

The Death of the Specification - sim1066
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/14/rip-spec/

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ChuckMcM
TL;DR version - the relative popularity of technology gizmos doesn't
correllate well with their specifications.

Somebody rolled out from under a rock that they ahd been in since 2000 and
woke up apparently. The history was that with x86 flavored personal computers,
there was a 15 year period between 1985 and 2000 where you could take two
machines, compare the specs of the ram/processor/video and come up with a
'good, better, best' scale. This made it easy for technology journalists, they
could get a press release for the new HP or Toshiba or Alienware PC and say
"this is better than last years/competitor X's/etc model." Easy sauce. But
eventually PCs and laptops got to be good enough so that most people didn't
care, it just worked, and having more features was better, or having better
features. So the 'specs' or the details of how the manufacturer did, was less
important.

Why Techcrunch's editors didn't figure this out, oh, 5 or 6 years ago, is
anyone's guess.

Now it would be great if they would internalize this newfound understanding
and stop pumping up OMGWTFBBQ we have PS3 graphics on an ARM chip! Type
headlines and instead focus on the people and companies who are using the
capabilities of this embarassment of riches to provide new and interesting
products. They do some of that of course but so far, for me at least, its not
nearly enough relative to this 'specs are dead' stuff.

~~~
pkulak
Exactly. You can't put out an article like this while spewing our countless
reviews talking about how one camera is so many megapixels better than this
other camera.

~~~
Dylan16807
I don't know, I think specs still work fine for cameras. Not the megapixel
number but the resolution of what it actually picks up. Also noise levels and
shutter speed.

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kstenerud
News flash: Consumer Reports is not a cheerleader for the top selling
products. They are an organization concerned over what you get in actual fact
for your money.

Consumer Reports is read by people who want to know all of the quality issues
and hard facts about a product before making a purchasing decision. Such
consumers always have, and always will be, a small market segment.

This "credibility rant" reads like a sycophant lamenting those who don't heap
lavish praise upon the popular kids.

~~~
j_baker
I don't think the author ever said that Consumer Reports _should_ be a
cheerleader for top-selling products. Rather, the author says that Consumer
Reports doesn't seem to have much influence over what sells. It sounds to me
like you agree with the author.

~~~
kstenerud
CR has plenty of influence over what sells to its target market. If this
weren't so, it would be impossible for them to turn a profit. The author is
claiming that CR is irrelevant and out of touch, and "demonstrates" his point
using a market that CR doesn't even cater to.

You might as well argue that Techcrunch is irrelevant because it doesn't cover
the latest in housing and furniture.

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drewda
Based on the headline, I thought this would be about how software engineering
is now most often done in a scattershot--sorry, agile--manner, without
documents that first detail customer requirements, then product
specifications, and so on.*

By the way, my somewhat sarcastic, somewhat serious rule of thumb is to avoid
specs when doing software in-house that I direct and to insist on specs when
contracting out work.

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model>

~~~
Volpe
Curious what you mean with "avoid specs", how do you know what to build?

~~~
artsrc
How do you know what to write in the spec?

~~~
j_baker
Clearly the answer is to have a spec for the spec.

------
artsrc
It is a bad thing that companies can charge monopoly prices.

It is a good thing that companies write good software.

Some specs are important. People care about storage space, screen quality,
device responsiveness and battery life.

Some companies have escaped the competitive hardware market with
differentiated software (or other things). So while 32GB micro SD cards cost
$30, some others can charge $100 for 32GB of flash storage.

[http://www.google.com/search?q=32gb+micro+sd&tbm=shop...](http://www.google.com/search?q=32gb+micro+sd&tbm=shop&hl=en&aq=1s&oq=32+GB+)

[http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_...](http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_touch/select)

In an area of specification that people definitely care about, some companies
can charge a 300% premium.

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eykanal
This is a good article, but the spec has been dead since the release of the
first iPhone. (Maybe earlier, but that was when everyone talked about it.)
Apple showed that users don't really care about spec unless everything else
looks the same. When all consumers have are rows and rows of identical-looking
computers, they pick the one with the highest numbers. When they have a single
piece of hardware, with no specs at all, but which behaves intuitively and
does what they need, the spec doesn't matter.

Everything the article says follows from that.

~~~
cbr
The first iphone? The first _ipod_ was famously panned [1] on specs and then
was a huge success.

[1] [http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-
ip...](http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod)

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tatsuke95
Just another way for MG to place Apple on a pedestal.

Look, it does make sense that when my mother goes to buy a computer, she can
be confident in knowing what she's getting, without having to understand
gigabytes, megahertz and cores. I get that.

But the first thing I did after clicking on the link to buy my Macbook Air?
Spec'd it out the way I wanted. It's not transparent, and people like "specs".
i7, 256 GB HD. It's the same reason I know the fuel mileage, tire size and
horsepower of my car.

How can anyone take this guy seriously when he says things like:

 _"My MacBook Air doesn’t have the specs of a brand new HP PC laptop — but it
still feels faster."_

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nl
This is a less well thought version of Marc Andreessen's _Software eats the
World_ essay[1]. For devices like phones and tablets the platform (aka
software+services) matters a lot more than the hardware.

Sure, there are a few exceptions: gaming requires specific hardware, the
connected fitness market likes Ant+, Bluetooth 3.0 or dongles, etc. But the
general case is that the software matters, not the hardware.

[1]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190348090457651...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html)

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Fluxx
Another way to look at this is that raw specs don't matter because it's
_execution_ and _quality_ that matter. Every Apple product I've ever owned has
cost 2x as much as the "equally spec'd" rival, but Apple products last longer
and work better because they're better designed and made to a higher quality.
I've had the same Macbook for 2+ years and it's still working great, while the
EEEPC netbook is slower, full of bloatware and has had it's AC adapter plug
fail.

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funkah
On the one hand, I agree that the experience of using something is all that
matters, and only a handful of specs (like storage capacity) actually mean
anything.

On the other, I'm kinda not looking forward to the upcoming glut of Kindle
Fire owners spouting off about what goobers iPad owners are, because they got
the same thing (as far as they're concerned) for less than half the money.

