6 ms·
You’re giving Dell / HP / etc too much credit. They’ve tried over and over again to build a machine with Macbook level quality. They have laptops that cost just
by symlinkk 6y ago
You’re giving Dell / HP / etc too much credit. They’ve tried over and over again to build a machine with Macbook level quality. They have laptops that cost just as much, if not more, than a Macbook. And every one of them has some glaring issue.
It’s not some purposeful design decision. They just don’t have the same caliber of engineers or management that Apple has.
- damnyou 6y agoEvery MacBook Pro these days has the glaring issues of * not having a top row of physical keys * not being able to run Linux natively * not integrating with any phones except the ones it makes Apple just doesn't have the caliber of engineering or management to compete with PC manufacturers.
- ashtonkem 6y agoThese are not glaring issues to most mac buyers, with the possible exception of the touchbar. Most Mac buyers both want OSX, and use iPhones. If you want Linux, don't buy a Macbook Pro, you'll save a ton of money on features you don't need, and get better hardware support.
- damnyou 6y agoWhat I'm saying is that — while the fact that all PC laptops have glaring issues is true, Macs just have a different set of glaring issues. Doing my bit to counteract the rampant sycophancy here.
- ashtonkem 6y agoYou don’t have to like Macs, but calling everyone else sycophants is out of line.
- dkonofalski 6y agoI love the Touch Bar and the fact that the new Macbooks have a physical escape key should pretty much silence any devs that were screaming about losing one.
- damnyou 6y agoI hate the lack of function keys. I hate the lack of touch typing support. It's a huge, glaring issue.
- dkonofalski 6y agoUnfortunately for you, you're in the minority. The Touch Bar is infinitely more useful than unlabelled function keys.
- ashtonkem 6y agoAll laptop keyboards are awful, and they encourage horrible posture. If you’re going to do extended typing in a fixed position, get an external keyboard monitor. The laptop keyboard should be for short term, mobile use only.
- asdff 6y agoBuy the i5 air, it's a great little dev machine if you have access to some remote horsepower.
- pwinnski 6y agoI downvoted you before you added your second and third bullet points, because you were taking a cheap shot. Even with the additional points, you're comparing apples to oranges. Apple chose to remove physical function keys. No other manufacturer has previously had a smooth trackpad and chosen to remove it.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI genuinely don’t get what the big deal about function keys are. I never used them heavily, even on external keyboards. I actually transitioned to external keyboards that don’t have them, to save space. The only key that’s useful on that top row is escape, IMHO. They should make that a key. Everything else is low utility.
- FpUser 6y ago"Everything else is low utility." - says who? I can't imagine working without function keys.
- ashtonkem 6y agoSays me. This is a personal observation about how I use my keyboards.
- FpUser 6y agoIt is your personal preference, what makes it any better than mine? I do not like red color on cars. Hence they should stop painting it this way and concentrate on offering what I like.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI spoke about my personal preference and experience, I’m not sure why you’re interpreting that as an attack.
- chrisseaton 6y agoNone of these things even remotely matter to me. They aren't issues when I'm looking at what to buy.
- coldtea 6y ago>not having a top row of physical keys They instead get an adaptable keybed, that can be used as sliders, piano keys, timeline managers, and other controls, plus a fast and secure fingerprint sensor (PC ones are laughable), and a physical escape key again. >not being able to run Linux natively On exchange they get stronger security from the T2 controller handgling they keyboard, etc. Besides, most dodn't buy Macbooks to run Linux on them (though Linus used to love them for that purpose). That said, if they're willing to turn it off, there's ongoing work from the Linux side to let it boot, talk to the SSD, keyboard, etc. >not integrating with any phones except the ones it makes I'm pretty sure it integrates just fine with my Android phone. Do you know something I don't know?
- rsynnott 6y agoI honestly think a lot of it is just (bad) prioritization. An analogous situation; remember when Mac laptops had far, far better battery life than PC laptops? Like ridiculously better. People usually thought it was some magic property of the PowerPC; then Intel Mac laptops came out and they were still ridiculously better. Then Intel started taking it seriously, and a few Centrino revisions later the gap had narrowed dramatically. I remember reading at the time that, when idle, the chipset in many PC laptops used more power than the CPU...
- karatestomp 6y agoAll Apple stuff's that way, it seems. A lot of it's the software. Just compare the effect of Safari versus Firefox or Chrome on MacBook battery life. One of these projects clearly gives a quite a large damn about power use—the other two... not so much. I worked on software for phones and tablets right around the 2/3 split for Android, up through Android 5 or so. We had lots of testing devices of all quality levels. The joke-but-actually-100%-true around the office was that an Android tablet left unplugged on a desk over the weekend was always dead when you got back on Monday, while an iPad forgotten in a drawer for a month would have a useful amount of charge left on it (and come to life instantly, of course, as if it had never been asleep). Didn't seem to matter how much the Android device cost.
- wpietri 6y agoTotally. I own Android phones and tablets. But when I pick up a friend's iPhone or iPad, it's clear that the user experience is more polished. Is that because Google has a lower caliber engineers than Apple? I doubt it. Certainly the people I know at both companies are equally smart.
- Daneel_ 6y agoTo be fair, apple hardware also has some catastrophic issues. The ongoing keyboard disasters and overheating/throttling are two that come to mind.
- kube-system 6y agoYou're right, it's not a design decision. That degree of optimization is not something that happens at the product design level -- it is organization-wide optimization. When Apple leverages iPhone R&D for their MacBook, they get it for free. If it takes Dell 50 million dollars to develop the tech, and Dell expects to sell 100,000 laptops, then if we assume everything else is equal, an equivalent Dell laptop would carry a premium of $500 over a MacBook. In which case, they probably wouldn't sell 100,000 laptops, and it would be a failure and a waste of 50 million bucks. Horizontal integration is powerful.
- nimish 6y agoThis is it. Apple is willing to spend money on actual R&D for user experience. Dell and hp and friends essentially just assemble off the shelf parts into a styled chassis. It took dell years to bother developing a thin camera module instead of having a nose cam. It does come at a cost and until recently windows machines were not able to recoup it (probably chicken and egg scenario) Until Microsoft forced precision touch pads windows touch pads were awful since the oems just slapped in garbage vendor drivers. Screen aspect ratio is another thing. Everyone but apple moved to 16:9 since it's cheaper but 16:10 is better for productivity and not bad for media. But even the business windows laptops pinch pennies and do 16:9. Only apple was willing to buy 16:10 panels.
- abrowne 6y agoMy new-this-spring HP EliteBook (ordered custom with FreeDOS) running Ubuntu 20.04 seems flawless to me, although YMMV. This coming from someone who has only ever owned Macs and uses Macs at work.
- asdff 6y agoWow what a mac clone! I thought these facsimile designs died out, but I guess they must sell.
- abrowne 6y agoI agree there's nothing original about the basic design, but that's true of a lot of mature products. With USB ports on both sides (in additional to Thunderbolt 3) and an HDMI port, it's a lot like the 2015 MacBook Pro aka the "best laptop ever made"¹. But mine has a great matte touchscreen, so there are some new ideas. 1: https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever
- wpietri 6y agoI would bet cash money that Dell, etc, could do just as poorly with equally good engineers. With differences that persist this long and are this far-reaching, I think you have to look at culture, process, and values. For all Jobs' flaws, he built an amazing culture around valuing user experience and putting that first. That's extremely hard to do, especially with a dominant business culture that instead values things like individual performance metrics, quarterly profit numbers, and low labor costs. The average piece of consumer electronics gets 3-7 physical prototypes before launch; the iPod had over 100. That's not down to the caliber of engineers or line managers.
- symlinkk 6y agoI think “culture” and “management” kind of bleed into each other, because at the end of the day you’re going to do whatever the manager tells you to do. If they tell you to make 100 more prototypes until you perfect the iPod, you’ll do it. If they tell you what we have isn’t perfect but it’s good enough, then you’ll go with that.
- wpietri 6y agoI think doing only what managers say is a fine example of bad culture. People who have been trained to not care can make a hundred prototypes and still not make anything great. People who believe that the organization will support them in making something great for the users will push to do more prototypes until they get it really right.
- aguyfromnb 6y ago>They have laptops that cost just as much, if not more, than a Macbook. And every one of them has some glaring issue. You can go to many laptop review sites and find that Apple are not dominating every category. What do you know that they don't?
- asdff 6y agoThe older I get the more I realize raw performance matters far less than the experience of using the machine every day. Macos is comfortable, so that's what I go with. Heavy lifting is better done with something permanently plugged into a wall.