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

NeXT · 1988

NeXT Computer

Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser and web server on one.

CPU	Motorola 68030 @ 25 MHz
Memory	8 MB
Storage	Magneto-optical disk
Launch price	$6,500 ≈ $17,240 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 1,024× the memory of the NeXT Computer and a clock 120× faster.

They are 37 years apart. Doubling every two years (Moore's law) would predict about 370,728×; the memory actually grew slower than that. Across the whole catalogue memory doubled every 1.9 years.

Memory8 MB vs 8 GB

Clock speed25 MHz vs 3 GHz

Bars use a logarithmic scale so both machines stay visible.

Popular match-ups

Commodore 64 vs Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K Apple II vs Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020)Amiga 500 vs Atari 520ST IBM PC (5150) vs A PC or laptop with Windows 11 Apple iMac G3 vs Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020)BBC Micro Model B vs Raspberry Pi (Model B)Altair 8800 vs Phone Asus Eee PC 701 vs A school Chromebook