Fruit Specs Slices and Dices Apple Product Features

Often, when you have a tech spec question, you just want the answer, which is why it can be satisfying to use an AI chatbot backed by a Web search index to extract your desired needle from the veritable haystack. When I want to be reminded of when a particular iPhone model was released so I get it right in an article, I’ll ask ChatGPT or Claude.

But at other times, you want to see—or at least would benefit from seeing—your desired bit of information in context, surrounded by all its little metadata friends. If I’m writing something that hinges on understanding how often Apple has released new versions of the MacBook Air, I’ll turn to MacTracker and browse through its MacBook Air category.

Author, TidBITS contributor, and pun-ishing wordster Glenn Fleishman has created a new website that promises to become a must-visit for anyone trying to make sense of Apple products and features. Called Fruit Specs, the site is the front end to a database that currently includes 187 Apple hardware products with 97 features, plus 78 operating system releases with 166 features. The database is an impressive enough accomplishment on its own, but the website lets you slice and dice the data in remarkably flexible ways: browsing by category, searching for a specific feature, or using a Picker Matrix to select one or more features to see which devices or operating system releases match.

From an information presentation standpoint, this approach quickly runs into scaling problems. For instance, 19 products support Satellite Connectivity, many of which differ only in irrelevant ways, such as the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro Max. Glenn chose to address this by collecting devices by product line and then displaying the earliest model in each. Wherever such summaries appear, a Show All Models/Hide Models toggle link lets you see or hide the full list.

Clicking any individual product name shows that product’s details, along with a link to the source at Apple’s Tech Specs site and a Report Error link for any quirks you notice. Each feature is, of course, a link that encapsulates a search for that feature.

The Picker Matrix is the most fun. It offers two tabs: one showing the 97 hardware features and another with the 166 operating system features, both organized into categories. Each feature has a checkbox and a parenthetical telling you how many products contain that feature. Select a checkbox, and the Picker Matrix instantly shows the matching products at the top of the screen, and the features absent from those products become greyed out—a feature Glenn added at my suggestion. Select another available feature, and the matched list updates to show products that have both selected features.

For instance, if you start with Thunderbolt 5, you get a bunch of recent MacBooks, the latest Mac mini and Mac Studio, and the new Studio Display XDR and the just-refreshed Studio Display. Add HDMI in, and the two Studio Displays fall away. Add Bluetooth 6, and you’re left with just the M5 Pro/Max 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros.

You’ll notice the section in the middle with Related Take Control Books. Fruit Specs is free to use and has no traditional banner advertising. Glenn initially created it so he could refer to it while writing his Take Control titles. It’s undoubtedly a major timesaver—I’ve often found myself flipping between multiple tech specs pages that I’ve archived in DEVONthink Pro while writing spec-heavy articles. But as useful as Fruit Specs is both internally and to the public at large, Glenn does need to earn a living, so he has built another database table that recommends specific Take Control books associated with the current search or selection. It’s a subtle bit of monetization, but every little bit helps.

Next time you need to sort through multiple Apple devices or operating systems to see which ones have certain features, give Fruit Specs a try. It has already earned a pinned tab in Arc so I can access it quickly while researching and writing.