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Acronym’s new computer with Asus is bonkers, but that’s the point
- Systemic33 3y agoThat's the most cyberpunk laptop/tablet I've ever seen, without it looking kitsch or gaudy -- very impressive!
- codetrotter 3y agoThe website is nice too. https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-acrnm-rmt02/ https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-acrnm-rmt... It has some Matrix looking visuals going on in parts of the page. And there is a weird video of a guy who demonstrates wearing the computer, without saying anything. The vibe reminds me of that video game from a few years ago where you play a hacker in a cyberpunk future.
- psimonazzi 3y agoThat guy is actually Errolson, the cofounder and designer of Acronym.
- ilyt 3y agoIt doesn't look very cyber-punky to me in the first place
- alpaca128 3y agoDoesn't beat an old Thinkpad imho
- rowanG077 3y agoI love it. If I wouldn't have just bought a Macbook Pro I would seriously consider moving to that.
- DrinkWater 3y agoThere is almost general consensus (in the techwear/streetwear/fashion scene) that Acronym is functional, but more in the sense of "functional for the sake of aesthetics". The stuff is really expensive, it is delicate and you have an ultra-narrow range of weather conditions where you can actually wear it. The laptop in this article is kind of the same.
- piva00 3y agoI don't feel that Acronym pieces are that delicate, at least the jackets and shells I have can take a beating as being worn day-over-day. Also don't really agree with ultra-narrow range of weather conditions, I wear them during most seasons (from mid-fall all the way to late-spring), the exception is summer. I also have a Nike ACG jacket that was a collaboration between Nike and Acronym, and even that has been really durable, 8 years going strong and has saved me during a lot of rainy days while biking.
- nicholassmith 3y agoI've got very similar thoughts, I have some ACG & Acronym trousers which I rotate through and I don't have any concerns about delicacy. The biggest problem is I wear the ACG trousers so often the black dye has started to fade, the main Acronym ones I think I'll be wearing in a decade still.
- namdnay 3y agoYeah I’m pretty sure you can get better for less in any Decathlon :)
- zls 3y agoHuh? Delicate? Where are you getting that “consensus” from? Their most delicate stuff is the Goretex, and that’s delicate only in the sense that you need to wash it regularly to avoid delamination. Same as any Arcteryx or Tilak or whatever jacket, because that’s just how goretex is. All their other stuff is even tougher, the stotz, the encapsulated nylon, the dryskin, whatever CH is, except maybe like, the knit beanies? Now if you mean delicate in a more psychological sense, I can see it. Sure, a J1A-GT may be just as tough as arceryx beta AR, but it’s hard to avoid worrying about the condition of a raincoat you spent $1500 on. :)
- p1necone 3y agoI really dislike kickstand style laptop/tablet designs, a proper hinge is stable even on oddly shaped surfaces, doesn't collapse when picked up, can be used while sitting on the palm of your hand etc.
- ilyt 3y agoIt's pretty much for this https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vC9qXnc5MuA https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vC9qXnc5MuA Althought I can't imagine someone actually using it that way... The keyboard is apparently detachable so it can be used as a tablet, which somewhat makes sense.
- dist-epoch 3y agoIs there a name for the aesthetic where you simulate something being rough, unfinished? In this case, they simulate a haphazard laptop where the creator ran out of same color keys and used whatever they had or they simulate not having time to finish the machining of the aluminum and leaving it in the roughing stage. Put another name, what's the name of the very intentional and studied "I don't care about looks" aesthetic, where you "don't care" in a very precise and fashionable way.
- tokai 3y agoPunk. Though technically the laptop is techware I guess.
- themoonisachees 3y agoI guess cyberpunk is the closest. Nasa-punk also has similar features, proffering functional edges over a supposed plastic cover which would add weight, making it unsuitable for sending it to space.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago>Is there a name for the aesthetic where you simulate something being rough, unfinished? Wabi-sabipunk
- michaelt 3y ago> they simulate a haphazard laptop where the creator ran out of same color keys and used whatever they had See, I interpreted that as like those gaming keyboards where the WASD keys are a different colour - but moreso. With mysterious extra keys.
- lioeters 3y ago> what's the name of the very intentional and studied "I don't care about looks" aesthetic I've noticed this approach and attitude in various arts, but it's hard to put a single word to it. As another commenter mentioned, I think wabi-sabi is related, and punk too. > The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" in nature. It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art. For example in ceramics, they value the crooked, asymmetrical, coarse, and cracked. In calligraphy, it's the splash and drip, the way the brush runs out of ink and how the line fades out near the tail end. In singing, it's the smokey aged voice that breaks perfectly when pushed by emotion. Or other musical instruments, when the sound gets dirty because of the physical material being pushed to its limits, like an over-driven guitar amp, or a violin bowing a string too hard but actually perfectly hitting that point intentionally, to get that stank, that nasty, it makes you grimace with pleasure. In theatre they say, "You need to throw it away." Apparently, acting can get stiff and unnatural when you try too hard, so you need to let go a bit, as if you don't care, to give it room to breathe. I suppose it can be seen in literture too, like "stream of consciousness" style, or certain narrative voice that tastefully breaks the rules of grammar. > where you "don't care" in a very precise and fashionable way That's the trick it seems, that this "don't care" attitude is actually very polished, studied, carefully done, paying attention down to the details, and then letting it go. It's an artful use of "mistakes" and imperfections. Jazz is like that, they value the richness of "off" harmonies, dissonance, polyrhythms which can sound "wrong" to the unfamiliar but which is exactly what the connoiseurs appreciate and enjoy.
- iakov 3y agoLooks really cool, the kind of tech fashion that doesn't scream "nerd!". I am a bit torn by they keyboard though - the primary labels are certainly not functional, and secondary english labels look like last-minute addition with a mismatched font. I wish they went either with complete nonsense print, or with a more functional one.
- CameronNemo 3y agoWhenever I see a picture of a keyboard online I wish they would also publish a video of somebody actually using it.
- ericmcer 3y agoThe keyboard also looks like a carpal tunnel nightmare for any long form computer session.
- prepend 3y agoI always found it odd that people would buy a computer how it looks over its performance as a tool. Of course, I really like cool looking stuff, but I wouldn’t want a weak computer or or one that ran an OS that was hard for me to use. I guess there is an intersection of fashion nerd and computer nerd. And I am not the arbiter of computer nerd, but I think the 20 or so times I talked with people who said they were computer nerds and had cool looking computers that sucked as computers they didn’t seem authentically computer nerdy (for lack of a better word). I specifically remember someone from the late 90s and early 00s who kept going on and on about how he was into computers and always had to have the best computers, the “absolute best” he would say. Then he had these really trash Sony vaios. I asked him about what he liked most and he just said how they were cool. I asked him what he ran and he didn’t really say anything. People like collecting stuff, and I don’t want to begrudge people their joy. But I’d like to learn about the people who buy these and what they are most interested in. I think my Sony Vaio guy just bought whatever was most expensive in the store.
- orthecreedence 3y ago> I always found it odd that people would buy a computer how it looks over its performance as a tool. I'm also perpetually confused that people buy Macs.
- morbicer 3y agoOK, I'll bite. Easy peasy, Macbooks are maybe not perfect in one aspect, but they strike a well-rounded balance. OS: Great ergonomics, unix based (WSL can shove it). The peak of Windows was win2000, with XP and 7 still usable. After that it's adware garbage that's getting worse with each release. Linux on desktop sadly never materialized into something that would work out-of-the-box. Plenty issues with wifi, audio, high dpi displays. And even if you overcome this the UI is still clunky. Hardware: Usually solid. There were some issues with the butterfly keyboards and low amount of ports but besides that it's just nice bodies, good sound, great display. Nowadays: ARM-based chips just blows out Intel out of water. Never heard a fan noise, battery lasts forever. You might pay some extra. But as a professional in software engineering, you should be able to afford it.
- ilyt 3y agoMy first thought was "damn those grooves gonna be PITA to clean". > You’d better know how to touch type. The Cyrillic-ish alphabet designed for Acronym by Rudnick is all part of the theme — this is a computer from another dimension slightly off axis from yours, where people stand in the rain on the roof of a parking garage typing something into a terminal prompt. looks at qwerty letters clear, if a bit dim, on the keys Did author sniffed glue before reviewing it or something ?
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- whywhywhywhy 3y agoI really appreciate the hard work of the design team managing to get something so daring looking to ship and the using of machine marks as a design feature is a lovely touch.
- toyg 3y agoAs someone who turned into a bit of a gadget-fashion-victim over the last 15 years, I'm not really digging this. It has a 16-year-old, cyberpunk-wannabe, gamer vibe. I guess '90s aesthetic is back.
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- vidarh 3y agoThat is pretty much the target demographics. "ROG" is "Republic of Gamers".
- bitwize 3y agoI used to use the term "Lambo vents" to describe gamer-gear excrescence. The inspiration was an Asus ROG laptop I actually used on a job that had deep, oddly-shaped fan exhaust vents that looked like the intake vents on a Lamborghini. Turns out that ROG beast was a rebadged model formerly in Asus's Lamborghini co-branded line, intended to compete with Acer's Ferrari laptops.
- sp332 3y agoThat's really Acronym's whole thing.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoThis kind of writing is a marvelous breath of fresh air. I’ve worked with Matt Panzarino in the past a few times and he’s one of the most well versed tech journalists out there. And a nice guy to boot Laptop sounds pretty amazing too if pricey
- dchest 3y agoDieter Rams's Ten principles of good design state: 5. Good design is unobtrusive. Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user's self-expression. 6. Good design is honest. It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It doesn't attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept. If you read these principles and reverse them, you get your typical "product art" — a product form of clickbait titles — an attention-grabbing product that's intended to shock and generate PR, not sell the actual thing. Such products are usually shallow: stylized to some theme without deeply understanding it, like user interfaces from movies, or like Lcroium's* own website (https://acrnm.com https://acrnm.com), which is stylized with useless _underscores and [brackets] without understanding why they are used in computing. *) that's how you read ACRONYM's logo if you know Cyrillic.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y ago"Λ" = "A" is the most annoying faux-futuristic typesetting/logo trend I've ever come across. It's a lambda, "L", the ancient symbol of the Lacedaemonians. It should be possible to make an avantgarde font without confusing or oversimplifying letters. As an aside, I wonder how many graphic t-shirts those guys sell at $200.
- masfuerte 3y agoTheir plastic macs cost two grand!
- jacquesm 3y agoYes, designers are nuts for wanting to make logos that stand out. The design trend I'm sick and tired of is spacing common words with underscores and using capitals to achieve the exact same effect.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoWell, it could be worse. I could have done this: ΛDΞPT Anyway, my point was that the symbol "Λ" has a distinct meaning from the symbol "A" -- and, try as I might, I can't see them as interchangeable.
- Ekaros 3y agoThose "mounting points" look rather painful and probably annoying. I can already see them catching on various things and might even slightly hurt user in certain situations.
- joshu 3y agoi did some procedural art for the marketing campaign behind last acrnm/asus collab, although it seems to be down now: http://www.skyanycolour.com/ http://www.skyanycolour.com/
- jrm4 3y agoWow, the absolute joyless responses here remind me of exactly why this place, and perhaps the tech world in general, is so VERY far from the wonderfully creative weird (virtual?) space that fostered my love of technology. I gotta find some better sites/communities
- FridgeSeal 3y agoYeah the comments admonishing a high-fashion techwear brand for “odd choice of lettering” and “trying to be futuristic” are strange. I want to see more wacky and boundary shamelessly “techno” designs like this, it’s like someone brought something from a Gibson novel to life and I dig it. I’ll take this over the current crop of bland device/tech design.
- cpach 3y agoYeah, this is so Gibson. When I saw these photos I immediately came to think of Cayce Pollard.
- wmf 3y agoGibson and the Acronym guy are BFFs.
- jabroni_salad 3y agoWhen I saw it my first reaction was that if Hackers had released in 2023 instead of 1995, this is the computer they would be using instead of netbooks My second reaction is that I'm due for a rewatch of Hackers...
- ubermonkey 3y agoThank you for this.
- dchest 3y agoYou can love creativity in tech and at the same time reject fakery. Maybe like someone who's into watches enjoys fun diversity of Swatch and G-SHOCK or artfulness and craft of more expensive brands and rejects blingy stylized pretentious watches from fashion brands. Also, please don't judge the community by their response to this design, because this design was specifically created to be polarizing. It's intended to generate debates, just like many pieces art.
- spread_love 3y ago> You’d better know how to touch type. The Cyrillic-ish alphabet designed for Acronym by Rudnick is all part of the theme Any high res photos of the keys/lettering?
- dustincoates 3y agoYou can see it here: https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-acrnm-rmt02/ https://rog.asus.com/laptops/rog-flow/rog-flow-z13-acrnm-rmt...
- seltzered_ 3y agoFYI there's others that use and talk about the Asus ROG flow z13 acronym on https://www.reddit.com/r/flowz13/ https://www.reddit.com/r/flowz13/ It's too weird for me, and yet I keep considering it as it's one of the only tablet PCs currently out with 32GB ram and can run Linux without too many headaches.
- rsolva 3y agoMy personal take is that I find the Framework laptops to be more in line with the cyberpunk vision, than this. Yes, this one looks kinda cool, but is it as moddable and modular as the framework?
- ratel 3y agoI am always looking for the interesting in computer design as most of what we work with is bland. The reviewer is a fanboy. Okay, that happens. He is the one claiming it to be functional. He calls it brutalist. Frankly I completely fail to see that with its mock engraving on the aluminum case and the stylized keyboard. Great design is art, but not all art is great design. It does not have to be. Whatever it thinks it is, it should not be boring. Unfortunately it is just that.
- 1-more 3y ago> He calls it brutalist. Frankly I completely fail to see that with its mock engraving on the aluminum case and the stylized keyboard. I get the brutalism thing. There are a bunch of exposed bits that would normally have some trim over them. Brutalism literally meant showing the raw (brut) structural concrete rather than hiding it behind a facade. The back of the laptop does have a little much in the way of ornate greebling, but the sides of the top show just the structural bits, right?
- glitchc 3y agoI think this machine can be described in one word: gaudy.
- ZephyrBlu 3y agoNever would have thought I'd see Acronym being talked about on HN. Cool cross-over.
- kevinventullo 3y agoAnyone criticizing this has simply never needed to stand in the rain on the roof of a parking garage typing something into a terminal prompt. That’s okay, it’s not for everyone.
- _ZeD_ 3y agoyeah, generally when it rains I prefer to have a roof over my head... moreso when I type. you should try it :D
- qubex 3y agoI doubt this thing is waterproof, but I still admire the aesthetics of it.
- ericmcer 3y agoMakes me want to install a pen testing linux distro on it and run around in sunglasses cracking peoples wifi networks.
- GuB-42 3y agoIt looks like it can crack people skulls too.
- franga2000 3y agoI have and I'm really glad I didn't have this thing on me so I didn't have to waste time looking for a flat-ish surface to awkwardly balance the screen kickstand on. I do wish my laptop had mounts for carrying straps tho...
- bitwize 3y agoCosplay cyberdeck junk for teenagers who want to think they're Zero Cool. People with actual design sensibilities buy Apple.
- spread_love 3y agoWord, remember the world before the hockey puck mouse? Strange to think we used to shape those like a human hand.
- karmicthreat 3y agoThis is the laptop 90's me would have wanted.
- namdnay 3y agoYeah straight out of “Hackers”
- geocrasher 3y agoThis looks more like a high end cyber deck than a usable laptop. I LIKE IT.
- solardev 3y agoThis thing is Stable Diffusion's drunken vision of a cyberpunk dystopia. ...is that a good or bad thing?
- shrubble 3y agoSo they made the case/housing out of aluminum and water resistant cloth but it isn't water resistant?
- baz00 3y agoI would be embarrassed to crack that open and do work on it.
- Animats 3y agoThe screen frame looks like it's made from stampings from the inside of a toaster.
- hn_shithole 3y ago[dead]
- CrimsonCape 3y agoThere's some sort of Asian soul (not sure of a good word) in these "repurposing" trends. There's noticeable "versions" of "camping" in Japan and Korea (also Instagram trends). Anecdotally, Japanese have fostered a sort of homeless-aesthetic with camping products. Koreans have fostered a sort of retro-nostalgia-diorama-and-cooking with camping.
- skrebbel 3y agoI think this is super cool and I hope it’s the start of a time when laptops look nicer and more distinctive. There’s really no reason for every computer to either be a macbook or look like one. The idea of fashion designers making cool/new/different laptops makes a lot of sense. I want one & I hope this sticks! Edit: hahahh the space bar has the word “VOID” on it in a sleazy serif font. Love it
- CrimsonCape 3y agoAnyone else notice a startling similarity between these products and midjourney renderings? It's like the designer intentionally finds people with odd proportions and then places clothing on them at strange jaunty angles and sizing which leaves people looking out of proportion to the clothing. Just like a lot of AI creation.
- yelling_cat 3y ago24-year-old me would have been Googling where to buy this by the time I was halfway through the article. It's not for me any more, but Acronym definitely hit what they were going for with this. Laptop and phone design used to be a lot less homogeneous than it is now, and though our devices are vastly more powerful and functional these days they definitely lack a sense of fun. I applaud anyone working to bring that back.
- type0 3y agoPanasonic Toughbook has more appealing design. That acronym thing looks terrible, they could have made something cyberpunkish https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/cyberpunk-laptop-concept-design-fddc4e68cc6c498b88b19af1a05bd420 https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/cyberpunk-laptop-concept-des... but no instead they created something as boring that even a design student wouldn't model
- franga2000 3y agoNot my cup of tea, but it's cool that it exists - the way evry laptop just looks like a bootleg macbook these days is getting kind of old. What isn't getting old is having a functional keyboard and not needing an extra 50% of flat surface behind the screen to precariously balance the screen kickstand on. Why are so many "convertibles" going down this stupid path? You could easily put a real keyboard with a real hinge on it at roughly the same thickness and very little added weight. Bonus points for going with the 2013-era XPS 12 flipping design for maximum cyberpunk feel.