Ask Paul: January 5 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and welcome to the first Ask Paul of 2024! Which, as always, is chock-full of great reader questions I will struggle to answer.
Apple envy?
helix2301 asks:

Dell announced their XPS line which is the flagship will be copying Apple and doing away with 13th inch model and making it 14 inches and doing away with 15 and 17 and just making a 16 inch. Why do these companies feel the need to line up with Apple? One of the nice parts about the PC space is the choice and the variety.

I'm not sure we can credit Apple with moving to 14- and 16-inch laptop displays, since the entire industry is/has been doing this for some time. The move from 13.3- to 14-inch displays on the best-selling models started years ago and definitely predated Apple doing this. And last year, I noted the shift from 15.6-inch panels with 16:9 aspect ratios to 16-inch panels with 16:10 aspect ratios on larger laptops, a move I am quite happy about. But whatever, I don't think this is so much about inspiration as it is about demand: Even the world's biggest PC makers are beholden to what display makers can get them, and squarer, slightly larger panels are in right now.

I know this because, years ago, I had a conversation with the designers at ThinkPad, and I complained about 16:9 being the wrong aspect ratio and that I was surprised they were continuing down this path. To my surprise, they agreed with me wholeheartedly and expressed their frustration with the situation at the time. They just couldn't get 3:2 or 16:10 panels in volume at the time, and they were (and still are) the world's biggest seller of PCs. I'm not sure exactly what motivates the display makers, but I suspect it's a trickle-down feedback loop where customers complain to PC makers and PC makers complain to them, and if it's a big enough volume, they take on the expense of changing what they manufacture.

Anyway, I have grown to prefer larger displays on pretty much everything—PCs, laptops, tablets, and phones—in part, I'm sure, because I'm getting older and my vision has never been stellar. For me, a 14-inch display is the minimum for a laptop these days (though I will soon be reviewing a 13.3-inch laptop, go figure), and I very much feel that 16:10 is the "right"/"best" aspect ratio for PCs (with 3:2 or 4:3 being more ideal for tablets/convertibles). But 16- or even 17-inch displays are even better … assuming those laptops don't have numeric keypads, which is absolutely a subjective thing on my part. I just hate them. (I spoke to HP recently about using modular keyboards so that customers could choose between a centered keyboard with no numeric keypad or one with the keypad at purchase time, or later, and they actually seemed excited about this possibility.)

Anyway. Apple obviously does its own thing, but I think this is just the entire industry lining up for the same set of reasons.
AI in 2024
gstevenb asks:

Do you think that AI investment starts to slow now that conte...