Recent example is Intel dropping the i from their CPU branding. What was an Intel Core i7 is now an “Intel Core Ultra 7”. This is a bizarre choice. The i3, i5, and i7 branding is very much a household name, and they’re just throwing that away.
Infinitely worse, they’ve also thrown out their low end Pentium and Celeron CPU branding. Now they’re simply calling them all a generic “Intel Processor”. What the actual fuck? People avoid Pentiums and Celerons because they’re widely regarded the absolute bottom of the silicon barrel. Now instead of “don’t get a Celeron, it’s practically e-waste” it’s going to be “don’t get an INTEL PROCESSOR, it’s practically e-waste”. Holy shit.
A bunch of rich fucking failchildren got paid the big bucks for these ideas meanwhile I’m making min wage working infinitely harder while actually producing a non-negative surplus value for my employer to steal.
Being confusing is the point. Because, you see, an Intel Core i7 isn’t just an Intel Core Ultra 7, it’s an Intel Core Ultra 7 and also an Intel Core 7. And is the Core Ultra 5 better than a Core 7? Who knows, maybe, maybe not.
Also notice that a Core Ultra 7 processor 155H has four more cores and twice the cache of a Core Ultra 7 processor 155U. And how many of those cores are P-cores, how many of them are E-cores? Who knows! And then a Core 7 processor 150U has two fewer cores than the Core Ultra 7 processor 155U, and the same cache, but a much faster max clock than any of the Core Ultra models.
Intel actively does not want anyone to understand these model names.
It’s so OEMs can put an Intel Ultra badge on their laptops instead of i3 or i5. Especially since AMD is kinda dominating that market right now.
And Apple switched to Silicon so that massive customer is gone
You’d think this kind of infantilizing of the customer would drive people to hate these companies and grow wary of marketing in general.
Don’t patronize me when I’m buying a cheap machine. I know it’s cheap, and would rather figure that out via Silver/Gold/Platinum or Tier 1/2/3 or whatever than this nonsense.
They aren’t selling this to the customer, they’re selling it to OEMs. B2B sales are always going to be at odds with B2C sales.
Yeah but it’s deliberately deceptive. I would expect, for example, a Core 7 150U to outperform a Core Ultra 7 155U in most tasks because it trades away the two weakest cores and the useless NPU for an extra 600MHz boost on the cores that actually matter but you really have to dig into spec sheets to figure those details out