3 ms·

Gloating about your notebook of choice just makes you an asshole. I don't want to swap out the components in my notebook every week, that's not a useful feature

by sjs 16y ago

Gloating about your notebook of choice just makes you an asshole. I don't want to swap out the components in my notebook every week, that's not a useful feature for me. It's objective! Instead of lame invisible magic scrolling areas on the side, what if I want a large trackpad with lots of gestures, 2-finger scrolling & right-click? Or a slot loading DVD drive instead of a shitty tray one? Backlit keyboard? Magnet based power adapter so the dog doesn't drag my notebook off the table? LED battery life indicator on the side? 1" thickness? 5-8 hours battery life? Or just want OS X? And yes it looks good. If you don't care about those things that's fine. I think it's even worth sacrificing an eSATA port even though I'd like one. Different people are willing to make different compromises. As everyone says the CPU, memory and disks are the same now. Only difference is software and other hardware features. I don't understand why people have a mental block about looking at Apple's hardware objectively. "It looks good so it's clearly not meant to be useful!" ... wtf? Let me guess, the Vaio Z isn't useful either because it looks good and doesn't have a swappable SATA bay. Even though you can get it w/ dual SSDs and a Core i7. Give me a break.

whatusername 16y ago
Apple do a lot of things right. But they optimize hard for the 80-90% rule. Maybe even 95%. If you want to do anything in that 5-10% -- you have challenges. Woz wanted power and flexibility and options. Jobs wanted beauty and simplicity and ease of use. There's nothing wrong with simplicity. In fact - most of the time it's a benefit. But lets call it for what it is -- Apple's design ethos will choose simple over flexible almost every time.
- sjs 16y ago
  That's true. In the Sculley interview that was posted the other day a recurring theme was that Apple is a design company first. I think that's good. I like products designed for humans even though my inner geek likes to solve puzzles (figuring out a bad interface is like solving a puzzle, it tickles the same part of our brains). Some lament the fact that you can't change hibernate/sleep settings without running a few defaults commands in the terminal. I like that the machine does something sane out of the box and I don't have to think about it. I just focus on what I want to get done. Again, people care about different things. I care less about tweaking & tinkering as I get older and lazier.

by sjs 16y ago

whatusername 16y ago

Apple do a lot of things right. But they optimize hard for the 80-90% rule. Maybe even 95%. If you want to do anything in that 5-10% -- you have challenges. Woz wanted power and flexibility and options. Jobs wanted beauty and simplicity and ease of use. There's nothing wrong with simplicity. In fact - most of the time it's a benefit. But lets call it for what it is -- Apple's design ethos will choose simple over flexible almost every time.

sjs 16y ago
That's true. In the Sculley interview that was posted the other day a recurring theme was that Apple is a design company first. I think that's good. I like products designed for humans even though my inner geek likes to solve puzzles (figuring out a bad interface is like solving a puzzle, it tickles the same part of our brains). Some lament the fact that you can't change hibernate/sleep settings without running a few defaults commands in the terminal. I like that the machine does something sane out of the box and I don't have to think about it. I just focus on what I want to get done. Again, people care about different things. I care less about tweaking & tinkering as I get older and lazier.