[dragonwriter]

> They boast specs (as they boast "retina" displays and thinness and grams and materials)

They tend more than other manufacturers to boast brands and subjective description rather than the base specs -- "retina" rather than PPI, for instance -- but its true that they do sometimes boast specs.

They'll brag about their (completely meaningless) processor name (A8), but won't spend as much focus as others boasting measures like GHz or core count, etc. -- IOW, they don't spend a lot of focus on things that you can meaningfully compete with and compare across vendors.

Because they are selling magic and brands, not concrete features.

[personZ]

I've heard Apple talk about their 64-bit processor magnitudes more than I've heard Samsung or HTC talk about Ghz or core counts. I've heard Apple talk about GPUs more than every other vendor combined, but somehow we all need to roll with the ridiculous notion that Apple cares not a whit about specs, despite talking about them endlessly.

[rsynnott]

> but won't spend as much focus as others boasting measures like GHz or core count, etc. -- IOW, they don't spend a lot of focus on things that you can meaningfully compete with and compare across vendors.

Erm, comparing frequency and core count is unhelpful, as you can see from the benchmarks in the article. The A8 is generally faster than the current Qualcomms, but has a far lower frequency and half the core count. Apple probably don't want to fall into the same marketing nightmare AMD did, where low-frequency high IPC Athlons competed against high-frequency low-IPC P4s.

[wklauss]

> Because they are selling magic and brands, not concrete features.

And because it's completely pointless to sell concrete features for certain components. If they boast the Ghz number it will be relatively easy for competitors to produce higher figures. Ghz don't mean anything unless you take into account all kind of details (architecture, throttling...) that no one except really detail-oriented reviewers will go through and that will bore 90% of the users. Hence the bragging on the name.