If this is true, it's strange that Apple didn't tout it more. I guess "And this Apple designed chip we told you is Apple designed already the last few times is even more Apple designed now!" is a hard message to sell, and from a consumer's perspective, those implementation details are completely irrelevant anyway.
I guess Apple will tout completely irrelevant tech specs when it sounds good and fits the message, but when it would just cloud the issue and be confusing they just leave it out, even if those tech specs would put them in a positive light.
Apple have touted it. Twice as fast as 4S, longer battery life. That is all that matters to the consumer and those are the benefits brought by the CPU.
That's the boring part. Sure, that's what's actually matters (or at least a good deal closer to what actually matters), but Apple hasn't been shy to share some technical details at pretty weird opportunities.
I think part of the problem is they already have introduced the cpu as "theirs" in a previous iteration (I don't remember which one) when they introduced for the first time the "Apple Ax". So I think it would now be difficult to explain that the cpu was not really completely made by them, that now this it is their design (built on the ARM IP) and put in silicon by Samsung... Too much hassle to explain I think for too few marketing gain.
They could have said "completely redesigned* - the closest they came to that was calling it "A6". They are right to sell the benefits, because that's what sells. Even Woz chastised them for saying "quad-core" graphics for the iPad 3. This time, they didn't even say that - just "2x faster graphics".
Maybe 5% of smartphone consumers would actually care about the nuts and bolts of it. I think Apple did a great job by showing it how it affects the user: battery life, speed for tasks, and demoing Real Racing 3.
I dunno. I totally geek out every time Ars does a CPU core review, but still I find the claim that the A6 is 2X faster in so many real-world situations to be more exciting than any geeky technical number they could claim.
I think it's weird that they'll gloss over CPU details, opting for "2x as fast", but then when the camera talk comes around, they go on and on about optics, filters, image processing, etc. I'm not sure why they go into so much detail on the camera details.
In practice, modern phone SoCs are fast enough for most purposes. It's not like the 4S (or even the half-again-as-fast 4) are slow. A great improvement won't really make too much difference to most users. Smartphone cameras, on the other hand, are still somewhat lacking and an improvement will benefit most users substantially.
It's to counter the needless and destructive megapixel race in phones. Until they get their claws on something truly gamechanging like Pureview they need to train their customers to talk about camera quality, not megapixellage.
I guess Apple will tout completely irrelevant tech specs when it sounds good and fits the message, but when it would just cloud the issue and be confusing they just leave it out, even if those tech specs would put them in a positive light.