4 ms·

Apple is not the biggest laptop producer - hp, lenovo, dell has been shipping each year more than apple. ThinkPads are actually durable and easily repairable

by pzo 3y ago

Apple is not the biggest laptop producer - hp, lenovo, dell has been shipping each year more than apple. ThinkPads are actually durable and easily repairable and even upgradable and they sell much cheaper and with smaller margin. You would expect that apple with bigger R&D, bigger product price and much bigger margin would focus more on repairability by itself instead of waiting for EU to force it's hand.

lozenge 3y ago
Their price and margin comes from the thinness, lightness and solidness, all of which reduce repairability.
- pzo 3y ago
  Excluding current m1 and m2 generations and going back 2-3 years back what did you get? Laptops that keyboards was breaking and to replace it you had to remove the whole top of laptop for like couple of hundreds of dollars. Hard drive soldered with price for 1TB around $1k with even backup port removed in case of failor. Battery glued. I used to have thinkpad x1 extreme gen 2 which price was $1.5k, 2x nmve slots, 2x removable ram up to 64gb ram. Battery removable with just a screws. Wifi module replaceable and could be upgraded. Display could be replaced and upgraded. Durable case from carbon fiber. Solid keyboard with even track point. And was still very lightweight - because carbon case.
  - kitsunesoba 3y ago
    As someone who owns both a MacBook and a ThinkPad, while the construction of ThinkPads (at least "real" ThinkPads, not in-brand-only models) is solid they often leave something desired in terms of case flex. I'm comfortable holding my 16" M1 Max MBP by its corner while it's open because it doesn't flex at all, while I'm more nervous doing that with my X1 Nano despite it being much more lightweight.
    - pzo 3y ago
      If you would talk about macbook air i could agree but in your case I also have 16" MBP and they are simply to heavy (2kg, almost as heavy as MBP 15" 2012 unibody) and risky (to drop and waste $3k) to hold it by corners
  - kaba0 3y ago
    The macs immediately before the M-series were shit. There are plenty of shitty thinkpads as well. Let’s take the current macs into account, which are unbeatable in performance/battery life and it is not even funny by how far they are ahead of the competition.
isykt 3y ago
> You would expect that apple with bigger R&D, bigger product price and much bigger margin would focus more on repairability by itself instead of waiting for EU to force it's hand. Why would you expect that? If the EU is going to mandate something, it’s in Apple’s best interest to wait for them to mandate it and build it so that it’s compliant. Otherwise, there’s a risk that they could make something “repairable” by the own standard but does not meet EU standards, forcing another redesign to do something they didn’t want to do to begin with. It’s also much easier to handle any criticisms in the design when they are forced upon you. You can be certain that Apple is thrilled that the EU forced their hand on USB-C. They’re going to get a juicy bump in accessory sales with the format change, with none of the criticism that came with the switch from 30-pin. “The EU made us do it! We would happily have maintained compatibility with all the accessories you’ve bought over the past 12 years but gosh darn it, looks like you’ll need to re-buy.”
- pzo 3y ago
  I expect apple have seen the writing is on the wall in EU just takes time to put into force so they started making design more repairable ahead of time to test design. Yeah I'm thrilled about EU forcing apple to adopt usb-c. It's ridiculous they selling phones for $1k or even phones with 1TB for $1.5 with still usb 2.0 transfer speed. And will be nice to use one cable to charge everything else and use cheap off-the-shelf Usb-c pendrive instead of MFI compliant pendrive or not needing to buy some dedicated dongles.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    USB-C is not necessarily USB3, it’s also not even necessarily data. I don’t know why people who care so much about usb-c support also happen to keep making that mixup. The EU only mandated the port not the data portion. There’s tons of devices that use usb-c (android phones, other devices) that are usb-2 or no data at all.
  - prepend 3y ago
    > usb 2.0 transfer speed. I haven’t transmitted data over a wire to my phone in 10 years. I think the usb-c switch is just about consolidating all the different connectors and saving consumers money. Lightning was created though because there was no good cord standard. MicroUSB really sucked. So it’s not that Apple is a jerk or anything, they just didn’t change when a decent standard emerged.
kaba0 3y ago
> ThinkPads are actually durable and easily repairable and even upgradable and they sell much cheaper and with smaller margin Which ones? The newer models are not like that. Also, their battery life sucks ass, and they throttle like all hell. (I use one personally, but had one as a company device as well — now I’m actively looking for an M-series mac).

by pzo 3y ago

lozenge 3y ago

Their price and margin comes from the thinness, lightness and solidness, all of which reduce repairability.

pzo 3y ago
Excluding current m1 and m2 generations and going back 2-3 years back what did you get? Laptops that keyboards was breaking and to replace it you had to remove the whole top of laptop for like couple of hundreds of dollars. Hard drive soldered with price for 1TB around $1k with even backup port removed in case of failor. Battery glued. I used to have thinkpad x1 extreme gen 2 which price was $1.5k, 2x nmve slots, 2x removable ram up to 64gb ram. Battery removable with just a screws. Wifi module replaceable and could be upgraded. Display could be replaced and upgraded. Durable case from carbon fiber. Solid keyboard with even track point. And was still very lightweight - because carbon case.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  As someone who owns both a MacBook and a ThinkPad, while the construction of ThinkPads (at least "real" ThinkPads, not in-brand-only models) is solid they often leave something desired in terms of case flex. I'm comfortable holding my 16" M1 Max MBP by its corner while it's open because it doesn't flex at all, while I'm more nervous doing that with my X1 Nano despite it being much more lightweight.
  - pzo 3y ago
    If you would talk about macbook air i could agree but in your case I also have 16" MBP and they are simply to heavy (2kg, almost as heavy as MBP 15" 2012 unibody) and risky (to drop and waste $3k) to hold it by corners
- kaba0 3y ago
  The macs immediately before the M-series were shit. There are plenty of shitty thinkpads as well. Let’s take the current macs into account, which are unbeatable in performance/battery life and it is not even funny by how far they are ahead of the competition.

isykt 3y ago

> You would expect that apple with bigger R&D, bigger product price and much bigger margin would focus more on repairability by itself instead of waiting for EU to force it's hand. Why would you expect that? If the EU is going to mandate something, it’s in Apple’s best interest to wait for them to mandate it and build it so that it’s compliant. Otherwise, there’s a risk that they could make something “repairable” by the own standard but does not meet EU standards, forcing another redesign to do something they didn’t want to do to begin with. It’s also much easier to handle any criticisms in the design when they are forced upon you. You can be certain that Apple is thrilled that the EU forced their hand on USB-C. They’re going to get a juicy bump in accessory sales with the format change, with none of the criticism that came with the switch from 30-pin. “The EU made us do it! We would happily have maintained compatibility with all the accessories you’ve bought over the past 12 years but gosh darn it, looks like you’ll need to re-buy.”

pzo 3y ago
I expect apple have seen the writing is on the wall in EU just takes time to put into force so they started making design more repairable ahead of time to test design. Yeah I'm thrilled about EU forcing apple to adopt usb-c. It's ridiculous they selling phones for $1k or even phones with 1TB for $1.5 with still usb 2.0 transfer speed. And will be nice to use one cable to charge everything else and use cheap off-the-shelf Usb-c pendrive instead of MFI compliant pendrive or not needing to buy some dedicated dongles.
- dagmx 3y ago
  USB-C is not necessarily USB3, it’s also not even necessarily data. I don’t know why people who care so much about usb-c support also happen to keep making that mixup. The EU only mandated the port not the data portion. There’s tons of devices that use usb-c (android phones, other devices) that are usb-2 or no data at all.
- prepend 3y ago
  > usb 2.0 transfer speed. I haven’t transmitted data over a wire to my phone in 10 years. I think the usb-c switch is just about consolidating all the different connectors and saving consumers money. Lightning was created though because there was no good cord standard. MicroUSB really sucked. So it’s not that Apple is a jerk or anything, they just didn’t change when a decent standard emerged.

kaba0 3y ago

> ThinkPads are actually durable and easily repairable and even upgradable and they sell much cheaper and with smaller margin Which ones? The newer models are not like that. Also, their battery life sucks ass, and they throttle like all hell. (I use one personally, but had one as a company device as well — now I’m actively looking for an M-series mac).