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Laptop Design Concepts

9 points by onreact-com 17y ago

Blow your mind a little.

jsz0 17y ago
Mindblowingly bad? None of them look very usable to me. There's a good reason the current design of laptops has been an evolution of existing designs. They work really well. The current iteration of the MacBook line is probably the pinnacle of laptop hardware design IMO.
- TrevorJ 17y ago
  I disagree. Form follows function, and if you need a device for very specific functions, some of these designs hold merit. As far as general-purpose laptops go, I think you may be correct that the present design is a good all-purpose approach.
GeneralMaximus 17y ago
All of those are unusable for anybody doing serious work, especially the ones with ultra-thin or OLED keyboards. I don't think keyboards which are actually large touchscreens will be particularly difficult to make from a technical viewpoint, but they will be a usability nightmare. Without tactile response, the fingers will start to hurt after a while.
- onreact-com 17y ago
  Hey, these are design concepts. Like concept cars they are meant to imagine the future not to be perfect. A concept is like a brainstorming, first you get the ideas. Details follow later.
  - zimbabwe 17y ago
    When's the last time a design concept actually turned into a design? Concepts are essentially waste-of-time pornographic images. Look at the old design concepts that claimed they'd be here by 2009. To quote a favored director: "Total fucking bullshit." The last thing I saw that remotely resembled an interesting "concept design" was when Apple told a bunch of people they were making an iPod phone with multitouch, a full-featured web browser, cover flow, and on-the-fly Youtube access, but that wasn't a concept design, that was a product unveiling, because Apple doesn't do concept designs because Apple thinks they're bullshit as well.
    - onreact-com 17y ago
      blah, blah, "fuck", "bullshit", "blah". Btw. the iPhone is a rip off of the Linux based Deeda Pi that was conceived as a concept phone long before the iPhone.
      - zimbabwe 17y ago
        Yeah, because the iPhone was conceived of right before it was announced, not half a decade earlier. Come on.
        onreact-com 17y ago
        The deeda Pi concept went public years before the iPhone has seen the light of day but don't let facts disturb your opinion and animosity towards me personally or rather my profession.
- davidw 17y ago
  Netbooks are 'unusable for anybody doing serious work' too, and yet they've taken off. The trick is to find a niche where something like that is actually good enough. And yeah, they're for show/brainstorming/pushing the boundaries - you're not going to see these on sale next year.
- gojomo 17y ago
  In my experience with touchscreens, finger 'hurt' only happens with large, flaky, public units (like ATMs and kiosks) that aren't always sensitive and precise. For better touchscreens, like the iPhone, pressure used quickly adjusts. While tactile response would help with usability, pain isn't a consideration. There are more possible innovations in the direction of the Blackberry Storm's touchscreen (that depresses-and-clicks). Reports are it's a little uneven, but what if the resistance were perfectly tuned and consistent? That offers solid feedback about intentional keypresses while giving the fingers a place to rest. There's still the issue of finding keys by touch. What if in combination with the above, a tiny amount of vibration could reward or discourage finger position, at the center or edges of active press regions? Or, longer-term, perhaps the screens themselves could develop subtle addressable rough spots and ridges as needed.
zimbabwe 17y ago
* You want traffic for your blog. * Either you can take a risk and attempt something insightful, or you can stick a superlative after a number, which always works. * Today you're feeling ambitious. Let's go for 20. There are 20 brilliant laptop concepts out there, right? * There aren't? There're only thin laptops, urban laptops, stylish laptops, and big laptops that aren't really laptops? * Oh, well. Every laptop designer has come up with a superthin laptop idea. Use all of them. They're all mindblowing. * Write a few sentences if you feel like it. Sometimes you can even write that you don't like the laptops you're presenting as mindblowing. * Submit your blog post online for SEO. * Make sure that in your profile you identify yourself as a New Media feller: "My new blog redefines what many misunderstand, SEO." * Learn to ignore the complaints from people who think there ought to be more substantial posts. I would say profit, but that web site doesn't have advertisers yet, so really it's more of a feel-good process.
- onreact-com 17y ago
  What's your problem pal? Your riddle is off topic. Don't you have a thing called netiquette here? Btw. this is not my blog I submitted here. My blog is linked on my profile.

9 points by onreact-com 17y ago

Blow your mind a little.

jsz0 17y ago

Mindblowingly bad? None of them look very usable to me. There's a good reason the current design of laptops has been an evolution of existing designs. They work really well. The current iteration of the MacBook line is probably the pinnacle of laptop hardware design IMO.

TrevorJ 17y ago
I disagree. Form follows function, and if you need a device for very specific functions, some of these designs hold merit. As far as general-purpose laptops go, I think you may be correct that the present design is a good all-purpose approach.

GeneralMaximus 17y ago

All of those are unusable for anybody doing serious work, especially the ones with ultra-thin or OLED keyboards. I don't think keyboards which are actually large touchscreens will be particularly difficult to make from a technical viewpoint, but they will be a usability nightmare. Without tactile response, the fingers will start to hurt after a while.

onreact-com 17y ago
Hey, these are design concepts. Like concept cars they are meant to imagine the future not to be perfect. A concept is like a brainstorming, first you get the ideas. Details follow later.
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  When's the last time a design concept actually turned into a design? Concepts are essentially waste-of-time pornographic images. Look at the old design concepts that claimed they'd be here by 2009. To quote a favored director: "Total fucking bullshit." The last thing I saw that remotely resembled an interesting "concept design" was when Apple told a bunch of people they were making an iPod phone with multitouch, a full-featured web browser, cover flow, and on-the-fly Youtube access, but that wasn't a concept design, that was a product unveiling, because Apple doesn't do concept designs because Apple thinks they're bullshit as well.
  - onreact-com 17y ago
    blah, blah, "fuck", "bullshit", "blah". Btw. the iPhone is a rip off of the Linux based Deeda Pi that was conceived as a concept phone long before the iPhone.
    - zimbabwe 17y ago
      Yeah, because the iPhone was conceived of right before it was announced, not half a decade earlier. Come on.
      - onreact-com 17y ago
        The deeda Pi concept went public years before the iPhone has seen the light of day but don't let facts disturb your opinion and animosity towards me personally or rather my profession.
davidw 17y ago
Netbooks are 'unusable for anybody doing serious work' too, and yet they've taken off. The trick is to find a niche where something like that is actually good enough. And yeah, they're for show/brainstorming/pushing the boundaries - you're not going to see these on sale next year.
gojomo 17y ago
In my experience with touchscreens, finger 'hurt' only happens with large, flaky, public units (like ATMs and kiosks) that aren't always sensitive and precise. For better touchscreens, like the iPhone, pressure used quickly adjusts. While tactile response would help with usability, pain isn't a consideration. There are more possible innovations in the direction of the Blackberry Storm's touchscreen (that depresses-and-clicks). Reports are it's a little uneven, but what if the resistance were perfectly tuned and consistent? That offers solid feedback about intentional keypresses while giving the fingers a place to rest. There's still the issue of finding keys by touch. What if in combination with the above, a tiny amount of vibration could reward or discourage finger position, at the center or edges of active press regions? Or, longer-term, perhaps the screens themselves could develop subtle addressable rough spots and ridges as needed.

zimbabwe 17y ago

* You want traffic for your blog. * Either you can take a risk and attempt something insightful, or you can stick a superlative after a number, which always works. * Today you're feeling ambitious. Let's go for 20. There are 20 brilliant laptop concepts out there, right? * There aren't? There're only thin laptops, urban laptops, stylish laptops, and big laptops that aren't really laptops? * Oh, well. Every laptop designer has come up with a superthin laptop idea. Use all of them. They're all mindblowing. * Write a few sentences if you feel like it. Sometimes you can even write that you don't like the laptops you're presenting as mindblowing. * Submit your blog post online for SEO. * Make sure that in your profile you identify yourself as a New Media feller: "My new blog redefines what many misunderstand, SEO." * Learn to ignore the complaints from people who think there ought to be more substantial posts. I would say profit, but that web site doesn't have advertisers yet, so really it's more of a feel-good process.

onreact-com 17y ago
What's your problem pal? Your riddle is off topic. Don't you have a thing called netiquette here? Btw. this is not my blog I submitted here. My blog is linked on my profile.