18 ms·

I really don't understand Apple's obsessions with thinness. Do they really think that a few millimetres off the depth of a laptop is worth sacrificing reliabili

• oth001 8y ago
  I think it's all in their interest of making more money.
• Someone1234 8y ago
  It is the "sex" factor. Meaning, it makes no sense, but a lot of people buy consumer hardware because of how sexy it is which means thin, light, and attractive design trumps a lot of core utility. I buy Thinkpads because they are more utilitarian. But we cannot ignore that Apple's entire M.O. has always been making the thinnest/most attractive devices money can buy. I'll just keep voting with my wallet until Apple releases a utilitarian machine again. The recent Mac Mini is the closest we've seen.
  • war1025 8y ago
    I have a Thinkpad through work and the main thing I notice with it is that the hard edge at the front is a killer on my wrists. Is this not a thing other people run into?
    • eropple 8y ago
      I've got a T480 and my hands rest in front of the edge.
    • folkrav 8y ago
      Ergonomically speaking, you should not be resting your wrists down when typing or using the touchpad. Your wrists and palms are supposed to be aligned and hovering over the keyboard.
      • chooseaname 8y ago
        I just can't type like that. I'm a very lazy typist.
        • folkrav 8y ago
          I used to say that too until I started experiencing RSI. I eliminated 95% of the pain just by fixing my typing ergonomics. YMMV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      • war1025 8y ago
        The main thing I've always heard is that you're supposed to avoid "negative" angles on your wrist when typing. So I have a very thin, flat keyboard that I normally use. Laptops are a similar concept, but they are raised up enough that my normal typing posture doesn't work that well. With my Inspiron that I have at home, the base of the laptop is thin enough and angled decently that it works out fairly well. The Thinkpad has a base that is almost an inch thick, and my hand is just the perfect size that the hard edge I referenced is exactly where my wrist bends, which is I think what makes things so uncomfortable when using it.
        • folkrav 8y ago
          It's not just negative angles but any deviation at all, really. Your wrists are not supposed to be sitting at a static angle all day long, and having physical pressure from the desk/laptop on the underlying nerves and ligaments is a know factor favoring RSI symptoms.
      • caconym_ 8y ago
        TIL I've been doing it wrong for thirty years. Only being slightly facetious. What's going to happen to me if I don't mend my ways?
        • folkrav 8y ago
          Honestly? RSI is always a risk. People don't have the same propensity to experiencing it though. I'm late 20s and it already started destroying my wrists, fixing my positioning relieved (most of) the pain.
    • chrisseaton 8y ago
      > the hard edge at the front is a killer on my wrists I'm not sure it's recommended to be resting your wrists on the laptop at all. You're going to injure yourself like that. Every recommendation I've ever seen is to have your wrists in the air so that they're straight and level.
      • totololo 8y ago
        For 8+ hours a day? Sounds impossible to me...
        • lexicality 8y ago
          Maybe this is where the recommended regular breaks come in? ;) My physio told me it was incredibly unhealthy to sit in the same position for more than 40 minutes at a time. (His exact words were "I'd tell you to move every 20 minutes but I know what you programmers are like")
      • war1025 8y ago
        That's an issue I have with laptops in general, I think. To have the screen in a place where you can look at it comfortably, you need your hands in a place that is uncomfortable for them. And then vice-versa. I already have issues with repetitive stress pain when I use a laptop too long. I mainly try to avoid the laptop when at all possible and just use my 8+ year old desktop instead for all work things. As a plus, it has drastically cut down on the amount of "bonus" work I do at home in the evenings. When the choice is getting a little more work done vs not having tendons that hurt to move for the next 3 days, I'll take the lack of pain every time :)
    • cptskippy 8y ago
      As much as I dislike using my Macbook Pro (2015 vintage), it has easily the best on lap and typing experiencing of any laptop I've had or used in the last 10 years. It has that hard edge but for whatever reason I don't find it an issue.
  • Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
    Latest Mac Mini is no better. The decision to bundle the power adapter within the housing has added to the already poor thermal performance leading to throttling [1]. Then again people say "Apple is a design company" in air quotes. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8DOzr7G82U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8DOzr7G82U
    • ascagnel_ 8y ago
      It's not a "latest" thing -- the Mac Mini has always had an internal power adapter. Whether or not that's worth the thermal trade-off is a different question.
      • jks 8y ago
        I still have a 2006 Mac Mini, and its power brick is external. The size of the computer suggests it was built around the optical drive, while the newer Mac Minis are visibly wider than a CD. http://lowendmac.com/2006/mac-mini-early-2006/ http://lowendmac.com/2006/mac-mini-early-2006/
      • paxswill 8y ago
        Only the unibody Mac Minis. PowerPC and Intel non-unibody Mac Minis had an external brick.
      • rleigh 8y ago
        My G4 Mini had an external power brick. The inside of the case was pretty spacious; much more so than the unnecessarily cramped current model.
    • greedo 8y ago
      I like having the adapter built-in. The fewer wall warts, the better. YMMV.
  • invalidusernam3 8y ago
    For the general consumer stuff it matters less, but I wish the pro line of devices worried less the "sex" factor and more on being actual professional tools.
  • Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    I mean, I like my devices to look pretty. Aesthetics have value, and shouldn't be ignored outright. But, it's not impossible for a thicker device to look aesthetically pleasing. To choose a random example, I've always loved Nokia's Lumia line of phones, which were quite thick but had these lovely rounded edges that made it seem natural.
  • guskel 8y ago
    >It is the "sex" factor. Meaning, it makes no sense, but a lot of people buy consumer hardware because of how sexy it is which means thin, light, and attractive design trumps a lot of core utility. It goes further than that. Apple products are status symbols and owners of Apple products are seen as more sexually attractive.
    • Kye 8y ago
      I got an iPhone and still don't have cute people lining up. I was misled.
  • Retra 8y ago
    BTW, this is a good example of "being traffic": Apple isn't the one spreading 'sex factor propaganda' in this thread, the people trying to ascribe motives to Apple and consumers is. The lesson is, if you don't want something to be the focus of everyone's attention, don't go around repeating it over and over again. Apple has the power to ignore you precisely because you're effectively parroting their brand identity, even if only to criticize it. Propaganda 102.
  • megy 8y ago
    Of course, no one likes thin, light devices in a laptop that you carry around all the time. That is just silly.
• tivert 8y ago
  > I really don't understand Apple's obsessions with thinness. Steve Jobs once prioritized a thing and found success. Now that Jobs is dead Apple is cargo-culting his past decisions. See also: hyper-aggressive removal of ports. It made sense in 1998 when we were talking about clearly obsolete things like Apple's nonstandard DIN-8 serial ports and SCSI-1, less so in 2018 when we're talking about performant and ubiquitous standards like USB-A and the headphone jack.
  • lallysingh 8y ago
    I think that's exactly it. They don't know what to do without Steve. So the company runs off of memories of him, which aren't enough.
  • slimsag 8y ago
    What I don't get is why not just replace the headphone jack with a smaller one? e.g. a 1.5mm one?
    • cptskippy 8y ago
      Where are those sweet sweet licensing fees they enjoyed from the proprietary connectors?
      • chris_wot 8y ago
        Kind of misses the point. I'd rather like to charge and use my earphones at the same time. It's not an unobvious use case!
        • cptskippy 8y ago
          Just wait, the next iPhone will be symmetrical with a notch and a lightning connector on each side.
        • dubya 8y ago
          There are a few adapters that do audio out and lightning in for charging. Apple makes (made?) a dock that was similar. They all have pretty bad reviews unfortunately. USB-C and Android seem to have the same lack of solutions. I was looking for one because one of our cars has no bluetooth, and the other has bluetooth that won't talk to any recent iPhone, and my iphone 5S is getting flaky. Wish I hadn't missed the SE over the weekend.
• randyrand 8y ago
  they did make it thicker. It’s thicker than an iphone 5
• graeme 8y ago
  The phones have been getting thicker for years. This myth needs to die. That said, I agree on the laptops.
  • dwaite 8y ago
    Agreed - it is amazing to me the number of things people will (falsely) blame on Apple having an uncompromising desire for thinness over all other criteria. Apple makes their devices as thin as possible to meet within their design specs; they don't sacrifice their design for thinness. Thats different from Apple not accounting for any one person's needs/desires as part of their design. I'll give keyboards as an example, since people are notorious for saying that apple put a "lousy" keyboard in all their modern laptops solely for thinness. I'm sure there are a few people who would love a modern laptop that used Cherry MX switches in its keyboard, but that's not a demographic Apple is going to leap up and target. From Apple's product page, describing the third generation butterfly keyboard in the MacBook Pro: "The MacBook Pro keyboard features a butterfly mechanism — providing four times more key stability than a traditional scissor mechanism, along with greater comfort. The 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Pro models with Touch Bar now feature a keyboard with a quieter typing experience." Note that the description does not mention thinness at all as a "primary" design goal - it mentions greater comfort, improved stability, and the newer model being quieter. Was reducing keyboard depth part of the design goals for what became the butterfly keyboard? Of course! But I guarantee Apple's philosophy for the project was not "thinness at all costs" - the keyboard would not be released until they felt it was a better overall experience as well. Now does everyone feel it is a better overall experience? Obviously not. I personally suspect Apple launched the keyboard originally on the Retina MacBook partially to gauge reaction, then was surprised at how much more negative the reaction was once it was added to the Pro line. To me, a "me too" post by someone accusing Apple executives for purposely sacrificing quality for thinness is not something that encourages communication - it just encourages more ranting. A post talking about say, whether the keyboard issues that people have with the new design are related more around just the change compared to previous keyboard technology, or if it is an impact of say key travel distance, the force curve or key bounce, would be a really interesting discussion to participate in.
• xxxdarrenxxx 8y ago
  Yes they do, but it's bigger than technicalities. People buy products when the person behind it, shows confidence and a sense of "predictability" and consistency. Apple says (as extension from Steve Jobs), we care about the design, Apple goes for thin and slick, people will buy this, because "apple stand for slick design". This creates a bond between company-consumer. This is more a psychology thing. It's why people like Trump get voted in. A weird example perhaps, but trump is 'simple', straightforward and 'predictable'. If he hates something, he will hate it with confidence and you can predict already how things will play out, when he's interviewed about it. This create "knowingness", and people might want a good leader, most of all, they want a leader that's consistent , good or bad, as long as it can be placed on the backburner in your mind. You see this in many places where emotions are a factor. A mother mourning a missing child, eventually just "Want to know what happened". They likely will (partially) heal from the sadness of loss, but 'not knowing' will keep people awake indefinitely.
• dwighttk 8y ago
  I have a 2012 Mac book pro 15” and it is thin enough for me. But I thought that with my 12” Powerbook and saw a picture of it the other day and that thing was real thick. I think for me the thinness should take a back seat to design issues like this monitor cable thing. But everyone talking about just making the iPhone a little thicker and adding lots of battery life need to realize their use patterns are probably out on the edge of the curve. My iPhones have rarely lasted less than a day of use. And if you aren’t going to get like a week or a month then what good is a little more battery?
  • pdpi 8y ago
    > But everyone talking about just making the iPhone a little thicker and adding lots of batter life need to realize their use patterns are out on the edge of the curve. Maybe it's you and I who's out on the edge of the curve? I also usually get a whole day of battery out of my iPhone without difficulty, but I know many people who don't, none of whom fit the HN-dwelling power-user stereotype. Also, any time I do things outside my usual routine, my battery takes a pummelling too — be it because I'm out and about on my own for longer than usual and all the spare battery goes towards Spotify, or I'm somewhere I don't know, and it's Google Maps/GPS that eats it up, there's many ways in which that "always lasts me the whole day" thing can go out the window. > And if you aren’t going to get like a week or a month then what good is a little more battery? Battery that lasts a whole weekend if, say, you miss the last train and need to stay somewhere overnight would be quite useful. Or, as above, battery that lasts the whole day for more intensive use.
    • dwighttk 8y ago
      Yeah I mean we have an example of thinness overtaking use in this monitor cable design (though I’m sure it wasn’t purposely “hey let’s make this thing thinner so the monitor cables will break!” At worst it was maybe a junior designer being overruled saying this could be a problem in a larger percent of cases than y’all are thinking) but extra battery life being nice to have is true but not a daily necessity. I mean in the past ten days I broke 50% battery useage twice and 75% 0 times. Average screen on of 4hrs 16 min and another couple hrs of screen off time. Their new battery case is a perfect way to deal with that nice to have capacity. I don’t need it, already have an Anker battery for long days (e.g. on airplanes) but if your friends need it there’s a solution that doesn’t mean many users (I’m guessing Apple knows that it is most, but I don’t know that for sure) don’t have to carry it around every day and never use it.
• doodpants 8y ago
  One explanation I read somewhere is that, by constantly pushing the envelope on form factor constraints and manufacturing complexity, they are making it impossible for knock-off companies to make convincing counterfeits.
  • LoSboccacc 8y ago
    only took 8 month to get a xiaomi with the same form factor, if you go to more obscure non reputable brands there were some even faster https://www.gizmochina.com/2018/03/06/top-iphone-x-clones-from-china/ https://www.gizmochina.com/2018/03/06/top-iphone-x-clones-fr...
  • clairity 8y ago
    yes. it’s a pretty straightforward differentiation strategy. whenever a product doesn’t compete on price, it competes on difference. it puzzles me that this is well known, yet people keep bringing up the thinness as an independent feature apart from apple’s overall strategy (and success). with price competition, you go for cheap components, processes, marketing and distribution. when you compete on difference, you not only need new and unique qualities to market but a sustainable advantage. one part of this advantage for apple is on the design and manufacturing side. apple maintains leads in these areas by being on the leading edge of what the technology can do (their products are never on the bleeding edge because their customers also demand quality and reliabilty). the other part is supply chain; not just the ability to source parts and get the best pricing, but the ability to create a cascade of innovation where components and design permeate the whole ecosystem (this lets them fully amortize fixed costs like r&d and manufacturing costs). this is why apple captures the majority of profits in the markets it competes in. thinness is an attribute of that advantage.
  • heisenbit 8y ago
    There is a real real risk in this costly strategy of differentiating for the sake of differentiation without major value add. After a while there will be companies not imitating Apple's latest products but the Apple's earlier products at a lower price.
  • vertexFarm 8y ago
• paulcole 8y ago
  > Do they really think that a few [millimeters] off the depth of a laptop is worth sacrificing reliability like this? Probably. I mean why else would they have done it?
• george_perez 8y ago
  Every iPhone since the 6 has been thicker than its predecessor.
• douglaswlance 8y ago
  Their data shows that's what sells to the mass market. You are not a representation of the mass market. You are an early adopter. Your needs are not their main priority.
• jwr 8y ago
  Super-thin things are great. Some people love them and will pay dearly to have them. The problem is not in building thin devices, it's with ONLY building thin devices. In a complete product line there should be an ultra-thin laptop, and a thicker "PRO" model that has a decent set of ports (bring back USB-A so that we can do our pro work without dongles please!), is reliable, has a good keyboard and battery life. I should be able to choose whether I need thinness or not (in my case, I don't much care). The MacBook line is going through a dark age right now, where seemingly people who design them are not the same people that use them. My personal suspicion is that Jony Ive (whom I do not consider to be a "Pro" mac user) became too powerful and people can't oppose his taste and his decisions. The worst thing about all of this is that Apple is (still) so far ahead of everybody else. I really, really wish there was a viable competitor. The problem is that with the lead that Apple has with MacOS and iOS and with the ridiculous amounts of money that they have it will be very difficult to catch up.
  • vinceguidry 8y ago
    Diversifying the product line for every single customer desire will lead to Apple's slow evolution into Dell. We already have a Dell. Apple needs to be free to focus on making computers the Apple way.
    • setquk 8y ago
      I’d take “dell that works properly”
  • komali2 8y ago
    What makes you feel that there are no viable competitors? On the hardware, build quality, screen quality, customization, fixit score and ports scales the HP Spectre and Lenovo carbon have been winning critics. Is it osx only that makes you say this? I've seen hackintoshes in the past, would that be viable?
    • jwr 8y ago
      Yes, macOS and companion iOS are the real problem here. Together with the hardware they form an "ecosystem", which is conducive to getting things done, especially for people who need to juggle many responsibilities at once (think entrepreneurs/bootstrappers) and who really do not have time to deal with OS issues. And please believe me that I did my homework before saying "no viable competitors". I regularly use Linux, Mac OS and Windows. It's not even close. I mean, seriously, Linux doesn't even have a sane concept of a system-wide clipboard. So in the end, hardware itself doesn't matter much, unless you mostly stare at it. If you want to use it to get work done, what matters is the entire package: hardware, OS, application software, companion devices.
• _hardwaregeek 8y ago
  There's a few reasons. First, your average consumer is not going to understand x GHz faster or y GB more RAM. They are going to understand that the new Macbook Pro looks thinner and sexier than their old, crappy Macbook Pro. Thinness is a dumb obsession, but it works on everybody. It transcends language, specs, bugs, whatever. It "just works". Second, all these damn "flexgate", "signalgate", whatever, won't even make the radar of a person who doesn't follow tech blogs. Even if they do get this problem (which, let's be clear, won't happen to the majority of people), they'll go to the Apple store, where a human being can diagnose the problem and fix it. Name another laptop company that can do that. The only case where it truly can hurt Apple's bottom line is if the store can't fix the problem. And even in that case, this person won't exactly take to the streets against Apple. They'll probably just grumble and buy a different computer. I guarantee there's some internal model at Apple that shows that the projected losses from "flexgate" is a lot less than the projected revenue from a thinner form. Finally, there's something to be said about thinness. Even one or two models back, I had to think about taking my laptop with me. If I wanted a laptop that I could carry everywhere, I'd have to consider a Macbook Air, which would be less powerful, have less space, blah blah blah. Now, I can pretty much slip my Macbook Pro into my bag because it's so damn light. I can palm my laptop and walk with it through an office. I can hold it under my arm like a magazine. Sure, there's some issues, especially if you're an actual professional. But it's been pretty obvious for the past few years that the "Pro" in MBP is a very loose term.
• jmull 8y ago
  > just make it slightly thicker and you could add hours to the battery life. Well, they have been making iPhones thicker. Apple's obsession with thinness apparently isn't as obsessive as purported. Of course there's a design tradeoff: how thick to make it and what to use the available space for. We can argue about specific tradeoff decisions all day, but we can't argue that the decisions have to be made -- and whatever the decisions are, they won't satisfy everyone. Anyway, if you want to trade thickness for battery capacity, you can get a battery case.
  • dwaite 8y ago
    I suspect Apple's iPhone thinness requirements include "device is comfortable to hold and use in a thick case". The camera bump has gotten gradually larger partially because they can be a cut out section of such a case, without taking up additional thickness and making the cased device less comfortable to hold and use for long periods. The most obvious subtraction to preserve device size and simplify internals to allow for other features was the headphone jack. Thus the "courage" remark - the teams (all the way up to the executives) were willing to have a device change that may people would be upset about because they felt it was the right tradeoff to make long-term.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• linuxlizard 8y ago
  > I really don't understand Apple's obsessions with thinness. We engineers will work on the same thing over and over until we're told to work on something different. The last input the Apple mechanical, etc, engineers were given was "Make it thinner." There has been no change in direction, no new instructions, so they continue to work on the same request.
• crazygringo 8y ago
  Honestly? I love thinness and lightness. The evolution of laptops from the space equivalent of textbooks to the space equivalent of a magazine is amazing when you're constantly on the go, have other things that need to go into your shoulder bag, and don't want your shoulder/neck to hurt at the end of the day. Thinness is amazing. If your laptop sits on your desk all day long, then of course it's irrelevant. But if you're using your laptop for its portability, taking it to multiple spots all day long (classes, conference rooms, buildings, across town), then thinness and lightness becomes an absolute top priority. I've been using laptops for 20 years. I wouldn't go backwards ever. They've just gotten better and better. I think most of HN is possibly just not the target market here.
  • qyv 8y ago
    The question is actually "at what cost?" Sure, all things being equal thinner/lighter is great. BUT, what trade off's are being made in the name of thinness? If you need to sacrifice 50% expected lifetime to make something 0.5mm thinner, is that a good trade off?
    • crazygringo 8y ago
      All my Apple laptops have lasted many years longer than laptops from other brands, and also have higher resale value at the end. I'm not a hardware expert who's qualified to judge the actual tradeoffs Apple's making and the actual failure rates, but the big picture seems to be clearly that they're managing both thinness and longevity quite well, despite whatever isolated cases of failures there may be. Apple certainly isn't perfect, but I've had more hardware problems with "non-thin" laptops by other brands than I have with thin laptops by Apple.
  • cr0sh 8y ago
    I'm actually in the process of refurbishing and (potentially) upgrading a TRS-80 Model 100 for everyday usage. Sure, it won't have any of the modern stuff available, but it will run for hours off of 4 AA batteries that I can purchase anywhere.
    • 8y ago
• laythea 8y ago
  It is a clever move to minimise engineering, whilst maximising profit at the expense of the consumer, whilst the consumer does not realise. Apple is in a position of power here, due to the public. Fact is, however you cut it, slice it, or dice it, people (in the whole) are stupid and will keep buying Apple for the foreseeable future, despite Apple's efforts at reducing reliability to maximise profits. They know people will just keep on buying, and I would favour a guess that anyone in their position would be doing exactly what they are. They will "milk the teet until it stops giving", and then change.
  • rayiner 8y ago
    > Apple is in a position of power here, due to the public. Fact is, however you cut it, slice it, or dice it, people (in the whole) are stupid and will keep buying Apple for the foreseeable future, despite Apple's efforts at reducing reliability to maximise profits. Are people "stupid" or are the alternatives even worse? Broken LCD cabling is not great, but you can take it into an Apple Store and they'll fix it or swap out your laptop. Never had a problem with it. But I recently bought a non-Apple laptop for the first time in a decade, and it's been a disaster. Spent $1,500+ on a Lenovo X1 Carbon. The LTE has never worked reliably. The screen just developed either a patch of dead pixels, or somehow some dust got under the glass. Neither has ever happened to me on an Apple product. And even when it works, it's just "meh." Windows is surprisingly slow on what should be a very fast processor (i7-8650U). The trackpad is just okay. Battery life is just okay. My wife just tried to replace her aging Retina Macbook Pro 2012. After trying a couple of Surface machines at the Microsoft Store, and my Thinkpad, she's decided to wait to see what Apple does in October.
    • FireBeyond 8y ago
      > Broken LCD cabling is not great, but you can take it into an Apple Store and they'll fix it or swap out your laptop. From the article: > Apple designed the cables as part of the display, so they cannot be replaced. This means that when (not if) those cables start to fail, the entire display unit needs to be replaced, as opposed to one or two little cables—effectively turning a $6 problem into a $600 disaster. > A few determined folks have managed to get their local Genius Bar to replace their screen on Apple’s dime, but for now it seems that for every person who succeeds, many more are rejected—or simply end up paying for a new screen out of pocket without realizing how widespread the issue is. > There are also multiple people who claim to have started threads on Apple’s support site only to have them deleted. No, people are not "stupid". Why should they have to be paying for this? Apple is regularly, repeatedly shown to have to be threatened with lawsuits to deal with their design flaws. And in many of those cases, they offer replacement of flawed components - with the same flawed components, which will fail again, and again (except you'll get unlucky and their 'window' will close, and you're just SOL).
• rayiner 8y ago
  Thin sells, and I think for good reasons. Laptops sued to be so thick, you'd carry them in a "laptop bag." Now, you can carry them in a sleeve or briefcase. I want a laptop thin enough that I can carry it around with a stack of papers. As long as it has reasonable battery life, there is quite a distance yet to go for thinner laptops.
  • markstos 8y ago
    People really want balance: thinness, lightness, performance, battery life, durability. A thin laptop that fails to endure a year without repair might be too thin.
    • rayiner 8y ago
      Except the failure rate is some probability distribution. If making the laptop thinner means that the 1-year failure rate spikes from 0.2% to 0.5%, that just means Apple pushed the manufacturing too far, not that there is an inherent problem with pursuing a thinner design.
  • cr0sh 8y ago
    > Laptops sued to be so thick, you'd carry them in a "laptop bag." Now, you can carry them in a sleeve or briefcase. I own a TRS-80 Model 100 "laptop" - it came with a "sleeve" you could put it in. It fits perfectly inside a briefcase or backpack. It runs for days on a set of AA batteries...
    • Keyframe 8y ago
      Yeah, but it's shit.
• JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
  It reminds me of wild birds that have gotten so wildly evolved through sexual selection that they are no longer fit or optimized for their environment. Wild colors and feathers everywhere attracting predators and taking too many resources to sustain.
• setquk 8y ago
  If they made it slightly thicker it wouldn’t have a fucking awful keyboard that I had to return after three weeks because it started registering duplicate key presses. They compromised everything for this aspect of the design.
• sigi45 8y ago
  A few millimeter (therefore a minimum of 2) is quite a lot. I don't see the thinnes as a problem, i'm more curious on how this was not detected in there endurance tests. Can't imagine at all that there are not 100 macbook pros open and closing all day long somewhere.
  • Arn_Thor 8y ago
    There definitely are, but there are many potential factors that impact how something wears: most notably temperature and humidity. I reckon all it takes is a few opening movements in cold and dry weather to weaken the rubber or plastic in such a way that it'll fail, but much later. But I'm just guessing
• babyslothzoo 8y ago
  > I really don't understand Apple's obsessions with thinness. Do they really think that a few millimetres off the depth of a laptop is worth sacrificing reliability like this? Ironically there are quite a few PC laptops that are thinner. With better keyboards, and useful ports.
• dreamcompiler 8y ago
  I think it's a Jony Ive problem. He has too much power now and all he cares about is how cool the product looks in the store. When Steve was around, he could counterbalance Ive with concern about function, but nobody seems to have that role any more.
  • dwaite 8y ago
    I have a hard time believing this sort of conspiracy theory - it would mean that design changes that impact quality (and thus things like costs to Apple for hardware warranties and returns) have no chain of responsibility.
• umvi 8y ago
  > I really don't understand Apple's obsessions with thinness. Do they really think that a few millimetres off the depth of a laptop is worth sacrificing reliability like this? My favorite is when they wanted thinness so badly, they sacrificed the "bulky" hermetically sealed crystals in favor of super thin non-sealed oscillators of some type. As a result, iPhones would stop working in the presence of helium atoms (such as at hospitals where liquid helium sometimes escapes)[1], but not Android phones (which used the "bulky" hermetically sealed crystal oscillators) [1] https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/ https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium...
• dwaite 8y ago
  > I really don't understand Apple's obsessions with thinness. Do they really think that a few millimetres off the depth of a laptop is worth sacrificing reliability like this? I'm pretty sure if they thought it would affect reliability in a meaningful way, they wouldn't have taken this approach. Since Apple has obligations to repair devices, such an "obsession" with thinness would trump their obsession with profit margins.
• megy 8y ago
  This is such a silly statement, I don't know where to being. Everyone wants thinner, lighter devices. Everyone. Or we would still be using 2 inch thick laptops. or 0.5 inch thick phones. Even then, with the 2 inch thick laptops, there were making them as thin as they could. The tech wasn't there to make it any thinner, or they would have.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• hopler 8y ago
  Apple sells a $130 external battery case now. Fatness is available if you want it.