>I honestly don't understand all these quality sacrifices just to make things thinner. It makes the product actually feel somewhat cheap and brittle.
It's easy: every time people had the chance to buy thinner or thicker products, they flocked to the thinner ones.
The complaints are random outliers around the internet, but the actual Apple's sales numbers (record years after record years and reduced sales for thicker older designs) speak for themselves.
Not just some "vacuous" "non-technie" users either (as the stereotype says).
Can you guess who said the following words about his MacBook Air for example?
Quote:
"I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light.
Btw, even when it comes to Apple, it’s really just the Air that I think is special. The other apple laptops may be good-looking, but they are still the same old clunky hardware, just in a pretty dress.
I’m personally just hoping that I’m ahead of the curve in my strict requirement for “small and silent”. It’s not just laptops, btw – Intel sometimes gives me pre-release hardware, and the people inside Intel I work with have learnt that being whisper-quiet is one of my primary requirements for desktops too. I am sometimes surprised at what leaf-blowers some people seem to put up with under their desks.
I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat. And when I travel, I want to travel light. A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)."""
"Not just some "vacuous" "non-technie" users either (as the stereotype says)."
Actually, Linus comes off to me as particularly non-techie. He obviously cares about it enough to get the work done but couldn't care about it more than that. Not even the OS (outside of the kernel) is of any interest to him (dissing debian because he thinks the installer is too cumbersome etc.).
Compare the MacBook Air with the lenovo x-series at the time and it's quite hard to see what the air actually brought to the market except for first in class non-replaceable batteries and few external ports.
You've always been able to get silent computers, but Linus doesn't have the interest to research them.
>Actually, Linus comes off to me as particularly non-techie. He obviously cares about it enough to get the work done but couldn't care about it more than that.
Non tinkerer is not the same as non-techie.
In fact I'd call tinkerers the par-excellence non-techies. They don't do anything technologically productive (much less write their own kernel), they just play with tech toys.
you are confusing coincidence with causation, there is no evidence that apples record sales numbers (which seem to be at an end anyhow) have much to do with making things thinner to the point of fragility.
a) "clearly being an asshole makes me steve jobs right"
I never claimed any causative chain of that sort. I said that thinner continued to sold in droves, not that making something thin necessarily will make it sold.
b) "or at least it cant hurt! right?"
That's closer to what I said, which is the continuously thinner products never hurt Apple's sales.
And to answer your question, yes, obviously it can't hurt in someone becoming like Steve Jobs -- since it didn't hurt Steve Jobs himself. In fact, if anything, it could have been necessary to Jobs success, and goes with his obsession and attention to detail and crazy push to his employees.
Not really. It's somewhat established that there are more psychopaths as CEOs than in the general population, suggesting it's a good trait to help one "make it".
> It's easy: every time people had the chance to buy thinner or thicker products, they flocked to the thinner ones.
You'll need to back up that statement with factual sources, because clearly all Apple decisions aren't always backed by marketing studies because all their products are not always that successful.
>You'll need to back up that statement with factual sources, because clearly all Apple decisions aren't always backed by marketing studies because all their products are not always that successful.
What marketing studies? I'm talking about marketing results. Their ever thinner laptops remained at the top of best selling laptops in their price class -- selling several times more than the closest competitor ever since Jobs came back to Apple in 1999.
> What marketing studies? I'm talking about marketing results. Their ever thinner laptops remained at the top of best selling laptops in their price class -- selling several times more than the closest competitor ever since Jobs came back to Apple in 1999.
we're talking about phones here, not laptops and correlation is not causation, you didn't demonstrate what you state as a fact.
You seem confused. I'm not trying to establish a causal relationship between thin and sales. I'm stating (it's a fact) that people have flocked to thin products.
We're also not "talking about phones here". The post is about the MacBook Pro keyboard. That's a laptop. You first brought up phones, when you mentioned "bigger screens".
Besides, even in phones, the ever thinning models kept selling very well, whether they had bigger screens or not.
It's easy: every time people had the chance to buy thinner or thicker products, they flocked to the thinner ones.
The complaints are random outliers around the internet, but the actual Apple's sales numbers (record years after record years and reduced sales for thicker older designs) speak for themselves.
Not just some "vacuous" "non-technie" users either (as the stereotype says).
Can you guess who said the following words about his MacBook Air for example?
Quote:
"I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light.
Btw, even when it comes to Apple, it’s really just the Air that I think is special. The other apple laptops may be good-looking, but they are still the same old clunky hardware, just in a pretty dress.
I’m personally just hoping that I’m ahead of the curve in my strict requirement for “small and silent”. It’s not just laptops, btw – Intel sometimes gives me pre-release hardware, and the people inside Intel I work with have learnt that being whisper-quiet is one of my primary requirements for desktops too. I am sometimes surprised at what leaf-blowers some people seem to put up with under their desks.
I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat. And when I travel, I want to travel light. A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)."""