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.

Computer A

Computer B

Apple · 1987

Apple Macintosh SE

The first compact Mac with room for an internal hard disk.

CPU	Motorola 68000 @ 7.83 MHz
Memory	1 MB
Storage	3.5" floppy / 20 MB hard disk
Launch price	$2,900 ≈ $8,010 today
In the atlas	Be the first to add it

Various · 2025

A 2025 flagship phone

The computer most people now carry.

CPU	8-core ARM @ 3 GHz
Memory	8 GB
Storage	256 GB flash

The verdict

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

They are 38 years apart. Doubling every two years (Moore's law) would predict about 524,288×; 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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