Memorial Day tech deals are here, and I'm not sure what any of this has to do with robotics
Retailers are slashing prices on desktops and laptops this weekend, which is fine, but let's talk about what these machines are actually for.
Image credit: Lottie animation by Centre Robotics (LottieFiles Free, used with credit). · source
I'm staring at my inbox this morning (yes, I still use email, fight me) and it's full of Memorial Day deal roundups. Laptops! Desktops! Save hundreds! And look, I get it, people need computers, computers go on sale, this is how capitalism works.
But here's the thing that's been rattling around in my head all week: we're in the middle of what everyone keeps calling an AI revolution, a robotics renaissance, pick your buzzword, and the way most people interact with it is still through the same beige boxes we've been buying since the Clinton administration. The form factor hasn't changed. The ritual hasn't changed. Wait for a holiday weekend, check the deal roundups, buy a Dell or a Lenovo or whatever Apple's calling its thing now, and hope it lasts four years.
ZDNet has a roundup of desktop deals, and ZDNet also has a laptop roundup (I'm linking both because I'm thorough like that, call me old-fashioned). The deals are real. You can save money. If you need a computer, this weekend is probably a good time to buy one.
But I've been covering tech since the 90s, and I've seen this movie before. Every few years there's a new paradigm, a new reason why THIS time the hardware matters, why THIS time you need to upgrade. Remember when netbooks were going to change everything? Remember when tablets were going to kill laptops? Remember when, and this one still stings, we were all supposed to be working in VR by now?
The pattern is always the same. New software capability emerges. Hardware manufacturers scramble to convince you that you need new hardware to run it. Some of that is true! Some of it is marketing! The hard part is figuring out which is which.
Related coverage
More in AI Models
A wave of new research tackles the gap between language understanding and robot control, with genuinely clever approaches that still leave fundamental questions open.
Aisha Patel · 1 hour ago · 9 min
The Chinese tech giant claims a breakthrough that could close the gap with TSMC, but the details are frustratingly thin.
Sarah Williams · 1 hour ago · 6 min
Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical on artificial intelligence might have been partially written by the very thing it warns against.
Robert "Bob" Macintosh · 3 hours ago · 3 min
A wave of new research is revisiting an old idea in robotics, and the results suggest we've been overthinking trajectory generation for years.

