Does it drive sales? Couldn’t some other stat be used to pad their presentations? Any thickness less than an inch is fine with me. I’m not concerned with whether my laptop fits in an envelope.
I don't know why so many people are under the impression that they do thinness for thinness sake. They do thinness for lightness sake.
The lighter your laptop (or tablet, or phone), the more you'll choose to not leave it behind but rather to just lug it around with you, and so the more places you'll have it and the more it'll be there to aid your productivity in random situations. [Also, for phones and tablets specifically, the longer you'll be willing to hold it up to your face to stare at it before putting it away due to the "gorilla arm" feeling.]
Sometimes I actually carry my MacBook around in my backpack when I'm just downtown for a meet-up and have no plans to do any work. I get it out for the same reasons you might pull out an external Bluetooth keyboard for a smartphone—e.g., if you want to type a long response to an email, or need to type a snippet of something that's awful to type on a phone keyboard, like code. Except that this Bluetooth keyboard happens to have its own computer attached to it.
(I don't use it at home, though; at home, I use a Hackintosh with a real keyboard. Which happens to be an Apple Magic Keyboard 2 with the exact same butterfly key-mech in it that the MacBook and rMBP have. But Magic Keyboard 2s aren't getting gummed up left and right, because the butterfly key-mech itself actually works fine when it's given adequate travel height. It makes a huge difference; you wouldn't even think it's the same key-mech!)
> The lighter your laptop (or tablet, or phone), the more you'll choose to not leave it behind but rather to just lug it around with you, and so the more places you'll have it and the more it'll be there to aid your productivity in random situations.
I didn't know how true this was until upgrading from an old Lenovo T400 to a newer Lenovo Carbon X1. I'll regularly carry the X1 a few blocks to a library, park, or coffee shop. The X1 and my work laptop - a Dell Latitude - are about as thick and heavy as the T400 alone, so it's not even a question that I take both to a location when working remotely. Now I need a bag with 2 laptop slots.
> [Also, for phones and tablets specifically, the longer you'll be willing to hold it up to your face to stare at it before putting it away due to the "gorilla arm" feeling.]
Conversely, the Samsung Tab A has enough magnets in the back to stick to a fridge - this remarkably makes it feel heavier than the X1, especially when working on magnetic tables and surfaces. The Tab A causes the "gorilla arm" feeling almost immediately, making it basically worthless to me. To add insult to this injury, when it's stuck to my fridge, the screen refuses to turn on when rotated to landscape. So it can't effectively play full-screen Youtube while stuck to the fridge, negating the last use case I found for it. I think this is due to a magnetic screen-off sensor that all Android devices seem to have on the back, but don't know why this would only turn off landscape and not portrait.
I'm jealous sometimes of my girlfriend's Samsung ultrabook for this same reason. I think it's Samsung's answer to the LG Gram and wow, it's light.
If you want a really light machine, don't you have to ditch the aluminum? My 2017 MacBook Pro gets heavy, esp once you add the charger. I take it everywhere.
They're both similar metrics, and both just vanity now.
There are lower bounds of acceptability and luxury that were hit years ago, with much more important things to work on now like battery life and connectivity. Nobody cares about shaving another few millimeters or grams off the design if it means a frustrating experience overall.
The Magic Keyboard actually doesn't use the same butterfly key mechanism: it's a scissor switch, albeit one that attempts to emulate some of the feel of the butterfly key keyboards (but with more travel).
I think it's just an easy thing for them to market. All other things being equal, people love "thinner and lighter." The problem is things aren't always otherwise equal.
I bought a 12" MacBook when it came out because it seemed like it was a big advance over the previous Mac Air. I also bought the first generation Mac Air. So, obviously, you and I don't have similar criteria.
MacBook Pro users and MacBook users generally don't overlap. It's fine if you want a super-light, super-thin ultramobiles, but it makes little sense to compromise the Pro's usability in the name of thinness. I've been a Mac user for the last 7 years and for the first time I'm getting a non-Mac computer because the MacBook Pro is no longer attractive. It's a shame, because I have invested a significant amount of time and money on my current setup.
Are you sure about that? When I work at my desk I use a dock and some monitors, and all the heavy lifting is on a remote server. I suppose there could be a selection effect for workers whose employers force them to work solely on their laptop, but is that common?
If you look at derefr's comment, he appears to work like I do.
Does it drive sales? Couldn’t some other stat be used to pad their presentations? Any thickness less than an inch is fine with me. I’m not concerned with whether my laptop fits in an envelope.