For the love of God, can't people SAY what they actually MEAN? Is that too much to ask?
Time to put my Grammar Nazi hat on again! (Although as any good Grammar Nazi knows, this is actually a matter of usage and basic word-meanings rather than grammar.)
"Other features touted by Schiller were improved GPU and CPU performance (Apple claims the CPU is 1.8 times more powerful than the iPad Air 2 and the GPU two times more powerful) and four speakers touting three-times-louder volume."
I think it's safe to assume that if the CPU were actually 2.8 times as powerful as that in the iPad Air 2, Apple would have said so. Surely the new CPU is only 1.8 times as powerful, and only 80% more powerful — not 180% more powerful, as the article claims.
Likewise with the GPU: If it really were 3 times as powerful as that in the iPad Air 2, Apple would have said so using the number 3 instead of 2, since 3 is bigger than 2, and therefore more impressive. ("Twice as fast" sounds more impressive than "one time faster" or even "100% faster", etc.)
(Technically, that the GPU is 3 times as powerful as the old one is in fact exactly what Apple said! Or at least what Shaun Nichols said, and attributed to Apple. But it almost certainly is not what Apple or Nichols meant.)
And likewise with the speakers: If they really are "three times louder", then they are in fact four times as loud. But in all probability, what was actually meant is merely that they are three times as loud, not three times louder.
As noted parenthetically above, it is impossible to tell whether the mistakes here were Apple's or Shaun's. But even if they were Apple's — as I am happy to assume — Shaun should have verified the actual numbers and then translated what Apple said into language that is not contextually ambiguous. The reader should not be left — let alone repeatedly and consistently, as here — to figure out that what the writer meant is (probably) different from what the writer said.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
