Comment Re:Apple Pushing All Mobile CPU Vendors (Score 1) 114
Uh, a dual core 1.3Ghz cpu is "marginally superior" to phones running quad and octo cores at twice the clock speed?!
Cores and clock speed is hardly the only determinant of performance. It sets a hard upper bound, but that can be readily squandered by software.
In the case of Android phones, they pushed for extra cores early on to avoid UI stutter during garbage collection cycles. iOS has never provided garbage collection; you either have to setup your own retain/release calls to keep or relinquish objects, or you use ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) to do more or less the same thing.
In effect, it's a trade-off. Google decided to simplify memory management for developers, and keep the barrier to entry low by appealing to existing Java developers, with the trade-off being that they require more parallel processing power for garbage collection. Apple avoided the need for the additional processing power and battery capacity (and in turn device size) by not implementing garbage collection in iOS, and thus can squeeze more performance out of fewer cores, with the trade off being you can't just pull Java developers off the street and have them start writing iOS apps. ARC is so slick that IMO Apple has an overall edge with their design; others are of course free to disagree.
Yaz