Ask HN: Why are Meltdown and Spectre being linked in the press?

Graz University of Technology, Google, and the rest have disclosed Meltdown and Spectre as a packaged deal and the media is treating them as such. Meltdown is a long-standing, exploitable Intel-exclusive hardware defect, whereas Spectre is an exploitable concept common to many vendors' processors.

Why are these issues being coupled when they are completely separate things? Is this a case of Intel being "Too Big to Fail" requiring Big Tech and the media to circle the wagons and provide them cover?

Personally speaking, I have hoped for a Meltdown-style exploit to emerge that forces Intel to switch focus from feature creep to software quality, formal verification, and removing the entire ME feature set from consumer chip offerings.

At the very least, I was hoping an event like Meltdown would usher in a "Snow Leopard-esque" generation of Intel chips that focus on quality/polish and not new features, process improvements or GHz bumps.