Yes, I was surprised to see marketing, even criticism of their own previous products, in a programming guide. Once past the "history lesson" the book is actually very good--with concrete examples on building an operating system and a coherent explanation of IEEE 754 floating point format. Hardware floating point for x86 used to be offered as a separate coprocessor chip--the x87 series--otherwise it had to be emulated in software.

I would also argue that the 8008 was a real computer. The ENIAC was the first "real" computer (in the sense of general purpose, digital), with its ~.005 MIPS (integer add/sub) vs. the 8008 at ~0.05 MIPS, and was a bit larger and more difficult to program. I wrote programs on a 6502-based Apple years before the IBM PC appeared. I guess that was a phantom computer.