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I'd love to consider leaving Apple, but there's something that keeps me that I'm not willing to give up: industrial design. I look at the rest of the market and

I'd love to consider leaving Apple, but there's something that keeps me that I'm not willing to give up: industrial design. I look at the rest of the market and wonder what the hell they've been doing for the past decade... Why is it all "gamer" hardware that looks like a Michael Bay movie? Maybe there's a carve out for things that look like they belong in a cubicle farm. Cheap plastic, laptops with bad battery life and worse cooling, inferior trackpads, and screens that don't quite hit the mark no matter where you look. I'm willing to accept that Apple buys the supply chain and makes it harder, fine - but why is there not one single company that makes something premium that I want to have in my office? I'll pay a premium for it, cost literally does not matter - just give me something nice. I could get a good looking desktop from System76, but every other monitor makes me cringe now. If the market is this much in disarray, I have no idea how they compete against the M1's internals. Ceding the premium market to Apple is the most depressing thing ever. And none of this is even touching on comparing macOS relative polish to Linux and its various DEs. I think that macOS is tricky with changes, sure - but if you know how the OS works, there's really very little surprise with it. tl;dr: would the rest of this industry please wake up and actually compete?

Jemaclus 6y ago
I've often wondered the same thing. Seems like Apple is winning because everyone else just gave up, but what that should really mean is that it's ripe for disruption. I'd love to have a Linux machine that looks good physically, has a polished OS, and "just works". But I've dabbled with various flavors of Linux a lot over the last few years, and I'm just never impressed enough to make the switch fully.
hkarthik 6y ago
It’s the economics of it all. Industrial design costs a lot of money. Money requires margins. There is little margin to be had in building PCs after Intel/AMD, Nvidia, Realtek, etc all take their cut. And let’s not forget Microsoft getting their pound of flesh for Windows. The modern PC is simply packaging. The flashy gaming PCs with cheap LED lights and backlit keyboards have allowed the manufacturers to increase their margin enough to stay in business, but not enough to fund the kind of industrial design that Apple puts forward.

Jemaclus 6y ago

I've often wondered the same thing. Seems like Apple is winning because everyone else just gave up, but what that should really mean is that it's ripe for disruption. I'd love to have a Linux machine that looks good physically, has a polished OS, and "just works". But I've dabbled with various flavors of Linux a lot over the last few years, and I'm just never impressed enough to make the switch fully.

hkarthik 6y ago

It’s the economics of it all. Industrial design costs a lot of money. Money requires margins. There is little margin to be had in building PCs after Intel/AMD, Nvidia, Realtek, etc all take their cut. And let’s not forget Microsoft getting their pound of flesh for Windows. The modern PC is simply packaging. The flashy gaming PCs with cheap LED lights and backlit keyboards have allowed the manufacturers to increase their margin enough to stay in business, but not enough to fund the kind of industrial design that Apple puts forward.