Re:The Death of the Specification
by ChuckMcM on Monday November 14, 2011 @04:54PM
(#3235870)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by Lukeas14 on Monday November 14, 2011 @06:34PM
(#3236195)
I think it comes down to hardware vs. software. In the "PC" era your hardware was the sole determiner of what you could do with your machine. However, in the "Post PC" era the software has become just as important. Your tablet's API and App store policies now determine what you can and can't do. When you consider that software is much hard to provide comparable specs for than hardware, the falling importance of specs makes sense.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by pkulak on Monday November 14, 2011 @06:22PM
(#3236158)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by Dylan16807 on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @12:12PM
(#3239023)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by ErikRogneby on Monday November 14, 2011 @05:25PM
(#3235979)
I agree. These days it's just as much about what content channels are available on the platform as well. Hulu, Netflix, <app du jour>, Flash support etc.
I think back to satellite radio: Sirus vs. XM and it was about who had which sports, and Howard Stern. Nobody was talking (or caring) about bit-rates or spectrum support.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by kstenerud on Monday November 14, 2011 @06:33PM
(#3236189)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by j_baker on Monday November 14, 2011 @07:01PM
(#3236262)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by kstenerud on Monday November 14, 2011 @08:18PM
(#3236478)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by dubya on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @08:42AM
(#3238139)
CR definitely does have an affect on the market for some things, but maybe not such a large effect for phones and computers. Try ordering their top-pick refrigerator or washing machine about a month after the review comes out to see.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by PotatoEngineer on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @03:53PM
(#3240161)
Until I saw this article, I never realized that CR reviewed computers. It makes sense (they review everything else), but I turn to CR for appliances and cars, not computers and smartphones. There are plenty of other sites that are better for reviewing computers and computer-like entities.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by drewda on Monday November 14, 2011 @04:45PM
(#3235832)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by artsrc on Monday November 14, 2011 @05:57PM
(#3236088)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by eykanal on Monday November 14, 2011 @04:41PM
(#3235820)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by tatsuke95 on Monday November 14, 2011 @08:12PM
(#3236467)
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."
Re:The Death of the Specification
by nl on Monday November 14, 2011 @08:24PM
(#3236501)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by Fluxx on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @03:03AM
(#3237475)
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.
Re:The Death of the Specification
by funkah on Monday November 14, 2011 @04:59PM
(#3235886)
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.
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.
I think back to satellite radio: Sirus vs. XM and it was about who had which sports, and Howard Stern. Nobody was talking (or caring) about bit-rates or spectrum support.
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.
You might as well argue that Techcrunch is irrelevant because it doesn't cover the latest in housing and furniture.
So what did you get? Sorry to threadjack, but I don't have one and may need to buy one shortly.
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
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://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_...
In an area of specification that people definitely care about, some companies can charge a 300% premium.
Everything the article says follows from that.
[1] http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ip...
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."
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...
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.