How is it that when someone takes inspiration from an Apple product it's stealing, but when Apple does the same thing it's either genius (to the point of being one mans creation) or the importance of original invention is trivilized? Being inspired is the foundation of creating new things, as almost everything new is actually taking one or more known things and combining them. What bothers me is when you take inspiration from something, claim it's your own unique invention and try to prevent anyone else from doing something with it.
Easy. When you do something that's been done before and do it better, you get credit. When you do something that's been done before and do it worse (e.g. this Macbook Air clone), you don't.
Between an unevenly lit screen and unusable trackpad, no magsafe connector and sharp case edges, it doesn't matter what hardware specs are being offered at any price, Asus missed the mark on 2 of the 3 primary means of interacting with the computer. I wouldn't want that computer if it were free.
On the level of a $1000-$2000 purchase, details matter and the Asus Zenbook just fails here. It doesn't matter that it has twice as much SSD space and RAM as the MBA because, I don't want to use a device that has a bad screen and bad trackpad.
I don't understand why no PC manufacturer has done something different like a very gentle ratchet or mild Vel-cro to get YankSafe functionality. Or even just slightly differently laid out magnets.
Velcro would be decidedly cheap and tacky. It would also not be very durable. As for a ratchet, I'm not entirely sure what this would look like, but it might be doable. It wouldn't have the nice feel of MagSafe regardless, though.
As for differently laid-out magnets, I believe Apple's patent is pretty broad, and basically covers any magnetic attachment of a power supply to an electronic device. Supposedly (according to Wikipedia) some Japanese appliances have magnetic connectors, so it's questionable how valid Apple's claim is. I guess the real issue is whether anyone wants to fight Apple over this. And to be fair, Apple clearly put out a genuine innovation here.
Inductive chargers then? Surely the current crop of barrel jacks can be improved upon in some way without violating a patent. Barrel jack plugs just suck.
Inductive chargers would be awesome for docks, but don't seem very useful for mobile use. Setting an inductive charger down and then placing a laptop on it means that a pulled cord still drags the laptop with it. Unless inductive chargers have gotten a lot better, they need to basically be in contact with the laptop, so having a separate device just sitting near the laptop would be inefficient (unless I'm wrong about this, in which case an inductive charging cube would be awesome).
I agree that it seems PC laptops should have some way of improving the power connection. The status quo is crappy.
It would have helped if you said so in your original comment...since the article has nothing to do with androids but instead with the ultra-portable pc market.
For me, the main difference is whether they made something _better_ than the original and innovated in the process. Apple did this with many of their products.
Asus may not have "done it right", but that doesn't mean there aren't good lightweight laptops to rival the air.
I have a Sony Vaio Z. It weighs less than the corresponding 13" Macbook Air (carbon fiber! Like a Ferrari!), has better specs and an innovative design. For one, it does not look like an Air--it does not taper to a point, which is something that annoys me in both the Asus and the Air. It has an actually minimalistic design and looks gorgeous in black.
However, the real innovation is in the "Power Media Dock" which--despite the silly marketing name--is actually a brilliant piece of hardware. The laptop itself does not have a DVD drive and uses an Intel HD 3000 graphics chipset. However, it comes with a dock using Intel's LightPeak protocol that contains a discrete ATI graphics card and DVD drive. This lets you have a meaty graphics card at home and a mobile one on the go--very useful. I can also plug my extra monitor and various peripherals into it so that I only need to plug one thing into my laptop when I come home.
There are a couple of problems: the keyboard is "not brilliant" at best, although I've gotten used to it. I've tried the Air's keyboard and, while it was better, it was also not brilliant. Additionally, the Linux support on the laptop is spotty. However, from what I've heard, this is also true of MacBooks, so it isn't a differentiating factor.
The last issue, of course, is the cost--it is closest to a 15" MacBook pro rather than the Air. However, for this, you get specs equal to a MacBook pro--including either a 1600x900 or 1920x1080 resolution. Even the lower-resolution screen--the one I have--looks fantastic.
Overall, the Vaio Z is exactly what the poster is deriding the Asus for not being--innovative, capable and well-built. It is "radically better" than an Air and the only really significant downside is that it's correspondingly more expensive. It even has a rather good touchpad. Oh, and raid-0 ssds. Oh yeah. I do not regret splurging on it at all.
FWIW, everything works under Linux on this Macbook Pro, so I'm a little dubious that it's not a differentiating factor.
I will give you that the Vaio Z looks like a nice machine, but it costs double what the Air does. I think I'd probably rather have the Air and a desktop at home rather than one laptop and that Dock thing, but each to their own.
I really think that the Z is more comparable to a MacBook Pro that just happens to be lighter than the Air. Living with a 13" screen, particularly one with such a high resolution, is really not an issue at all (especially since external monitors are so cheap now). The overhead of keeping two computers synced would not be worth it, I think.
As for Linux, I suspect it depends a lot on the exact hardware and distro in question. I had issues with OpenSUSE; it worked immediately with Fedora (only after spending a while playing with SUSE :().
As for the MacBook Pro, I have a friend who has been relegated to living almost exclusively in a Linux VM on Mac OS because running it natively caused it to overheat. The only way I see of being sure of not having any Linux issues would have been to buy a computer with Linux installed, but I didn't see any interesting ones in this particular market.
Do you happen to know exactly which MBP your friend has? I'm just a little surprised since mine (13" MBP 7,1) has never actually overheated no matter what I throw at it (gaming, heavy compiles etc) - the worst I've had is that the fan gets louder and the case warms to touch. When running normally it's cool and the fan's practically silent, as you'd expect.
Agree on Linux preinstalled; that's pretty rare full stop. Dell had a few at one point but IIRC it was not across their whole range.
Did you get trackpad, wireless, sound and suspend-and-resume to work under Linux? I've tried a couple of times with mbp5,5 but couldn't get everything to run smoothly, and in the end the constant annoyance of unable to scroll or battery running dry in two hours flat wasn't worth it.
Linux will never work properly on a laptop or any interesting consumer hardware. VM is always the way to go. The stable drivers on uniform virtual hardware solve the problem in a way real hardware driver will never be able to do.
Please stop the FUD. My experience has been that Linux support for most laptops by Lenovo, Dell, HP etc is pretty good. There are couple specific technologies that dont work well with Linux - Nvidia Optimus, any graphics hardware from Imagination Technologies (hardware is good but their driver story is unbelievably convoluted). If you buy a thinkpad and hold it for five years your chances of it being able to competently run the latest and greatest version of linux are far greater than your chances of doing the same with a with osx or windows.
That's certainly plausible--I've heard good things about ThinkPads. Most of my friends are Linux users, so I definitely know some ThinkPad fans. However, in the "ultraportable" (horrible marketing terms strike again) category, I think the Z pulls ahead of the Lenovo X1, which I also considered. Unless I'm much mistaken, the X1 is the replacement for the X300.
Back in my high school robotics days, I did use a Toughbook and it was actually very good. The ergonomics are not compromised on too much, and I suspect there are tools that are less durable than Toughbooks.
However, in my current incarnation as a dainty EECS major, the closest I get to a machine shop is the CS building beside it, so a Toughbook--while indubitably awesome--would be a bit of overkill.
Also, the tacit assumption that macs are the best laptop is, I think, flawed--there's no question that they're good, but there are plenty of cases where there are better options...
I don't doubt there are better laptops than the Air I just can't remember them. Most OEMs are tripping over themselves to pump out SKUs that you really have a hard time remembering which is which. You could get the model X32-GS724X or the X32-GS725T. The higher spec'd one is the one reviewed but the lower spec'd version is what is in stores and may be missing the features the reviewers raved about.
I've been burned like this before, ordering a laptop that was reviewed with bluetooth and receiving one without. My mistake was I ordered version B and not version C.
> However, in my current incarnation as a dainty EECS major, the closest I get to a machine shop is the CS building beside it, so a Toughbook--while indubitably awesome--would be a bit of overkill.
Beware, Panasonic has a bunch of different toughbooks series. I'd expect what you used for robotics was a "fully rugged" series: looks like a small case and can be rolled over by trucks (basically what they use in combat fields, truck shops and whatnot).
Those are pretty much indestructible short of using explosives (and even then), but they're big and heavy. Panasonic also has lines of wimpier "business-rugged" laptops built merely to withstand being dropped from tables, thrown against walls in fits of fury and having mugs of tea dropped on them.
They're also much more lightweight, and somewhat better looking. The one I was talking about is the C1: http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughbook/business-rugged-... which sports pretty standard laptop look (apart from the trackpad) and while pretty solid (certified for 30" drops, 6 ounce of liquid and 225 pounds of pressure) is nowhere near a fully-rugged MIL-STD-810G-certified Toughbook 19 or Toughbook 31.
The C1 is for carrying your laptop a lot and not really caring if it happens to fall or encounter bad juju.
Ah, you have a good point--the model I used was definitely one of the really tough ones. It definitely had its own charm but was more reminiscent of a tool box than a laptop (not to say that's a bad thing).
I suspect the one you're talking about is one of the few models with that sort of hinge not to fall apart immediately--the others I've seen were very weak.
Vaio notebooks are nice, I had one before my MBP, but they lack the little problem called Windows. But when forced to, I would choose a Vaio or a Thinkpad (depends on model). Both know what they do.
For reference, my Vaio does not have Windows. And if I had gone for the Air--I did consider it--it would not have had OS X. The sub-par OSes sold with pretty much all laptops these days can trivially be replaced, so it really isn't an issue.
I've spent significant time on both various versions of Windows and Mac OS (a bit of 9 but mostly 10). I've had the best experience, and been the most productive, on Linux.
If you are not willing to tolerate anything except Mac OS, then obviously the quality of non-Apple hardware is of little importance. (I guess you could go the Hackintosh route, but I think that rarely goes well.) Besides, Windows 7 is really not that bad at all--certainly no worse than Mac OS, just different.
I consider getting a second notebook for Win and Linux because sometimes you have to work with them. I love Thinkpads for having a Zen influence (just like Apples hardware) and it's sturdiness. Vaios look awesome but sometimes they get the details wrong. The WLAN button on the front broke of my Vaio broke, why did they put it on the front, where it has always contact with my belly when sitting in bed?)
But I will always need OS X for my main machine. It's all the little details helping me to get work done. I adjusted my workflow to Exposé and Spaces and it's the most well designed OS, so I love it's consistency, scrolling in windows off focus, CMD not CTRL for shortcuts (so I can use my thumb and don't need to move my hand or use the little finger), taking advantage of more shortcuts in general (but they killed some in Lion) etc.
And many of those little helpers are only possible because of the great trackpad. It's no problem for Win7, because it does not rely on gestures, but it would be great they would include something like that. (do some artful linux devs work on those things?)
I don't know about gestures on Linux. I've heard there is a package but never bothered with it. I basically do two things on my computer: I browse the internet and I edit text (programming, writing, homework...). For both of these tasks--and most other things I do less commonly--I can just use the keyboard. All this means that I only use the mouse/trackpad if I really have to--it really slows me down.
In my experience, Mac OS is not the most well-designed OS at all. Whenever I have to use it, it manages to annoy me fairly consistently. It isn't bad, of course, but all modern operating systems--especially Linux--have improved drastically in the last several years.
CMD vs CTRL is not a function of Mac OS/Windows, it's a function of your keyboard layout and both proprietary solutions get it wrong: CTRL is actually the key labelled Caps Lock. Everything else you've mentioned is also present in Linux, at least with KDE--it's well designed, consistent and even lets you scroll windows off focus (I think the scrolling, as well as other window conventions date back to older Unix window managers that predate both KDE and Mac OS). KDE also lets you have some very useful key combinations. Particularly, I like being able to tile a window left or right with a single keystroke, which is trivial with KWin. That said, I'm going to take this idea to the next level and switch over to XMonad soon, which is a nice upgrade for OS X as well (a couple people I know have used it there successfully).
Coincidentally, why would you need to get another notebook for Windows and Linux? As far as I know, you can dual/triple boot with a Mac, or you could just get a virtual machine.
Ultimately though, the qualities of Mac OS are rather tangential here (and we're ignoring the philosophy behind it even more)--if you're not willing to use anything else, you're stuck with Apple. If, on the other hand, you're like me and see no reason to use it, the quality of hardware become important and finding the best lightweight notebook pertinent.
Why another notebook? Well, I feel happier to divide the systems physically. You know what to do on the one system and you know what you do on the other. Those are toys, so main motivation is fun I would guess. :D
When reading your post, I think you are the efficiency guy, and OS X is for ease of use and both things are sometimes conflicting. But I got around using OS X in an efficient way, so I feel happy with it.
Really? I've heard some, but not enough to dissuade me from getting it. I also got a two-year warranty for free and I live within reasonable distance of a Sony store (they exist, I was surprised to learn), so I think I'll be able to get decent support. I also suspect that they might go to a little bit more trouble supporting the Z because it really is their top-of-the line model, but I really don't know.
I've also heard bad things about Macs, but they all end with happy stories about Apple's support which is definitely a point in their favor.
While I can't say anything about Sony's cheaper offerings, the Z seems well-built and sturdy. The only real issues I've had were to do with Linux drivers, but I ultimately managed to resolve those satisfactorily.
Umm, I honestly have no idea. The battery monitor's estimates are horribly inconsistent, and I haven't used it unplugged for long-enough stretches to drain the battery completely. So, at least for me, we can call it "enough".
I have used it for over 4 hrs of active use interspersed with sleep periods (e.g. with the lid closed) without running out. I plug it in whenever I can, which means it gets a little charged whenever I'm at home, at work or at the library (but not in lecture). My schedule means I rarely need to use it for more than three hours without being able to plug in at some point.
Since it doesn't use the switchable graphics cards that are popular in other laptops, this is not an issue. Unfortunately, I think it still does better on Windows.
That said, if it isn't enough, you can always get an extra sheet battery you could attach to the bottom of the laptop--it's pretty neat.
A bit out of topic, but how good does it fare when upgrading windows?
I had a few friends who got stuck on a specific version of windows for driver problems. How future proof would the Sonys be?
Umm, I really, really have no idea (wow, I'm being a useful resource here!)--the first thing I did when I got it home was install Linux, completely overwriting even the backup partition (I had to do that in switching to software raid, I think).
So I've had this laptop for maybe two months (enough time to install the Windows 8 developer preview, granted) and run Linux exclusively. I really can't answer your question.
What I can say, though, is that while Linux tends to have more driver problems than Windows initially, they tend to be much simpler to solve. So if you can't upgrade from Windows, just switch to Linux ;) For every sleepless night I've spent looking for Linux drivers I spent two looking for Windows ones a couple years prior.
The trackpad on MacBooks are the greatest thing. I got my first Mac about a year ago and I'll never go back to a PC notebook simply because the trackpads are always terrible.
Now whenever I use a PC trackpad, I'm astonished at just how bad they are, even on premium PCs.
A laptop without this is not worth buying. See? Who knew than another guy's opinion can be so different...
I can type and operate "mouse" without moving my palms from the typing position. I can do all three types of mouse clicks with my thumbs! Moreover, Thinkpad's touchpad provides the most direct feel when moving the cursor [more on this later]. Having the central "pin" for quick cursor jumps (while typing) is absolutely invaluable.
Now, about the directness and precision of the touchpad. It's all about drivers. Early white Macbooks had a terrible lag of cursor movement but Apple fixed it later in software. My Thinkpad had somewhat inadequate "cursor feel" under windows 7 which came with it, but under Ubuntu it has the most satisfying "mouse" money can buy, called Ultranav.
I've owned several laptops that only featured "the nipple" and I had one where it every so often would get stuck in a single position whereby it would always go off to the top left. This seemed to happen after having owned and used it for a year or so.
I have also owned several laptops, both Windows and Mac OS X based and my MBP's trackpad is far superior over any other trackpad I've used.
The best feature of the trackpoint is scrolling. You can scroll with it by pressing the middle button and move the trackpoint around. I'm using this all the time and i like it more than two finger scrolling.
Lenovo has pretty good trackpads but they are tiny. The trackpoint is nice but not for everyone. If you want one you obviously have to buy a Lenovo laptop.
I’m not exactly sure, though, why you seem to be so outraged about someone else’s opinion.
I use the trackpoint exclusively, so I always buy a Lenovo without a touchpad. It's much better in my opinion, because you never have to move your hands away from the keyboard position.
The trackpad issue is an absolute deal breaker for me with PC laptops. Bad touchpad feel destroys the direct manipulation illusion. And the illusion is a pretty neat one. Swiping between full screen apps in Lion and gesturing to scroll, zoom, and go backwards and forwards in web pages is just amazing.
Do you remember what touch pads were like even 10 years ago? Fiddly things that made you carry a mouse around with you? Mice feel so primitive to me now.
Apple got the grain of the glass just right. Using an old plastic trackpad sucks. Either the grain is too course and you rub your finger raw or the grain is too fine. Then your finger sticks to the trackpad.
Most laptop users I've observed only use the trackpad when there is no alternative. If they have 5 minutes to put the laptop down on a desk (or any flat surface) they'll break out a mouse.
I think IBM had a good idea with the trackpoint nub but most users (unless they were really ardent Thinkpad users) couldn't get the hang of it and went back to the crummy pad or USB mouse.
Gestures are really nice. Switching spaces with swipes is very nice. Also having Mission Control for an overview makes things a lot easier.
What I miss when having to deal with Windows, is to, spread my work like I do on OS X. Also, I miss being able to scroll in Windows currently not selected (of any application kind). So I can code in an IDE and scroll through a PDF (only mouse over it) without having to leave the focus of the IDE.
The touchpad makes scrolling easy with the two finger swipe.
Apple multi-touch pads are less fun when your one year old child swipes his hand over it, changing god knows what and you having no idea how to get everything back.
I never used a mouse for the last 10 years. Reading the rant from the article made me wonder, what breakthrough Apple did, that after using their technology you can't use normal touchpad.
"Now whenever I use a PC trackpad, I'm astonished at just how bad they are, even on premium PCs."
Yesterday I had to install something on my old computer and I realized how bad the keyboard was, there it was , a piece of clunky , and cheap plastic. I have got used to mac keyboard so much.
I also use the magic track pad, OMG, using wacom trackpad was terrible.
"Why can't PC manufacturers get it right?"
Because it takes a lot of work and money. Apple products are patented and they can't just copy them(magic trackpad uses good quality glass and aluminium instead of plastic) so they need to design new ones, costing millions of dollars per device and this only makes sense if you could sell millions overnight like Apple does.
Surely Asus make enough laptops to amortise the cost of designing a decent trackpad over them? I think the problem here is the same thing that manufacturers still haven't gotten; the quality of the build is important, even though it isn't a number that you can put into a spreadsheet for a $/MHz comparison.
Apple's smoothing algorithm for mouse movement is something that mad PCs unpleasant to work on for me for years. Those ads I think Microsoft has got it good enough that while it's different it's no longer actively unpleasant, bu it's oe of many, many tiny things Apple sweated over back in 1984 and Microsoft didn't notice at the time. (let's not get into text edit field behavior.)
Not all trackpads are created equal. I was playing around with the Acer Aspire S3 (another one of those MacBook Air wannabes) and it had a pretty decent trackpad. Not quite what you get with Macs and by the looks of it also a bit smaller – but at least competent.
Looking down the row of laptops left and right to the S3 I was, however, struck by how tiny all the other trackpads were. This seems like such a simple fix.
My old 2007 MBP has a larger trackpad than all those Windows laptops.
(The S3 actually looks like a pretty nice laptop. It feels nice and stable. The Acer logo also isn’t quite as ugly as the Asus logo. Still, it does many of the usual crappy things Windows laptops tend to do: there are too many damn LEDs and too many damn letters and logos on that thing – and I’m not talking about the removable ones. Those are bad enough but at least removable. And now: monochrome. I guess that’s progress.
Specs are a wash – as usual. The S3 has a crappier screen and a worse CPU (not that it matters) but you get more SSD for your money. I’m still not entirely sure why anyone would buy the S3 over the MacBook Air, though. The difference in price is actually pretty small. The only model that is worth considering is the base model with HDD since Apple doesn’t have anything in that price segment.)
The S3 felt really, really cheap to me. The trackpad had too much flex. Everything about it had too much flex. The screen wobbled. I wouldn't buy it for half price.
The Samsung Series 9 seems nice, though I haven't used one for an extended period. My boss's boss had one and didn't like it, but I'm not clear why. The trackpad felt nice when I used it, but the port cover design is moronic (they had to add stickers explaining how to open them, and they're fragile, too). It also has bottom vents, which is pretty lame.
I'm considering the Lenovo U300s, which looks nice, and not like an Air clone. The only real drawback seems to be the glossy 1366x768 screen.
From MacBooks to many (most?) PCs they're using Synaptics chips, which implement hardware multitouch. It's impressive how PC manufacturers are able to absolutely screw up something as simple as two finger scrolling, which is in most part implemented in hardware (the remainder is tweaking a bunch of parameters). How many times have I encountered unusable trackpads under Windows, which only required a little synctl prod under Linux... It talks at length about the carelessness of manufacturers.
FWIW only Apple trackpads made me drop lugging a mouse around. This big-ass, ice-like sliding, smooth surface is a wonder to work on for hours. It seems PC manufacturers conspire to make the smallest, most post-10-min-of-use grinding surface ever: not only the size makes it a pain to aim, having to fight against the surface just kills it.
From MacBooks to many (most?) PCs they're using Synaptics chips
Don't know about PCs, but the current and last gen of MacBook Airs uses the Broadcom bcm5974 touchpad controller, and I believe the MBPs do as well. The Linux "synaptics" driver drives a lot more than just Synaptics chipsets these days.
That's the problem: in many recent machines ASUS has used Elantech touchpads to save money. These are are absolutely terrible: they don't even have pressure sensitivity, let alone proper multi-touch.
I'd say it is entirely Apple's Execution. Someone used this machine before they pushed it out the door. Someone had to have gone, "this trackpad is just awful!" And yet, nothing changed about it, and they released it. It's hard for me to see another brand capturing such equity and such positive reputation when this happens over and over again. If there's a will, there's a way around the patents, etc.
I find the snide and cynical tone of this kind of post sad. We seem to be at the point where offering any competition to Apple in any category is tagged as as a "rip off" when a short time ago it was just seen as healthy, even essential competition. We the consumers are the beneficiaries of competition. Why we (or this class of person) have chosen to deride it I don't understand.
I'm glad there are companies that try to compete with Apple. I think it isn't healthy for anyone when there is a dominating presence. But I see no reason not to deride products which are clones of other companies' products with no improvements (or that are in fact worse).
Put it another way, I don't see a reason to automatically grant extra lenience or extra credit to anyone that produces a clone of an Apple product. This isn't golf and there are no handicaps. Either make a better product, or be ridiculed.
It's also worth remembering that all our deriding, ridiculing and arguing counts for little in the real world. As Jobs nicely put it in an interview (paraphrased): if we build something people want then they buy it and we get to come to work another day.
I don't think so. It's a rip off when they copy everything, and copy it badly.
For instance, the keyboard design on the Mac has "separated" keys because it's needed to give better structural support to the unibody frame. It's not just a "cool design thing". Jony Ive talks about it here: http://youtu.be/t0fe800C2CU?t=2m46s
Watching other companies copy this keyboard design in many ways resembles the first people trying to fly by flapping their cloth covered wings. "It looks exactly the same as what the bird does, dammit, why isn't it working?!"
Now, imagine how many different, _better_ products one could have if only more companies had someone as obsessed with product design as Ive, and gave him some authority.
What if some laptop manufacturer made a thinner, more sturdy ultraportable design that for some reason didn't need this keyboard design? It wouldn't have to look anything like the MBA, and it wouldn't be accused of being a rip-off.
They sweat the details, but sadly not enough.
I guess there might be some great designers in many other companies. The big problem, of course, is that they don't get the resources to do great work. That was true of the Apple pre Steve Jobs as well.
Some companies are better than others, but I don't know of any that takes attention to detail to the extremes that Apple do. The underside of the X1 very "clean" compared to other laptops: http://www.lenovo.com/shop/americas/content/img_lib/products...
Not sure what point you are trying to make. Do you disagree with what I said, or do you think this text (or the Apple logo) is any proof that I'm wrong?
I'm implicitly wondering whether you think the back side of the iPhone is good enough for Ive, why or why not, and what that implies about the amount of details Apple "sweats."
It seems to me Apple "sweats" details until they don't, and the classification under which the underside of the X1 wouldn't be good enough but the back side of the iPhone - complete with FCC and CE logos - is seems rather arbitrary.
Without a battery cover to hide them, I think those logos need to be there. It certainly seems like they have put thought into the placement, font size etc. Given the constraints, the designers did the best they could.
The underside of the X1 has many "arbitrary" vent holes and screws. Why are they placed like that? Well, probably because the internal components demanded they be like that. The designers did the best they could given the constraints.
Now, why were the internal components designed like that? Who knows. Could they have been designed in another way to make the vent holes look more symmetrical? Yes, but it would probably be very expensive. That's one of a ton of decisions that are made, where someone at Apple said "screw it, lets spend the money and do it the proper way".
So, to me, the X1 backside tells a deeper story about the design process of the product, how engineers and designers worked together to create the product, and how compromises were made. The iPhone backside only tells you that some regulators wants their logos on products, and that some marketer (maybe Steve Jobs) wanted you to feel good about owning a product assembled in China.
To me, the iPhone backside suggests a compromise between aesthetic properties of a "clean" backside and engineering, manufacturing cost, and user experience properties of not having an ordinarily-operable battery cover, and is in fact quite interesting to think about. Consider what would have had to change had Apple wanted the logos off the backside but to still comply to relevant regulations. Do you think someone hadn't said "screw it, lets spend the money and do it the proper way" about an Apple-grade cover that would allow for the logos to be hidden? Is it not interesting to think of why that decision was not made?
I do agree it's interesting to think about. The decision to not have a battery cover was a controversial one, and probably one that was not taken lightly.
I'd be wrong to say that this isn't a compromise, but they thought a clean and thinner design and fewer parts was more important than keeping the logos off the back and allowing the user to easily replace the battery.
If a battery cover was important to them, they would have spent the resources to make it work. Likewise, if a clean backside was important to the Lenovo designers, they would have fixed the ugly vent holes.
A cynical answer would be that it generates pageviews and discussion. If the article was just "ASUS Zenbook--it's okay but not brilliant", it would not have gotten onto hn at all, and if it did I certainly wouldn't be discussing it quite as fervently. I doubt the author consciously planned it this way; however, it's perfectly reasonable that he subconsciously wanted to make a more striking point but unfortunately came over as overly antagonistic.
I disagree. A MacBook Air with an unusable trackpad is emphatically not okay- it's absolutely worthless, ruined by one component. (At least if you don't fall into the USB-mouse-on-a-laptop camp.)
The MacBook Air was never about specs, where the Zenbook might be okay (except for weight and height).
Or if you fall into the power-user camp that uses the keyboard almost exclusively like I do (this is both with a nice touchpad and even on desktops with a physical mouse).
The newer touchpads like the ones on my laptop and Macs are okay, but constantly switching between that and the keyboard is ultimately slower than just using the keyboard. Once you get used to navigating around with the keyboard as much as possible--assuming your OS supports it well--the quality of a touchpad stops mattering.
I am now consistently annoyed by web apps and programs that force me to use the mouse unless I really have to.
Ultimately though, my point wasn't really so much about the laptop as about the tone of the article, which your post doesn't seem to address. Even if the Asus deserves derision, and antagonistic response is still not necessary, and still generates more views and comments.
The worst bit is that--by virtue of replying here and commenting on the thread--I've shown that his tactics are successful.
I for one hope that this Ultrabook is a wild success, if I want to buy a Mac in my country I have to pay about 900$ more compared to the US and I don't even get AppleCare, but an equivalent. The world shouldn't begin and end with Apple, competition is healty.
The problem is not "offering [...] competition to Apple", it's building an inferior copy to their lines. Note the part about it being inferior, because that is the issue.
If this laptop was better than the Air, or significantly cheaper, it would not get panned. But it's not, and it's not.
> Why we (or this class of person) have chosen to deride it I don't understand.
The internals of the MacBook Air were designed by Intel, not by Apple. The same goes for the internals of the current ultrabooks. It's basically a reference design.
Yes, reference designs are extremely common nowadays. With something as complex as a motherboard, designing it from scratch is a serious endeavor. There are probably a total of over 20,000 pages of documentation for all the parts on that board. I designed a cabled PCI Express output board for a piece of test equipment and there was over 3000 pages of documentation to sift through.
Also, didn't Apple get Intel to produce a small package, low-voltage processor just for the Air? Did anyone expect them to restrict its use solely for Apple? This is basically a campaign to sell more chips.
How come none of the 13/15/17" laptop PC motherboards and internals look like one of a MacBook Pro then?
Reference designs allow precisely that: do the heavy "from-scratch" work and allow manufacturers to bend the reference to fit their constraints.
Also, didn't Apple get Intel to produce a small package, low-voltage processor just for the Air?
It's more probably the usual ULV variant that has existed for every Intel chip since they cared about wattage. I suppose it's more a case of the usual Apple strategy of upfront ordering bucketloads of components, essentially locking the production to themselves.
The original Air had a normal Intel ULV processor in a smaller-than-usual package. Whether this was something Intel came up with and shopped around or something that Apple requested isn’t known.
This - and also Pegatron was spun out of Asus, and both Asus and Apple use Peg for manufacturing and integration. The same tool makers, tools, people etc. were used on both of these products. Intel designed this chip and board so that the manufacturers can go out and release these types of devices, and now we are supposed to believe that because Apple were the first (they weren't really the first either, I saw a HP carbon fibre prototype in Korea long before the Air was released) and are the prettiest, that nobody else is allowed in the market?
Edit: to add to this, it is important to understand that how tech is manufactured has changed in the past 10-15 years. It used to be that a company like Apple would design the case, the circuit board, all the components, etc. and then take it out to manufacturers and get a quote. What happens now is that the ODM is involved from very early on in the process, and it is more likely that it is the ODM (like Pegatron, Flextronics or Foxconn) go to the tech company first with a new board.
for eg. in the case of the Air-type laptops, Intel designed that chip and board with this market in mind. Intel would have went to the ODM's, and they would have designed reference boards and reference devices together. The ODM's and their marketing and tech guys then would have taken all this out to Apple, HP, Sony etc. and pitched it to them, and then went back to Intel and locked in a multi-year contract on component supply (which wins them favor when the next set of chips and boards are released).
What the tech company does now is manage outsourcing relationships, supply chain (which is also now outsourced), industrial design (can also be outsourced), marketing and retail. The ODM takes care of what the internal layout is and this is done to a spec (although not a detailed spec). At the manufacturing plants you have design offices - this would be 2-3 people from Apple and around 30-40 people from the ODM working on the schematics and tooling. The Apple people would hang around during the prototype phase. ODM's offer this service at no charge based on orders coming in later.
On the Crunchpad project we got hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of design work done for us for free with various ODM's on the promise of us manufacturing with them. Our specs were very vague, the initial prototype hardware spec was a 15-line email at 3am in the morning from me. Two days later I was holding a netbook with those specs. They all work the same way, and when you are in China or Korea you see the reps from all these other companies hanging out in bars and around the factories.
Intel bends over backwards to get their chips and their boards into new devices. They heavily discount and will throw as many people at you as you need. I wouldn't say that it is easy to start a hardware company, but it is certainly more efficient and a lot easier than what it was before the ODM model. If you have a brand and a decent idea the ODMs will fall over each other to get your attention - and will likely run it at cost to you, with tooling costs financed etc. for the first x thousand units.
The key point here is that the story about Apple sitting in their lab and designing a laptop which nobody else can see and that others have 'copied' couldn't be further from the truth. That board and a lot of that design comes from the ODM's, and they know that other companies are working there as well. This is why you hear Apple complaining about gestures being copied but not complaining about Laptop design being copied.
Further Edit: I know a lot of tech investors shy away from Hardware startups, but if you have a good hardware idea the MVP costs have come down just as much as they have for software. If you have a good plan you can get to a prototype that you can then use to test the market and raise more money from for very little. I would hasten to say that with the market being as competitive as it is now, that you could almost get it for free - by just signing a longer term agreement. All the ODMs have large teams of engineers that they want to put to work. If you present an idea well and take it to the 5-6 majors one of them is bound to pick you up. Just demonstrate that you understand the market, will be able to build the brand and are stable enough to trust with long-term finance. If anybody is thinking about doing hardware feel free to email me
Just as the internals of the iPhone were designed by Samsung?
No really, do you have any source for this? Because after reading about Steve Jobs obsession with the internal design of a device in his biography, I don't believe Apple would let another company do this.
You can pretty much guarantee that Intel designed most of that ASUS motherboard. Do you really think they copied Apple? Apple (or anyone else) couldn't make a motherboard without Intel's help.
This is how it works with all the chip manufacturers and all the ODMs (from Intel Atom and Snapdragon etc. through to desktop PC's). They will announce that they have a new range of boards and chips and the marketing people will go out with some engineering people to every single consumer co and pitch the new hardware to them.
Apple fanboys live in a fantasy world where every single good innovation (such as the trackpad, the A5, the touchscreen - all acquired) comes out of Cupertino, and all the crappy stuff is what other companies do - not realizing that the iphone, ipad, macbooks etc. are built around dozens of different companies - all of who work with more than just apple.
If other companies take the same reference designs as Apple and make such lame devices from them, that's an even worse world than the "fanboy fantasy" where they make lame devices from scratch.
Intel reportedly is unveiling reference designs aimed at keeping ultrabook prices at less than $1,000 to better enable them to compete with Apple’s MacBook Air.
So, that shows that Intel have been producing reference designs to compete with Apple's design. Where is the evidence that Intel designed the MacBook Air?
Then why does the Asus version look so much cheaper?
That may explain the similar layout, honestly. But what strikes me the most about those pics is that the Asus internals look like a cheap toy version of the Air.
comparing by price is not fully justified because each have their own markup margins (they are businesses obviously) and i know apple definitely have a larger margin than it's competitors.
because they want it to be cheaper. if they went with aluminium unibody it would have ended up costing at retail more than the Air, which doesn't make sense, does it?
"It’s sad, really, that the state-of-the-art in the PC world is attempting to copy Apple. Why isn’t Asus trying to blow the MacBook Air out of the water with something radically better?".
I have an answer for this. I don't think they can create something that blows the MacBook Air out of the water. The bar has been set too high for the PC manufacturers to properly compete in design, at least for the moment.
I really don't see why this is the case unless you have a very strong affinity for Apple. As I said earlier, the Vaio Z is really a much better machine overall, but has a price to match. The Lenovo X1 is also very good and I think looks better as well.
Of course, I'm probably a little biased against Apple--although I seriously considered getting an Air as my new laptop recently--and have found their recent laptop designs a little garish. There is a gigantic, light-up logo in the back! My roommate had a Mac Book Pro last year and it would light up our room if he used it at night. I favor a more minimalistic, muted aesthetic--if I could, I'd get an all matte black laptop with no labels at all (including the keyboard), but I do not think anything like that exists. The new Vaio Z is close though.
"I seriously considered getting an Air as my new laptop recently--and have found their recent laptop designs a little garish. There is a gigantic, light-up logo in the back!"
That's not a recent design. Apple notebooks have had a lit logo on the back of the lid for the last 13 years[1], starting with the PowerBook G3 Wall Street.
In any case, this 'problem' is easily remedied by covering it up with a sticker. That's what production companies do[2] when they want to use a notebook in a TV show or motion picture that doesn't have 'promotional considerations'[3].
"if I could, I'd get an all matte black laptop with no labels at all"
Apple's black MacBook[4] and Google's copy[5], the CR48, came close. Matte black, barely any labels.
I don't actually keep track of Apple's designs, so I guess you're right--they've been garish all along. Covering the logo up with a sticker would make sense if there were no alternatives without annoying logos; happily, there are.
I have seen the black MacBooks, and they are better than the normal ones--rather good looking, actually--but I'm not sure if they sell them any more and I was looking exclusively at thin, light laptops akin to the Air. As far as I know, matte black Airs do not exist.
I remember seeing the beta Chromebook and really liking the design; unfortunately, the ones they actually sell now look different and too much like normal netbooks.
Where both fall short is the keyboard--in a perfect world, there would be a version with unlabeled keys. It would match my DasKeyboard :).
The Vaio Z I currently have also comes close. From my perspective when I'm using it, it's actually almost exactly what I want (except for the annoyingly omnipresent labeled keys). The back of the screen is a dark blue with a metal (not lit) logo. I rather like that effect as well, although it doesn't quite have the appeal of a completely blank laptop. Having a plastered-over Apple logo wouldn't do either--all this would ruin the effect I want.
Of course, I recognize that the laptop I picture is incredibly silly and can never be more than a very niche product, but I am perfectly content being silly.
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Could anyone explain why this is on the front page? The only piece of information in this rant is that there is some new Asus notebook that looks like a MB Air.
Apparently at least 75 people's intellectual curiosity is very easily satisfied...
To give my opinion on the matter I like the 13" Zenbook's 1600x900 resolution better than MacBook Air's 1440x900. The 13" Macbook Pro has 1280x800 which is useless to me.
When running Visual Studio or Eclipse I definitely like the extra 160 pixels to have the sidebar wider without sacrificing space from the editor.
One the one hand, Apple takes pride in copying and enhancing themselves (then claim they did it but ok)
On the other hand there are radically differently designed ultrabooks, so don't take Asus for the general norm?
Oh and as many on this page I'm typing from a Vaio Z21 running Linux and of course, everything just works.
Of course its way faster, yet lighter than the MBA. And while you may hate Sony because "its not hype to have a Sony dude!" its well built and works perfectly well, 20h a day so far.
I want a Macbook Air like laptop, but I don't want it so expensive and designed for Mac OS. I want a cheaper machine running Ubuntu? What's so bad about making this available?
On a different note, the attempt to show how the internal design of Asus copies that of Apple is laughable. The PCBs look completely different, except for maybe the main fan placement. But think about the space constraints in such a device and it becomes obvious there aren't too many options!
I know the ultrabook project is taking a lot of flak in a lot of area, but the idea excites me. A lot of people would argue that cloning is not the way to go, and even in the article the writer states that its a pity asus didn't try to do something better than apple.
Why not make something equal first, we seen it with android, although I'm not saying that Android is built as a clone of iOS, but they got feature parity and then went onto more innovation.
Personally as someone who loves the look and feel of the MacBook, but who for a number of reasons won't be purchasing one ( expensive for a college student, not a fan of Mac OS). An entry into the market like this appeals to me greatly. Keep it up Intel and partners!
I think I have to chime in to try and counteract Apple's marketing: the world isn't actually divided into Mac/PC. Just because you buy Apple hardware--which really isn't bad--doesn't mean you have to use their OS--which is. You could install Windows or, even better, use Linux. Of course, if you're not into Mac OS, you might as well get the Asus, which means its entry into the market benefits you.Even some non-Apple clones are competition and make the market much better for everyone.
As a college student, I think you'd get almost the same utility out of a nice netbook running Linux as you would an Air unless you're a heavy gamer. I have several friends who went that route and their uniformly happy and productive (unlike some of the people I know using Mac OS, although that is more a function of their not being CS people).
Of course, I say this almost hypocritically as a college who did splurge on a laptop and doesn't regret it. I just had some money left over from an internship--that's my excuse.
Interesting discussion. I had to buy a laptop recently and as much as I like the look of Mac's Air it didn't have a right Control key. That just frustrated me as I use Emacs and I rely on a working right Control key so much. I know that there are tools to remap keys. Tried various ones, but at the end of the day I was trying to make Mac act as X Windows and it just wasn not smooth. So I bought Samsung's 900 3XA. Just as light, has the right Control key and all of the hardware components are supported with the latest FreeBSD 9.
Apple actually acquired FingerWorks, which made flat touchpad keyboards. The quality is much higher than what most companies are able to use (Synaptics or whatever?)
Apples trackpads really are one of the main selling points for me. I got my first Macbook Pro in 2009, liked it, got used to it but somehow wanted to go back to a rigid business laptop where i dont have the fear of scratching it etc. So i sold the MBP and got a Dell Latitude only do realize how much of a difference the trackpad on a MBP makes and how much i got used to its awesomeness.
Today i use a MBP again ;)
No doubt apple (read steve jobs) has taken inspiration from a lot of products and features. But apple is more onto tweaking and making it better with even effort on design and user friendliness. Everyone knew touch but apple made it useable. Take an idea or inspiration and tweak it to perfection so it becomes revolutionary and apple become genius! Think you can do it?
As an owner of one of Asus's early precursors to the Ultrabook which also has serious trackpad problems (UL30VT), this makes me wonder how long Asus is going to go without correcting these basic problems.
Until then the Samsung Series 9 is probably a better choice.
Expanding on this, the idea is that a great artist takes someone else's idea, but executes it so much better that the idea ends up being associated with the great artist, not the original inventor of the idea. The iPod versus other mp3 players is a good example.
In this case, it suffices to look at the title of the article - the Asus is being seen as a copy of the MacBook Air, and not the definitive form of Ultrabook that all other makers are going to try to copy. If they had succeeded in stealing the idea, the article would have been talking about how the Asus was going to be the benchmark all other Ultrabooks were going to be judged against, and it would have highlighted how the Asus had filled in the weaknesses of the current champion, which is the MacBook Air.
What is particularly sad here is that Apple responds to market pressures just like any other company: when faced with serious challengers, they are forced to innovate and improve.
When faced with a $300 million dollar movement to basically rip-off their product? I doubt they'll move nearly as quickly.
"What is particularly sad here is that Apple responds to market pressures just like any other company: when faced with serious challengers, they are forced to innovate and improve."
What made Apple Apple until recently was an intrinsic force(from within the company) to innovate an improve(a perfectionist and angry force that will insult and denigrate you if she did not wanted what you made, that will demand the best of you whenever the company is well or not).
In life you don't have to wait for others to force you when you could force yourself for your best. E.g students that choose careers their selves (even hard ones) are way happier than those that let others to decide for them.
"I doubt they'll move nearly as quickly."
Your opinion is based on a prejudice "Apple responds to market pressures just like any other company".
Apple had made very good products without "market pressure" that comes when things go bad, sales and. stock go down. The last decade had no pressure on Apple so your prejudice is not true.
Eh, I'd argue it responds much more aggressively and quickly when it has serious competition. Note that I didn't say Apple doesn't innovate when it doesn't have competition, I said it innovates more when it responds to market pressure, which, I think, shouldn't be controversial. Why exactly that statement is controversial is perplexing.
