General > General Technical Chat
Why is Apple obsessed with making products thinner and lighter?
james_s:
It isn't just Apple, it's everybody now. The simple answer is because that's the trend, Apple products are nice but they're as much about fashion as they are functionality. Personally I like a lot about my employer issued Macbook but I think it sacrifices far too much in order to be thinner than it needs to be. A few more mm thickness to have a larger battery, better keyboard and more ports would be well worth it.
westfw:
For quite a while, my "laptop" was essentially a desktop that I could take home with me. It went into a dock on my desk at work, it went in my car, it say on a desk at home. I didn't travel very often, so its weight and battery life were pretty irrelevant. The kids also had laptops, which were essentially small desktops that they could take to their rooms. Ditto.
Then the kids went off to college, and they wanted something they could take notes on in class, carry around campus in their backpacks, and use between classes wherever they happened to be. Size and weight became relevant. Battery life became important. There was one of those "ultrabooks" (12inch screen, smaller than a textbook) on sale at the time, and I bought one for my son. It was ... rather nice. I bought another one for myself, and started using it when I did travel, and it was a LOT nicer to lug through airports (especially since airlines cut back on free luggage, so most of the time you'd be lugging a carryon suitcase and a laptop bag all around.) I preferred it a lot, for anytime I didn't actually need "big computing power."
(I now have a "gaming laptop" as well. It's ... hilarious. I think just the power brick for it weighs more than the ultrabook INCLUDING it's power supply.)
For the people who really need laptops, small and light is nice. ("at home", you can connect it to a full-sized keyboard and display, right?) If it's just a "luggable", then you can go for the bigger and heavier machine.
rdl:
It amazes me how many people, who travel rarely or never, will buy laptops for home use.
DiTBho:
I still wonder - why is the Apple logo upside down on 2003 laptops when the lid is open? - My first girlfriend looks like Sarah Jessica Parker, and my first laptop was the same Apple PowerBook G3 used by Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City (2004) :o :o :o
rsjsouza:
I used to be a road warrior well before the ultra-light trend and the novel Latitude CPi (PII-266) was incredibly powerful for its time and far from lightweight: back then, much more emphasis was done to the durability of the laptop, using high quality hinges and a sturdy shell behind the fragile LCD screen - that always proved invaluable when the regular idiot tried to crush your laptop bag under their luggage in the overhead compartment. That laptop had every port I needed, including a handy pair of PCMCIA that could hold both the network and the 14.4k modem.
The next generations eroded durability while gaining portability, culminating with a Precision 5500 that was quite scant of ports, super slim and poor quality (at least the battery).
The latest HP (Elitebook 830 G6) gives me hope this trend might be reversing, at least in some brands. It is holding better than the Precision and feels much more sturdy. It is heavier due to its better enclosure (the Dell had that rubbery feel that starts to decay over time).
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