[Mereebirl]

Yes it's great but I hate comparisons like this.

The iMac used CRT technology which has been around for many decades. Taking that out would have shrunk the size and reduced the weight a lot. There's also stuff like a CD/DVD-ROM drive in there that is not shrinkable and absent from the Iphone 4.

Anyway, pedantic side out.

Ok, include the LCD from the year 2000 and shrink it, only the cost of it now just went THROUGH THE ROOF.

Also let's compare battery life.... Wireless...... Bluetooth...... 3G interface....... Flash vs mechanical drive speed...... LCD vs CRT (on the imac) clarity of image......

[Hsmrcahr]

The product on the left still makes a more effective boat anchor.

[Adeniinteme]

I hate macs and all but i think it makes the point well, and the point is to demonstrate that the same machine you spent a grand on in the year 2000 now fits in the palm of your hand and costs half the price (with better performance).

But what has that really got to do with Macs? And is it that great a comparison? I remember my house mate being really impressed in 2001 that the Ipaq 3660 I had ran at slightly higher Mhz than the machine we were using for a server. The iPaq didn't cost much more than 300 pounds. Ten years earlier a home PC was tough to find, cost about 2000 pounds and ran around 25Mhz. So the question seems to be if things are exponential why aren't we seeing PDAs that size of a grape?

[WUlcN1Rz]

Don't forget a 500MHz imac G3 could possibly be similar performance to a 1GHz hand held device. Performance per clock cycle on these portable CPU's are not the same.

Here is a link that shows the 1.6GHz Atom vs other desktops. As you can see it's performance is similar to Penium III era desktops at 1GHz. I would imagine then that the A4 in the phone 4 is weaker at instructions per clock than an Atom is and thus even an old 500MHz Pentium 3 for example could probably beat it.
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/0...icial-release/

[WUlcN1Rz]

Anyhow I found some info...

A4 CPU : 33MFLOPS
Pentium 3 500, 667 MFLOPS.

Hard to compare as so many other factors. But goes to show that these portable devices perfoamcne wise don't exactly crap on their desktop counterparts of 10 years ago.

[illignocearia]

The product on the left still makes a more effective boat anchor.

It would float...

[Hsmrcahr]

It would float...

Nope, they fill with water quickly and sink to the bottom. Not much hesitation.

[stuntduood]

Ok, include the LCD from the year 2000 and shrink it, only the cost of it now just went THROUGH THE ROOF.

Also let's compare battery life.... Wireless...... Bluetooth...... 3G interface....... Flash vs mechanical drive speed...... LCD vs CRT (on the imac) clarity of image......

You have some good points there but all I'm saying is that the CRT in that year 2000 iMac is not representative of the technology level of the year 2000. Display technologies in general don't quite scale nicely like transistors; they kinda stay the same for a while seeing incremental improvement then BAM a new form comes in and replaces it. So 5 years from now if we did a ten-year comparison of display technology year 2005 versus 2015 and we're still using LCD based displays then it wouldn't be a stark difference then would it? 1990-era color CRT TVs vs 2000-era color CRT TVs...not a stark difference either right?

[avavavava]

I prefer the one that states that a single cell of e coli through replication could - under ideal conditions - create a colony the size of planet Earth in one day.

The numbers probably aren't completely accurate, but it's close enough to really put the power (hurr) of exponential growth in perspective.