If you don’t remember that slogan, let me remind everyone. Because in a rather strange way, it has been wiped from Google! Seriously, Google it. “We burn Pentiums to the ground” and toasting Pentiums was a major Apple promotional campaign, aimed at convincing us all that their proprietary Motorola (IBM) processors were “better” or “faster” than the Intel alternatives. It is an extremely educational story to take to hearth as Apple goes down the same rabbit hole with the iPhone today. Back then it took users a couple of years to figure it out. Graphic artists were trying to ignore that benchmarks of actual task performance was showing a huge disadvantage. Back then, Apple was the tool of choice for creative professionals in the visual design. So it was a matter of pride. You applied a Photoshop filter and it took twice as long to render it as that guy you made fun of with the cheap PC. In video it was ridiculous. Apple did its best to make sure that there weren’t many applications running on both PC and Mac, but Adobe After Effects slipped through the net. Benchmarks there were off the chart, with the ultra expensive Apple machines trailing by whole minutes in everyday tasks.
So what did Apple do?
They lied in your face! The “we burn Pentiums to the ground” campaign, much like a lot of Steve Jobs’ presentations, were 100% lies. He used vague graphics and charts showing an X percent advantage, or stating the new processors were 22% faster than…something. And then they got personal claiming they “toasted” the Pentium processor. But you won’t find it easily. Here’s a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE6aKeK61A4
Where are the ads now? I am a long time Apple hater so I know very well how I used to find them with an image search…..gone. Zilch. Almost no digital footprint of them left! Either Apple or Intel, or both of them, got Google to make them disappear. And this is where it gets interesting. Because Apple is heading the same way today. I wrote a short article highlighting the many things about the iPhoneX. Quad DAC, GigabitLTE, MQA, Log and lookup tables for video…it is a long list of useful high end features other smartphones have already. I post it on Facebook and an Apple fan friend (I still talk to them) starts going on about the “all mighty A11 Apple chip”. Obviously he had no better response. But allmighty Apple chip? Really?
The company is in its classic rabbit hole. It needs to “think different” but instead it is focusing on “being different”. Not the same thing. When the whole world has Bluetooth, the whole world needs Apple working on a safer, faster, better standard. Not to just tweak it a bit and call it iBluetooth, making its AirBuds “proprietary”, “more expensive” and “not compatible”. (What their tag lines should have been in the first place.) When the world agrees to use USB type C we don’t want to carry around custom Apple dongles and dangles. Siri is a joke and new Apple “features” are usually just copied from Android. If they are not, they are a bad idea. Like getting rid of the home button.
I still remember holding the very first iPhone and asking “where is the copy-paste” function? They laughed. Like they laughed when I asked where the right click was on their mice. Guess what? The iPhone got copy and paste eventually. And the Mighty Mouse had a right click. Even now, Apple products are not as good as others in these two respects. In Android we have built in advanced clipboard features and multiple windows to play with. They copied too little, too late. And made a mess of the reality distortion necessary to cover up their tracks.
Much like the old days, someone is going to have bail Apple out. Not talking about cash this time. It will be Google that will run to the rescue and they won’t even tell us about it. Suddenly Siri will magically get better, Apple Maps will work around the world instead of the rather limited version they have now and other Google power features will trickle through in various ways. Just enough for Apple to pretend it is the innovator. Which it is. Just not in technology. In technology it takes R&D, persistence and number crunching to get to the top. Apple is better at getting money off people. Some call it marketing, some of us like to call it as it is. Especially since most of us aren’t making any money from this mass dellusion.
Don’t let me spoil the party though, enjoy looking at your shiny iPhoneX until it unlocks.