstrate that betterness in terms of user economics, in terms of user experience. You haven't yet, and you seem unwilling to even grapple with my argument in those terms. Are you planning on trying?
