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Comment by aristidb | Hacker News Reader

Yes, Apple shows that showing specs is not necessary: http://www.apple.com/macmini/ </sarcasm>

If specs help sell the things, by all means Google should include them. Whether they are "relevant" or not.

Also note that the info that it is _not_ an Intel Atom CPU is highly relevant IMO, because the Atom is slow as molasses.

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Agreeing with you here.

Apple is great at identifying context. A lot of people don't realize that Apple does "sell specifications", because they're mostly exposed to Apple's advertising, which rarely uses specification. However, when you get to their website, they recognize that you're probably looking for more detail. That shows an understanding of context.

There's another contextual difference they play as well. Have a look at their pages for traditional computing hardware, then have a look at their pages for iOS devices.

Traditional computers:

http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

iOS:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

Notice the difference in pitch? There are even identifiable differences in the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad pages. Which one is closer to a traditional computing device? The iPad. Which page is more specification oriented? The iPad.

A lot of lip service is given to Apple's avoidance of specification, but I think too many people treat it as a black & white scenario: you either do talk about specification, or you don't. Like many stereotypes, this focuses on the wrong distinction. It's not a matter of do or don't, but a matter of when and why. Specification isn't the best way to get customers interested in your product, but once the customer is in the door, you do need to be prepared to communicate the specifications clearly and in a relatable way. Apple is very adept at identifying that transition and guiding the customer on their way to a sale.

I love it how one of the titles for iphone is simply 'Mega megapixels.'.

"What does your phone have?" "Oh yeah, it's got Mega megapixels."

Most consumers don't even know what an Intel Atom CPU is. A large portion might have some vague brand awareness of Intel, though, so mentioning Intel is good in general. For a consumer product to succeed you can't sell it and market it to only people who know the difference between different processors. That's a very small group of people.

Intel "Core" is a brand that's got nice soft rounded-rectangles and friendly blue lettering. It's designed to appeal to consumers. They don't have to know what it is exactly, they just have to recognize it and buy it.

But Apple's page doesn't give nearly as much focus to the tech specs as Google's does. Most of the page "above the fold" is given over to a description of what it can do and the details they do give are more about relative improvements (2x faster, etc.) than raw numbers. The specs are available and it's clear where to see them but they're not the first thing the eye is drawn to.

Perhaps they should change the emphasis. But IMHO they should change it in the way that maximizes conversions.

What I took offense at was the suggestion that the specs are irrelevant and by consequence should not be shown _at all_.

(Also note that on my screen, the "fold" is below the Core i5/i7, Radeon HD and Thunderbolt blurbs. Meanwhile even above that, it emphasises "2x faster processors", "Thunderbolt I/O", "upgradeable memory", as well as physical size and software.)

This https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebox.html is equivalent to that: http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html

This http://www.apple.com/mac/ is equivalent to https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/

You have to click "Explore", then the "Devices" tab and then on the Chromebox image. Or you have specifically click "Chromebox" in the top-menu.

Using a deeplink and complaining it provides no general information about the whole ecosystem is imho a little bit silly.

Let's talk about the base url: https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/ that's bad. It should have its own domain.

Apple spends time on different kinda of specifications.

Instead of listing how much it can compute, they talk about how big it is (x inches by y inches by z inches), relative speed improvements (which aren't useful since the consumer may have no idea how slow or fast the prior one is), lots of specs around the price (price is a specification), what kind of I/O it has (thunderbolt), the processor (just not the Ghz), the graphics part (just not which model, but strangely they list the CPU speed over there -- and of course it's the rated speed for the more expensive model) then some generic statements about which Apple software you can run on it.

But because some people still want to have an idea of what it can compute they still offer

http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html

I'm not particularly interested in either device, but it's clear that Google's sales page is almost a copy of Apples page.

Good spotting. But I think Apple's desktop OS is already quite familiar to most people. Chromebox is offering quite a radically different experience that needs to be communicated.

I really would like to know 'what' a Chromebox does as opposed to 'how' it does it. Whereas with a Mac product I'm more interested in the 'how'.

No one thinks the iPad 3 is too slow and any modern Atom processor is quite a lot faster so it shouldn't be a problem at all. These machines are extremely limited by the OS so hardware limitations are a distant concern in my opinion.

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