I'm (mostly) picking models on speed now, not intelligence

For the first time I can remember, I'm not choosing my daily driver models on raw intelligence. I'm choosing them on speed. Have we reached an intelligence tipping point? This is probably going to age like spoilt milk, but right now, models around the ~Opus 4.6 level seem to be 'smart enough' for most of my daily tasks - code, pulling together research, designing slide decks and doing analytical tasks against a plethora of databases. While like most I was hyped to play around with Fable, ironically the US Gov shutdown gave everyone time to get used to Opus again. When Fable came back post-hype with additional guardrails, the first thing I noticed was just how slow it is[1]. So slow, actually, that I switched back to Opus pretty quickly. I've spent a lot of my career making software fast. It's remarkable how much better software feels to interact with when it's fast. In my experience (and many studies), you can take the most beautiful product, but if it's slow, you won't enjoy using…