4 ms·

The essential point about specs is bang on, but comparing computer purchasing to soft drinks over-trivializes it. Soft drinks have nearly zero feature different

The essential point about specs is bang on, but comparing computer purchasing to soft drinks over-trivializes it. Soft drinks have nearly zero feature differentiation. Lots of consumer goods have meaningful features. One dishwasher might be quiet. Another might use very little energy. A third may heat its own water, sanitizing the dishes. You may want a model that can be fitted with a panel to match the cabinetry. What dishwasher manufacturers have moved away from is specifications that do not strongly correlate with features. How many horsepower does a dishwasher motor have? How many chips are in its circuitry? What does it weigh? These things are rarely front and centre, because most buyers can't draw a connection between them and a benefit they will enjoy. The trend is not towards brands being the only thing that matter, but rather towards features that probide benefits. RAM and Megahertz are specifications. Being powerful enough to do speech recognition in real time is a feature. Siri is a benefit.

eykanal 15y ago
Your point about over-trivializing is a good one. I had a hard time figuring out what sector to use as an example.
- ovi256 15y ago
  Movies. Handtools. Paintings. They may seem a disparate set, the connexion is subjectivity. Movies and paintings both speak in different ways to different people, and everyone knows they may like something their closest friend hated. It's even more of a clear cut with handtools. If you don't get the right one to fit your task, any talk of quality/speed is useless. The best concrete drill can't replace a carpenter's hammer if what you need is to extract nails.
libria 15y ago
Some specs matter; the problem is that they don't present their strengths clearly or they dilute it with meaningless ones. I could send a soccer mom to a store and tell her to prefer an SSD over 4200 RPM, i7 over Atom, 4GB RAM over 512MB. She doesn't know what these are, but she does know which one is better, the same way she'd know that a V6 is more jumpy than a 4-cylinder. (edit, had RAM specs swapped)
- ugh 15y ago
  Specs are an awful proxy. Specs do matter insofar as they impact user experience. That relation, however, is not linear. Diminishing returns are very common and there are also discontinuities. Also, there are tradeoffs to consider: noise, temperature, weight, size, speed, battery, price, software … You can’t have it all. That’s just not an option. Specs are an implementation detail. They matter, sure, but the average consumer shouldn’t try and judge products based on them. That’s destined to fail. They should look at user experience and tradeoffs. Companies and reviewers should try to translate the specs that were used to implement tradeoffs into user experience. Who is this device good for? What tradeoffs does it try to pick? Does it do a good job at that? That’s what matters.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    The problem with doing that is it would require very comprehensive reviews or for customers to very thoroughly try out all products before purchase. For example if a new product is launched on the market and it appears to be cheap but you know that it has a Fast Quad Core CPU and decent video hardware , you already know in a relatively small amount of text that it will be good for video editing , gaming and various other tasks. If it only has a 300Mhz CPU you already know that it will not be good for any of these tasks and you can confidently avoid it. As another example I remember years ago seeing computer adverts which would attempt to simplying their specs with bylines such as "Family Computer" , "Small business computer" , "Games Computer" etc. What if you want a PC for use by all the family for homework/internet etc but the oldest child happens to be an avid WoW/COD Player and Dad plans to use it to prepare accounts for his small retail business?
    - ugh 15y ago
      It’s not so hard, really. There are a very limited number of use cases, a limited number of tradeoffs. A long list of specs is much worse than just writing “This machine is great if you need a lot of power for video editing and rendering and other creative tasks. It is, however, correspondingly noisy, hot and big, not a very good fit for mobile use or for anyone who needs a quiet computer.” That’s so much more helpful. Specs are code in comparison. Specs confuse, specs frighten, specs suck. They force consumers to figure out the tradeoffs that stand behind them. That’s too much work.

eykanal 15y ago

Your point about over-trivializing is a good one. I had a hard time figuring out what sector to use as an example.

ovi256 15y ago
Movies. Handtools. Paintings. They may seem a disparate set, the connexion is subjectivity. Movies and paintings both speak in different ways to different people, and everyone knows they may like something their closest friend hated. It's even more of a clear cut with handtools. If you don't get the right one to fit your task, any talk of quality/speed is useless. The best concrete drill can't replace a carpenter's hammer if what you need is to extract nails.

libria 15y ago

Some specs matter; the problem is that they don't present their strengths clearly or they dilute it with meaningless ones. I could send a soccer mom to a store and tell her to prefer an SSD over 4200 RPM, i7 over Atom, 4GB RAM over 512MB. She doesn't know what these are, but she does know which one is better, the same way she'd know that a V6 is more jumpy than a 4-cylinder. (edit, had RAM specs swapped)

ugh 15y ago
Specs are an awful proxy. Specs do matter insofar as they impact user experience. That relation, however, is not linear. Diminishing returns are very common and there are also discontinuities. Also, there are tradeoffs to consider: noise, temperature, weight, size, speed, battery, price, software … You can’t have it all. That’s just not an option. Specs are an implementation detail. They matter, sure, but the average consumer shouldn’t try and judge products based on them. That’s destined to fail. They should look at user experience and tradeoffs. Companies and reviewers should try to translate the specs that were used to implement tradeoffs into user experience. Who is this device good for? What tradeoffs does it try to pick? Does it do a good job at that? That’s what matters.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  The problem with doing that is it would require very comprehensive reviews or for customers to very thoroughly try out all products before purchase. For example if a new product is launched on the market and it appears to be cheap but you know that it has a Fast Quad Core CPU and decent video hardware , you already know in a relatively small amount of text that it will be good for video editing , gaming and various other tasks. If it only has a 300Mhz CPU you already know that it will not be good for any of these tasks and you can confidently avoid it. As another example I remember years ago seeing computer adverts which would attempt to simplying their specs with bylines such as "Family Computer" , "Small business computer" , "Games Computer" etc. What if you want a PC for use by all the family for homework/internet etc but the oldest child happens to be an avid WoW/COD Player and Dad plans to use it to prepare accounts for his small retail business?
  - ugh 15y ago
    It’s not so hard, really. There are a very limited number of use cases, a limited number of tradeoffs. A long list of specs is much worse than just writing “This machine is great if you need a lot of power for video editing and rendering and other creative tasks. It is, however, correspondingly noisy, hot and big, not a very good fit for mobile use or for anyone who needs a quiet computer.” That’s so much more helpful. Specs are code in comparison. Specs confuse, specs frighten, specs suck. They force consumers to figure out the tradeoffs that stand behind them. That’s too much work.