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Batavian

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 10, 2011
464
38
i don't understand their marketing. The first thing iFixit or any other site is going to do is tear down the device. Why the secret about whether the iPhone 6s or iPad Mini 4 has 1 or 2 GB of RAM?
 
The vast majority of iPhone users are not tech geeks and people don't care. Ask a typical Apple user what their iPhone spec's are they wouldn't be able to tell you.

I couldn't agree more with you.

Yet they list just about every other spec BUT RAM.
 
Because they don't care. They know they'll still make stack on stacks on stacks of money.
 
Because they don't care. They know they'll still make stack on stacks on stacks of money.
Precisely

Apple takes great pride in their self image as superior beings in a superior company. Closed and proprietary, they go to great lengths to create very unique expensive items you are forced to buy from them.

I give Apple a lot of credit, they're better at clever marketing than almost any other company on the planet. They're brilliant at manipulating customers. The stuff they get away with, the support they get from the worshippers is bloody amazing. People who have nothing to do with Apple yet defend their practices and high pricing like they were getting a percentage of the sales.

It's good that be Apple :D
 
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The vast majority of iPhone users are not tech geeks and people don't care. Ask a typical Apple user what their iPhone spec's are they wouldn't be able to tell you.

Whats funny is that I don't find Android users any more knowledgeable or tech savvy. I almost always know more about the phone than the someone trying to brag about it's specs, and I only use iPhone. I love the look the person's face who was bragging about their S6 Edge and didn't know what a QHD or 1440p display was. :rolleyes:

In reality, the vast majority of people(iOS or Android) don't even know what RAM means.
 
Because Apple doesn't want to go into that spec-war where companies are just posting numbers that doesn't make any sense in how the overall experience is..

Samsung: "Octo-core CPU in our new flagship phone", and yet numbers usually show, that the CPU in iPhones are faster in the end.

Which CPU is faster? A 3GHz Pentium 4 or the 2GHz i7 that's sitting in my Retina Macbook Pro?

If we compare a Geekbench single-core performance (because the Pentium 4 only have one core, and my i7 has four), so it's 100% comparable, we'll get the following number:

3GHz P4 (one core) = 816 score
2GHz i7-4750HQ (one core) = 2907 score

Hey - the P4 even has 1024 KB L2 cache versus my i7 that only has 256 KB...
 
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Because Apple doesn't want to go into that spec-war where companies are just posting numbers that doesn't make any sense in how the overall experience is..

The overall experience does depend heavily on the available RAM. It's more relevant than half of the specs that they do list.
 
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The overall experience does depend heavily on the available RAM. It's more relevant than half of the specs that they do list.

Could this precisely be the reason? iPad sales have been sluggish because people keep them longer. Crippling an iOS device by limiting RAM is a very effective (and inconspicuous...) built-in obsolescence mechanism...
 
Because Apple doesn't want to go into that spec-war where companies are just posting numbers that doesn't make any sense in how the overall experience is..

Samsung: "Octo-core CPU in our new flagship phone", and yet numbers usually show, that the CPU in iPhones are faster in the end.

Which CPU is faster? A 3GHz Pentium 4 or the 2GHz i7 that's sitting in my Retina Macbook Pro?

If we compare a Geekbench single-core performance (because the Pentium 4 only have one core, and my i7 has four), so it's 100% comparable, we'll get the following number:

3GHz P4 (one core) = 816 score
2GHz i7-4750HQ (one core) = 2907 score

Hey - the P4 even has 1024 KB L2 cache versus my i7 that only has 256 KB...
I think this post sums it up well. Quite often, even the flagship Apple model looks inferior to the competitor's one on paper (specifications-wise). But in real life usage it is often the other way around. I guess that because of this Apple did not want to enter this kind of contest and chose to publish only a subset of the specifications - the most meaningful for the average user.
 
The overall experience does depend heavily on the available RAM. It's more relevant than half of the specs that they do list.
Sure it does. But you cannot compare 1.5GB in an Apple product running IOS that runs native apps vs. 3GB in a product running Android that runs apps JIT byte code in a JVM. It has a HUGE overhead in doing that versus iOS.

And 2GB is more that enough on an Air as well as a mini.
 
I guess that because of this Apple did not want to enter this kind of contest and chose to publish only a subset of the specifications - the most meaningful for the average user.

Indeed, Apple only want to protect their average users from dangerous information such as whether these devices have 1 or 2 GB of RAM -- which, for example, merely impacts whether Safari constantly reloads pages, which is completely unnecessary knowledge that should not have any bearing on the purchase decision.

This is done solely out of consideration for the poor average users who must be kept in the dark so that they don't accidentally make informed decisions when they spend their money.
 
I guess that because of this Apple did not want to enter this kind of contest and chose to publish only a subset of the specifications - the most meaningful for the average user.

Except they do chose to insist on some other meaningless (for casual users) tech specs, such as 64-bits CPUs, which quite frankly don't make as much difference in terms of usability as RAM.
 
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