Head to head

Compare any two computers

Pick two machines from 50 years of computing, or pit one against the phone in your pocket. Every number comes from the atlas catalogue.

Apple · 1986

Apple Macintosh Plus

Sold for almost five years, longer than any other compact Mac.

CPUMotorola 68000 @ 7.83 MHz
Memory1 MB
Storage3.5" floppy
Launch price$2,599 ≈ $7,440 today
In the atlasBe the first to add it
VS

Various · 2025

A 2025 flagship phone

The computer most people now carry.

CPU8-core ARM @ 3 GHz
Memory8 GB
Storage256 GB flash

The verdict

The A 2025 flagship phone has 8,192× the memory of the Apple Macintosh Plus and a clock 383× faster.

They are 39 years apart. Doubling every two years (Moore's law) would predict about 741,455×; the memory actually grew slower than that. Across the whole catalogue memory doubled every 1.9 years.

Memory1 MB vs 8 GB
Clock speed7.83 MHz vs 3 GHz

Bars use a logarithmic scale so both machines stay visible.

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