I really, really miss the days when there was more than one manufacturer of computers. I think it was in 2002/2003 when I was last in the market for a non-appl

I really, really miss the days when there was more than one manufacturer of computers. I think it was in 2002/2003 when I was last in the market for a non-apple device and there was a lot of interesting competition ... thinkpads, sony vaio, HP ... Dell had some great laptops ... there was actually a reason to scroll through gizmodo/engadget and look at new products coming out. Now there's only one.[1] I really do think that the macbook air is the final evolution of the laptop computer. Yes, I do wish I could pull the battery and yes I do miss PCMCIA and yes I cannot use a laptop with a single port[2] but the 13" MBA that I bought in late 2008 lasted 7 years of hard use and three battery swap-outs (done by apple, of course).[3] I don't really understand why other manufacturers can't make a MBA ... I'd like to see some minor competition along the very, very final bits of design latitude you can have in this thoroughly distilled form factor ... but for whatever reason Dell/HP/Sony/Lenovo refuse to just make their laptops out of metal for god's sake. I wonder if this is where we are going with high end cars ? I notice the exact same inability to function on the part of all the incumbent car manufacturers. It's how many years since the Prius came out and how many years since the Tesla roadster and Porsche just announced an all electric car and of course it's a concept car?[4] BMW has a brand new 7 series with the predictably lame hybrid option mated to some little lawnmower engine. Just concept cars and half-assed hybrids over and over again. Meanwhile, Tesla has a dual-motor, AWD supercar for sale. There used to be more than one maker of high end four door luxury cars ... [1] Well, actually there's two - apple for laptops/desktops and supermicro (god bless them) for anything that goes in a rack. [2] New macbook 12" with the single combined USB/power. [3] Actually it still works now, but I get a new 11" MBA. [4] http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/15/autos/porsche-debuts-first-electric-car-mission-e/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/15/autos/porsche-debuts-first-e...