Go back 15 years, when Intel was on the Pentium II, and you’ll see the same scenario playing out. Back then, the industrial design of the PC wasn’t much of a differentiator; the focus was on processor speed. But once the processor got up to the whopping speed of 300 Mhz (that means Megahertz for the young people out there), and processor upgrades went up 33-100 per release, there wasn’t much of a reason for people to upgrade, since the basic PC tasks worked fine on a 300 Mhz machine. Intel started to focus more on new software to act as the key selling point of their processors. Intel’s developer programs were all about getting “ISVs” to code new programs that would tax the processor. By doing this, Intel could easily demonstrate the difference between a 300Mhz processor and the new 350Mhz. Having a fast processor was the key to unlocking the upgrade path. Intel’s processor launch events were nearly all focused on new software applications that could be run on the new processors. (via The Apple iPhone Strategy: We’ve Seen This Before)
