Benchmarking a 1986 Mac
Classic - literally.
For the functions that people use most often, the 1986 vintage Mac Plus beats the 2007 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+: 9 tests to 8! Out of the 17 tests, the antique Mac won 53% of the time! Including a jaw-dropping 52 second whipping of the AMD from the time the Power button is pushed to the time the Desktop is up and useable....
Is this to say that the Mac Plus is a better computer than the AMD? Of course not. The technological advancements of 21 years have placed modern PCs in a completely different league of varied capacities. But the "User Experience" has not changed much in two decades. Due to bloated code that has to incorporate hundreds of functions that average users don't even know exist, let alone ever utilize, the software companies have weighed down our PCs to effectively neutralize their vast speed advantages. When we compare strictly common, everyday, basic user tasks between the Mac Plus and the AMD we find remarkable similarities in overall speed, thus it can be stated that for the majority of simple office uses, the massive advances in technology in the past two decades have brought zero advance in productivity.
I wouldn't say zero - the pivot table alone has improved savvy spreadsheet users efficiency a lot, and they didn't mention that Word 3 didn't have any real table support. But that's not really the point. It's still outrageous how little improvement the average user of office productivity software has gained from the billions expended on so-called software development.
07:17 AM, 21 Aug 2007 by Mark Aufflick Permalink






