

Why tech specs are going to be meaningless in the age of the iPad  - mlongo
http://ipadwatcher.com/2010/04/25/why-tech-specs-are-going-to-be-meaningless-in-the-age-of-the-ipad/

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philk
For regular users tech specs haven't mattered in years.

Although I suppose if you're writing for a website called ipadwatcher.com you
feel obliged to relate everything to the iPad.

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mlongo
You could say that, but the fact is that it was my feeling of stragenss with
the iPad / netbook comparison I mentioned in another comment here that got me
to thinking about this.

The netbook has 8 times more memory, but can't play movies as well as the iPad
can. So comparing such a basic spec isn't meaningful any more.

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ivenkys
Yes, tech specs do not matter if all you are doing is looking at the device as
a consumable.

For techies i suspect it will continue to matter.

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tfh
We _(techies)_ tend to ignore that the vast majority of the web users today
are not techies.

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senko
Not bothering with the tech specs is nothing new, game console market's been
like that for years. People (normal people, not geeks salivating over specs)
don't care how fast the CPU in their console is - they only care which games
can be played with it.

They can still compare the quality of the consoles (newer, bigger, nicer,
games will run on newer consoles, but not on older - or, one can complain
about lack of DVD playback on Wii, without going into tech details).

(Feature) phone market used to be like this, too, at least from what I
remember in the past 13-14 years in europe. Only with the rise of the
smartphone (when people started looking at the more like computers) and phone
cameras (the unavoidable megapixel comparisons) did tech specs started get
into everyday conversation about phones.

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cschep
It's hard to relay how "fast" and "crisp" it feels with numbers, which
certainly seems to be part of the game apple is playing.

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johnohara
My understanding is tech specs are generally used to maintain price points.

"Yes, it's the same price as last year's model but look at the specs."

When I first saw the iPad I immediately drew a comparison to two other
technologies -- the netbook and the Kindle. I guess I did the tech specs for
the iPad by proxy.

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stcredzero
Many tech specs have been close to incomprehensible to the average consumer
for some time. Remember the gigahertz gamesmanship Intel was playing with the
P4? The clock speed number was being _inflated for marketing purposes_ , even
though it resulted in hotter, slower chips.

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ig1
I'm pretty sure every tech marketing manual ever written has had the mantra
"push benefits not features".

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keltex
What about battery life? device memory? screen resolution? Triangles/sec (for
GPU/games)?

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mlongo
While those points might still seem relevant, I'm sure that they really are.
Take the iPad as an example. With it's puny amount of memory it plays 720p
movies perfectly which my netbook with 8 times doesn't.

Simply comparing these things directly isn't so meaningful anymore.

