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This madness is something Apple can only blame themselves for. It's Steve Jobs' ploy to kill the laptop market. He didn't need the laptop market, he had the iP
by chx 8y ago
This madness is something Apple can only blame themselves for.
It's Steve Jobs' ploy to kill the laptop market. He didn't need the laptop market, he had the iPhone, he knew of the iPad when he demo'd the Macbook Air. Today the entire Mac revenue https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re... is below 10%.
See, he have started the thin craze and everyone copied.
But noone needs a thin laptop. There's no advantage to it whatsoever. People do need lightweight laptops and well before the Macbook Air we had shockingly lightweight ones, my Panasonic CF-Y5 was 1.5kg including a DVD ROM more than ten years ago. It had a protrusion on the lid to create a cushion which made a review to call "the exterior design of the machine's casing is reminiscent of a Sherman tank cross-bred with a 1970s sports saloon". It made it 45mm thick at the thickest point. Still, it was 1.5kg and undestructible.
So, instead of focusing on materials science and building lightweight laptops in whatever thickness a good cooling system would require everyone is falling over themselves to produce a thin laptop. Which, of course, can't be properly cooled. It's just physics. In this case, the Macbook "Pro" is 0.61" high where the Lenovo P52 (which is Pro for real) is 0.96”. This thinness craze killed off the convenient bottom dock ports from the business laptops creating these awkward side docks.
Fantastic trick, Mr Jobs, well played.
- komocode 8y agoThat's a serious tin-foil hat you got there.
- chx 8y agohttps://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmkve/thinner-and-lighter-laptops-have-screwed-us-all https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmkve/thinner-an...
- Shank 8y ago> But noone needs a thin laptop. There's no advantage to it whatsoever. I own an Air, and it's been my go to machine in university. Yes, the weight does a lot to help me just pick it up and grab it, but the thinness does help a ton too. Thin means that I can throw it in a bag and still fit textbooks, notebooks, hoodies, and whatever else inside. I've had bags packed fully and needed every inch of space. The Air does that. It's not a huge market, and I think only the Air models should focus on it, but it does exist. A bigger but equally light laptop wouldn't make nearly the difference that the Air does in how it fits ends up being the smallest thing in many of my bags.
- rz2k 8y agoI don't know why there aren't docks on the market. The Henge USB-C dock has been pre-order for two years, so I just made my own in an afternoon by cutting a slot into a 4x4, and drilling a couple holes for a usb hub cable and a monitor+power cable.
- slededit 8y agoWhen I bought my Lenovo P50 I was unpleasantly surprised by its weight and thickness after having used MacBooks before. However I did get over it pretty quickly and swapping out batteries so I can keep working is awesome. I do need the power.
- r00fus 8y agoI really doubt even Jobs thought his RDF extended to the entire laptop market. He just had a great idea and Apple executed on it. The early MBA's (2010) were absolutely fantastic, quiet and reasonably powerful (read completely usable). As an anecdote, new hires at my company are given either a somewhat heavy ThinkPad or MPB (higher end). Many have complained about the weight of the ThinkPad. None complain when they choose the MBP.
- chx 8y agoThis just shows Apple items are fashion items which you can't do a technical comparison with. The ThinkPad T580 is 4.29lbs where the Macbook Pro 15" is 4.02lbs. I am sure the four ounces made a huge difference. If you wanted to compare it to the 5.4lbs P52 then may I point out the GTX 1060 level GPU which is quite a bit faster than the Macbook Pro? Not to mention the 128GB RAM capacity or the multiple M.2 SSD support. They are entirely different machines for different purposes.
- pmontra 8y agoPanasonic CF Y5, interesting machine with some uncommon features https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/panasonic-toughbook-cf-y5-panasonic-cf-y5-page-3 https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/panasonic-toughbook-c...