Anyone in IT support and sysadmin can tell you that the people who deem themselves a professional user are usually the ones that have no idea what the hell they are doing. They are the worst kind of users one can come across and most IT shops will refuse these users. They have no idea what a professional is nor what gear a professional uses. It is almost impossible to work with them.
Well you've just explained why you are posting here in the forums now didn't you
As stated many times before, there are many different kinds of professionals and most of the professional users do not need powerful hardware (most are office workers anyway). Those that do are quite the minority unlike popular believe. That said, modern day hardware is quite powerful. Enough to run 3d simulations and calculations on a MacBook Air 2012/2013/2014. The same can be said about virtualisation where quite a lot of people still seem to be thinking they need a really fast CPU (you don't, memory and I/O speed are far more important as whitepapers from VMware and others have shown).
Besides some people don't understand the entire client-server model. You have great flexibility with this model where you can decide whether you need a thin client and a fat server or the other way around or some mix. In other words, people don't seem to be understanding that you can separate tasks and use the client as an interface. There are some developers that do all their development on servers and thus can keep their clients really simple, as simple as an iPad for instance. The same for sysadmins, many have tools like Prompt 2, VNC viewer, Microsofts RDP app on their iPhone or tablet so they can connect remotely to whatever system needs immediate attention in case of an emergency. Let alone that people know that all this cloud service stuff is in fact something we've already known for years: server based computing. Take a look at how many online services there are and that are accessible from nearly any device. Do you really think you still need a fat client for everything?
You could have been working your rear end off making those spreadsheets, calculations, reports like those financial people do, it would have given you the same knowledge about the IT market and users in general: absolutely none. If you want to have any knowledge of users in general and the IT market then you need to start working with users. A business consultant has a far better idea of all this, hence the reason why modern day IT courses are not about technology alone, they also cover small bits of psychology and business stuff.
The fact that you code should have made you aware of things like the client-server model but also to how modern day apps are build using various tiers and microservices, sandboxing as well as the well known mvc (model, view, controller). They all share the same basics: separation of various tasks. You of all people should have known that you can use a client as a simple or more complex interface. I find your post rather disappointing when it comes to the knowledge you claim to have.
And you are doing great contributing to that with this post of yours. If you want to lecture someone, start with yourself.
We are talking about generic computers here, they need to be able to do generic tasks and thus cater for numerous different kinds of workloads. This isn't the ARM processor in a digital camera that only has to do DSP. What the new MBP does with the Thunderbolt 3 ports is make it even more generic so it can cater to even more different kinds of workloads. No longer is the manufacturer dictating what the machine does but the user. Some would say "freedom at last!". Too bad not everybody sees the potential here.
