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I think you meant 'performance' instead of 'capability'. As far as 'performance', Apple has never been one to put performance numbers up as a selling point. Ma

I think you meant 'performance' instead of 'capability'. As far as 'performance', Apple has never been one to put performance numbers up as a selling point. Macs have never been marketed as an X (M|G)hz machine with Y (M|G)B RAM. Those were details Steve felt should be abstracted away from the user. So, I'd agree with you that the success of iPhone has never really been driven by 'hardware performance', as that is the popular habit of Apple. That said, it remains that iPhone is still a fairly powerful smartphone, as they come, and the author seems to be arguing (rightfully so, IMO) that Apple is cashing in on that fact through leveraging that for the aesthetic design of their software. Arguably, all mobile OSs have to be built with some amount of mindfulness to the performance of the lowest common denominator device. Android could be pretty low, whereas Apple's lowest common denominator device for iOS 7 still has moderately powerful specs.

bornhuetter 13y ago
> Macs have never been marketed as an X (M|G)hz machine with Y (M|G)B RAM. Not quite true, I don't think. Around the late 90s, early 00s there was a lot of marketing around the high Mhz of the Mac CPU compared with PCs - and arguments about the merits of RISC vs CISC. That was back in the Mhz wars when Mhz was all most people cared about and paid attention to.
- mason55 13y ago
  > Not quite true, I don't think. Around the late 90s, early 00s there was a lot of marketing around the high Mhz of the Mac CPU compared with PCs Funnily enough that exactly corresponds to Apple's dark period
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  > there was a lot of marketing around the high Mhz of the Mac CPU compared with PCs Em, no. At a time when Apple used PowerPC instead of Intel processors, Apple wanted to de-emphasize Megahertzes because the PowerPC chips had lower clock frequencies than the Intel chips of the day. Instead, Apple would advertise the PowerMac as being twice as fast as PC workstations, and it would speak of megaflops and ‘the first desktop supercomputer’. See also ‘The Megahertz Myth’[1]. So yes, Apple did compare the performance of their pro models (PowerMac, PowerBook) with PC counterparts, but they didn’t use clock frequency or memory speed to make their point. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth

bornhuetter 13y ago

> Macs have never been marketed as an X (M|G)hz machine with Y (M|G)B RAM. Not quite true, I don't think. Around the late 90s, early 00s there was a lot of marketing around the high Mhz of the Mac CPU compared with PCs - and arguments about the merits of RISC vs CISC. That was back in the Mhz wars when Mhz was all most people cared about and paid attention to.

mason55 13y ago
> Not quite true, I don't think. Around the late 90s, early 00s there was a lot of marketing around the high Mhz of the Mac CPU compared with PCs Funnily enough that exactly corresponds to Apple's dark period
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
> there was a lot of marketing around the high Mhz of the Mac CPU compared with PCs Em, no. At a time when Apple used PowerPC instead of Intel processors, Apple wanted to de-emphasize Megahertzes because the PowerPC chips had lower clock frequencies than the Intel chips of the day. Instead, Apple would advertise the PowerMac as being twice as fast as PC workstations, and it would speak of megaflops and ‘the first desktop supercomputer’. See also ‘The Megahertz Myth’[1]. So yes, Apple did compare the performance of their pro models (PowerMac, PowerBook) with PC counterparts, but they didn’t use clock frequency or memory speed to make their point. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth