Why doesn't anyone come close to apple as far as design?

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Of course, with a lot of Mac customers who don't mind dropping $2,500+ on a MBP, they'll just throw the old MBP in the garbage after a year, and get the new model. Problem fixed.

How about without the snarky comments?

 

[Macamus Prime]

Why does anyone care about less than 10% of the market?

Boy, for a company that makes totally worthless shit, and doesn't have the majority, half or even a quarter of the market (regarding OS) - you cunts sure do make lots of noise.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

And for most HP's you would need 2 or even 3 batteries to get the same battery life as 1 on the MBP. My neighbor has an HP he bought, it's not even a high end one. He's lucky to get 3.5 on a single charge.

Funny my ThinkPad has substantially better battery life than a Macbook Pro 13 with the same cpu and graphics.

 

[Zebo]

The IBM / Lenovo Thinkpad series is so close to perfection that its form has not changed significantly in over 15 years (for the T series like laptops at least).

lolz dude I HAVE a x201, T61 and x201t the only one worth a shit is the x201t with the $350 "out door view" upgrade. A 450 nit IPS display. Rest look like looking through a screen door. Pathetic cheapest crappiest TN made & unusable outside. My wifes 15" MBP is much much better.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

lolz dude I HAVE a x201, T61 and x201t the only one worth a shit is the x201t with the $350 "out door view" upgrade. A 450 nit IPS display. Rest look like looking through a screen door. Pathetic cheapest crappiest TN made. My wifes 15" MBP is much much better.

The IPS screen is only a $50 option on the X220 which just replaced the x201.

 

[vi edit]

Why does anyone care about less than 10% of the market?

If you want to talk about market share, how about their market capitalization compared to others?

They are the second largest company in the US by that measurement.
http://ycharts.com/calculations/rankings/market_cap

 

[Zebo]

it must be easy to make a seamless design when you don't ever have to worry about cracking open the system because your "repair" option is making the customers buy a new one.


I could live without that fucking red button, though.

Only way to fly actually. I'm faster with trackpoint than mouse.

 

[Zebo]

The IPS screen is only a $50 option on the X220 which just replaced the x201.

Yeah that's newer sill totally different @ ~ 250 nit & e-ips. vs 450 nit & H-IPS That's why it's only a $50 upgrade vs $350.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

Only people that care are fags with $200 jeans thats why.

YHPM

ATOT Moderator ElFenix

 

[nerp]

The Thermaltake Level 10 PC case is pretty sexy and doesn't copy Apple. It's also $850, so barring insanity not many people will opt for it. And I very much like the look of my Dell XPS 8300.

That is just horrific looking.

 

[Arkaign]

How about without the snarky comments?

Well, it's not particularly intended to be snarky. There's nothing wrong with being extremely wealthy, and indeed a lot of the Mac customers I know are like that. One of the attorneys I do work for has a pile of apple stuff (and to a lesser extent other electronic toys) that's he's just plain cast aside due to replacing them with newer models. There's a 64GB Ipad 3g that he's given to his 3-year-old to bang on now that he has the Ipad 2, a couple of Macbook Airs, a Macbook Pro 15" from sometime last year, etc. For people who make $1m+/year, buying a few things like Mac products is a pittance. It's literally a waste of his time to put any effort into getting products fixed when he can just replace them with something better, and pay someone to get it set up with all of his data and apps the way he wants it.

Being rich is definitely a nice way to really not have to worry about things that shouldn't be signficant to begin with. Personally, if my ~$1,200 notebook was dropped/broken, I'd have a hard time just plopping the cash down that instant to replace it, and it's something I'd really notice in my finances.

 

[Arkaign]

If you want to talk about market share, how about their market capitalization compared to others?

They are the second largest company in the US by that measurement.
http://ycharts.com/calculations/rankings/market_cap

Hah yeah, they're tremendously overvalued at present. I'm not saying they're not a solid company with many good/great products, but that is ridiculous.

No bubble lasts forever, but people never learn ..

Real estate bubbles (lots of these historically), Stock bubbles, Dot.com bubble, Telecom bubble, now there's a Gold bubble (unlike many others though, even though Gold will inevitably come down a lot vs. major currencies, it won't/can't totally crash), etc.

Apple is it's own bubble.

 

[Minjin]

Example 2 (no pictures this time) - I wanted a basic media player box for my TV. Apple's solution - the Apple TV, which has integrated wireless n, uses an x86 CPU so can be jailbroken to use a multitude of excellent software, and has a beautiful interface out of the box. Also integrates instantly with itunes without fucking around with the network.

Unfortunately I needed it to work with a shitty old TV, which means component out (Apple TV only supports HDMI). I have to go with a WD Live TV, which was more expensive, didn't have wifi, and had a big ugly power adapter. Moreover, it has the worst interface known to mankind, and you have to be a network engineer to get it to find media on your computer. Fuck people, why are Apple the only ones getting this stuff right?

Comical and oh so typical...

 

[nageov3t]

I, for one, an extremely surprised that an operating system manufacturer makes a better GUI than a hard drive manufacturer.

 

[Cogman]

I, for one, an extremely surprised that an operating system manufacturer makes a better GUI than a hard drive manufacturer.

, lol. Honestly, though, you never know how good a company will do in a new market until they start up business there. Case in point, corsair, they were strictly a memory company for the longest time, yet when they started making power supplies they did awesome.

 

[vi edit]

Hah yeah, they're tremendously overvalued at present. I'm not saying they're not a solid company with many good/great products, but that is ridiculous.

Their P to E ratio is 16 which isn't that crazy at all. That's lower than Berkshire Hathaway. Not that P:E is everything but it's any easy stat to compare stock prices to a companies income.

 

[JackBurton]

Yep, and the Macbook air was really an improved copy of previous thin/light notebooks like the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ series which preceded the first Macbook air, or the ancient Mitsubishi Pedion from 1998, which at 10 years old was still thinner than the first Macbook air.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/01/mitsubishi-pedi/

Copies of copies of copies, with improvements each time for the most part.

Not even close.

 

[Arkaign]

Not even close.

Well that's all a matter of opinion really. One might say that the iPad 1 and iPad 2 are "not even close", which can either be true or false depending on how one looks at it.

The fact is that mfg's have been making very thin/light notebooks for ages, and a lot of it is reliant on tech that gets better every year. There's nothing extremely original about any of the Macbooks, they have just gotten quite good (best in the business overall I would have to say). But it's evolution, not revolution, imho. Everything is somewhat of a derivitive at this point. Even the iPad is basically a super-improved version of the ancient failed Apple Newton. Saying that the Macbook air is completely original ignores common sense. It's a notebook. It's thin. It's light. It has good design qualities, other than some tradeoffs (non-removable battery, soldered-on non-upgradable memory). It's fairly priced compared to loosely comparable PC notebooks of the thin/light genre.

 

[pontifex]

because other companies are too busy worrying about putting out a good product, not putting out a pretty product?

 

[makken]

Remember that Apple's so called amazing design has only really poped up in the last 4 or 5 years. Prior to that they were churning out crap like the original imac, its horrible mouse:

and the iBook posted eariler

So now the question is, have there been stylish, well designed products before apple and post apple?
I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

Laptops:
The macbooks were released in 2006. Prior to that, IIRC Apple's laptops consisted of the iBooks (see above).
Here is a sony viao S from 2004:

and a Asus W3v from 2005:

Post apple, we have things like the dell studio xps series:

and that asus UX posted eariler.

Phones:
The iphone was released in 2007. Prior to that, we had:
the RAZR from 2004, the nokia 8800 series from 2005 (which I still think is the best looking 'dumbphone' out there):

and of course, the LG KE850 in 2006; commonly called the Prada phone:

Post iPhone, there's really too many to list. We have the original Droid/Milestone, The samsung galaxy S line, and pretty much every phone HTC has made since.

MP3 Players:
The iPod was released 2001. Prior to that we had:
The Rio500 from 1999? i think?:

The Creative Labs Nomad from 1999:

Post iPod we of course have the zune:

and the Sansa players:

So is Apple the only one that has stylish, well designed products? no. Do stylish, well designed products only come out after people copy apple? no.

 

[halik]

apple's thermal design for its towers is unreal

The quad G5 powermac I'm getting tomorrow comes with watercooling stock.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Hah yeah, they're tremendously overvalued at present. I'm not saying they're not a solid company with many good/great products, but that is ridiculous.

No bubble lasts forever, but people never learn ..

Real estate bubbles (lots of these historically), Stock bubbles, Dot.com bubble, Telecom bubble, now there's a Gold bubble (unlike many others though, even though Gold will inevitably come down a lot vs. major currencies, it won't/can't totally crash), etc.

Apple is it's own bubble.

Keep telling yourself that

I'm a serious pimp for Apple stock, but seriously, right now Apple stock is undervalued, you're going to shit bricks over the next few months...

 

[ShawnD1]

Keep telling yourself that

I'm a serious pimp for Apple stock, but seriously, right now Apple stock is undervalued, you're going to shit bricks over the next few months...

Why?

 

[Pliablemoose]

Why?

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL

We'll see $400/share by July, and likely $500/share by the end of the year.

If you're an investor, do a bit of research, I get tired of the fanboy shit here (if you dare to say you like something made by Apple, you get shouted down, they make good stuff, and it sells like crazy, sure it's not challenging to just buy an iPad, but at least it's relatively trouble free, and it works, is your mom/grandma/dad going to root a nook color and install Cyanogen 7 on it? (I just got 2 refurbished nook colors delivered today by the way), hell no...) I've made ~$100K in Apple so far, and it looks like I'll be making more...

BTW, I've always thought that Thermaltake case looks like ass...

 

[coldmeat]

Post iPod we of course have the zune:

If you got rid of the 2 buttons on the front, it's basically an exact copy of an iPod. And I'm sure the 2 buttons are only there because they can't copy the wheel.