“When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it’s copied. I have to be honest, the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn’t. I think it’s theft, and it’s lazy.”
Xiaomi have done this to others. Their new air filter for example basically clones a Japanese design and sells it for a fraction of the price: http://www.gizmochina.com/2014/12/09/xiaomis-air-purifierbor...
There is so much code copied around these days. This is all just the way it is and how we have decided to move ahead as a society. Making judgments on others is uncalled for.
He said exactly that: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/tech/2014/10/jony-ive-lessons...
And yes innovation is incremental but this is Xiaomi not simply borrowing design cues but literally cloning a design. See for yourself - here's their take on Japanese company Balmuda's air purifier: https://www.balmuda.com/jp/airengine/
Xiaomi's version: http://www.mi.com/en/air/
Alto: http://s7.computerhistory.org/is/image/CHM/500004657-03-01?$...
Lisa: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/apple-lisa2xl/ap...
Mac System 1: http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/images/screenshots/syst...
http://b-i.forbesimg.com/anthonykosner/files/2013/11/jony-iv...
(I'd use the phrase "has been inspired by and has applied to the contemporary times" instead of "copied", but if he likes that verb more...)
I'll never understand designers. I don't mean that as a criticism, I literally don't understand the mindset. This is my problem for not understanding.
It sounds really undemocratic (why shouldn't everyone have their say?). And it undoubtedly contributes to the sterotype of the designer as diva or precious about their work. But can you think of an open source project praised for it's visual and interaction design that was colloboratively develeoped with dozens or more participants? If you can, it will be an exception, not the rule.
When there are too many participants in the design of a program, you end up with a project pulled in every direction and pleasing to no-one. But if you go the opposite route and limit design decisions to a dedicated UX team, you end up generating resentment from contributors or users who feel their input is being ignored (just look at Ubuntu for an example of this).
From a designers perspective, either of these scenarios will seem like a no-win situation.
If someone copies my software work, I don't go around calling them lazy. Even I spent all my weekends on this lovely piece of code, only for someone else to "steal" it.
How can you paint such a broad stroke, like THOSE DESIGNERS, I'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND THEM! With the implication being those designers aren't open and collaborative and willing to share and don't understand iterating in the open like us developers. The quote is from one specific designer.
Read history, then comment, okay?
The PARC machine barely scratched the surface of what could be done, and it was far from being packaged in a way that could be marketed to consumers. It was inspiration, and any engineer knows that's a long, long way from a working product.
Not reinventing the wheel is a great business strategy. Everyone copies everyone in the tech space. Apple didn't invent lightweight laptops.
It's either lower wages, better productivity or both, either way, it's better for us, consumers, which now have additional money to spend on other products and services which further enrich our lives (where additional money = Price of the Japanese product - Price of the Chinese product).
Parasites depend on their hosts survival, since if the host dies, the parasite dies too.
Now it's China's turn. In ten years it'll probably be someone else as Chinese development continues. Just as Hollywood got their start years ago.
Apple will just have to lower the greedy margins a bit.
Clearly it's not a cheap product, but the Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 is razor thin, high powered, well built, and very good looking.
Maybe I'm missing something?
I now own a 3rd-gen X1 Carbon for personal use. After my experience with it, I'll never buy or recommend Lenovo again. Months of waiting on backordered parts (for their flagship laptop), repeat visits from their service center, and the end result is finally a laptop that mostly works, but is starting a slow death very early because of cheap plastic construction and tight tolerances that aren't so tight after a few months of use. I've had it a year and a half (I bought it the week it came out); I'll be lucky if it makes it to two years without another significant problem.
Terrible experience all the way around. It looks pretty on the website, but it's not built to last like their older products were, and their service is a shadow of its former self.
[1] http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...
Xiaomi is a Chinese company they don't care since if they ever do get sued the Chinese court will always side with the Chinese company.
The again if the clone works just as well as the original I don't really care but this would have been a really good chance to copy and improve.
The eeepc was the thing that proved there was enough interest for a low-power-but-mobile computer, which ended up turning into the tablet market. Crappy build quality, but people went berserk for them.
Don't get me wrong, it's a really good laptop and I've chosen it over so many others on the market. I would probably still choose it for my linux laptop (lenovo x1 is neat but I'm done with lenovo with all the stuff they've done lately). It just looks poorly to me in a direct comparison.
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&q=samsung+serie...
Though to be honest there is a small issue with coil whine in very quiet settings. I hear Dell has addressed this in newer models.
Last laptop I bought was due to needing something for occasional DJ and projection graphics projects. Since it needed to be mobile, even a small form factor desktop build was not really feasible so I went looking for the best thing I could grab at Microcenter for under a grand.
Now this was a few years ago so the specs aren't top notch anymore but for just under $1000 I got an Asus that's not quite all metal (bottom half of the shell is plastic but the rest is aluminum), 1920x1080 screen (but worse viewing angles than a premium display), an i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and the mobile variant of the then-current class of nVidia GPUs (because I needed something that could handle all of the OpenGL stuff I was messing with). The only other sucky part was it came with a HDD instead of a SSD but at some point I'll upgrade the SSD in my desktop and hand that one down to the laptop.
The nearest competing Apple notebook at the time (at least 1920x1080, i7, 16GB RAM, and discrete graphics) would've run me about $2500. Build would've been better, display would've been a bit better, and if it had a SSD or one of those hybrid drives, that obviously beats spinning platters.
But none of those things (or all of them together) was worth spending more than double. If it was going to be my only machine for everything I'd have probably paid the premium for an Apple or another higher-end notebook with nicer display and SSD but for a secondary computer at around $950-ish it is still running perfectly when I need to take something on the road.
My primary concerns are:
- not to have open it up and clean from dust. That's what all of my laptops, except Air, suffered from. They get dust inside and then get hot and loud. I move around a lot and it's inevitable. I don't want noise and I want as little heat as possible.
- Multitouch Trackpad like on Macbook Air. It's wonderful!
- Long battery life with moderate to high power cpu.
- Great 13" monitor that you can see what's going on in direct sunlight.
- As much as possible of internal fast storage.
- Lots of RAM.
- Great typing experience. I'm fine with chiklet on Air. It's just fine. I write a lot, more than typical programmers - treatments, instructions, screenplays on a daily basis.
Currently, only Air fits the bill, but it's getting old.
So, a high(er)-powered Air 13" with longer battery life and more RAM and disk space and better screen with updated CPU and graphics would be great. I haven't found one. I don't care which OS it runs. They're all the same these days.
I'm typing on a Razer Blade Stealth right now that I've had since February and it is already falling apart, with most of the screws on the bottom plate falling off and a trackpad that constantly sticks. The fans buzz and brush against their metal grills often enough that you have to gently slap the side of the laptop to make it stop. I've also had its USB-C charger literally fall apart when the USB-C connector came off, which then had to be replaced in its entirety. The 2015 MacBook charger at least let you swap the cable, which was a lot more sane since it appears USB-C is fragile.
After 10~ years of owning Apple laptops, this was a rude awakening of how bad it can be not buying one. I'm hoping moving to a Thinkpad next will not be a similar disaster.
This is all ignoring the insanely bad support from the Razer Web store, which was probably the worst ordering experience I've ever had. Their support is so infamously bad, that even the fans on /r/razer usually defending the company beyond any sense of proportion will admit it is bad.
Pros:
- Almost unbeatable specs for the chassis size
- 14" display, which seems to be getting rarer now, but I really appreciate the extra inch of screen space
- High quality display, if you get a good IGZO panel. Some panels have color issues, but this seems to be common to all IGZO type panels--my Nexus 6 has the same issue. You can return it until you get a satisfactory panel.
- Can dual boot to Windows and play modern games at high quality if that's your thing
- Clean and simple chassis (excluding the silly bright green logo)
- Excellent Linux compatibility
- You can purchase an aftermarket SSD and upgrade it yourself if you're OK with voiding your warranty
- Very nice trackpad with multitouch that even works in Linux. It has physical buttons which I personally prefer, and that's also getting harder to find
Cons:
- Absurdly expensive
- Parts are proprietary so you have to mail the unit in for even the most basic repairs (changing the battery for example), and repairs are expensive
- Matrix-green keyboard and logo color scheme is a little silly and might not look professional. I put a matte black round sticker over the lid logo which helps
- A poster below mentioned screws falling out; I've noticed this with mine too. I think since the chassis is aluminum and is itself part of the system's heat sink, the heating and cooling expands it and gradually pushes the screws out. But pulling out your Torx screwdriver once every few months is enough to fix the issue
Overall I very much like the machine and even moreso since it supports Linux without headaches.
God, I wish that was true. I cannot keep screws in my Razer Blade Stealth at all, not for lack of trying.
Only three of the eight screws remain on my back plate: The two in the back by the hinge vent and the left-hand middle screw. Possibly these areas suffers less thermal stress? Who knows.
Also: Good luck finding replacements when one pops off and you lose it.
Superb Linux compatibility...and can be charged using the Dell companion battery pack !!
And if I might add - excellent swag appeal.
I'd get a new MBA if there were a new one with updated specs and a better screen.
With your criteria, only the Lenovo X Carbon series comes to mind. (Maybe the Dell XPS series?)
That and that it's compact (13") and lightweight and that it makes coffee! I know, but that's what I want. As for high-powered CPU, I would be OK with some super-duper i5 mobile or something. i7 is not a must. Also, I was under the impression that CPUs, these days, do not drain battery more than low-powered one if you're not hitting the gas pedal?
[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/motorola-confirms-tha...
Keeping up with the monthly updates would likely be preferable, but batching them is still a long way off from how you've characterized it.
I love their hardware, it's a frugal premium grade that's hard to come by. I just wish it were more open and their software wasn't so questionable.
Mi Band vibrates on incoming connection, sms and apps so maybe that's why it requires permissions to phone, sms and notifications.
Considering how cheap the Nexus line is, I'm not sure why people even both with the super-budget phones. You get a lackluster experience, few if any OS updates, worse everything, etc just to save $75 or so. A Nexus can last you years compared re-buying a new budget junker annually.
I really wish the mobile market and buyers could mature to the point where we start talking about environmental responsibility here. We shouldn't have to buy phones this frequently and filling up landfills with this stuff. My Nexus is getting old and is still fine. My laptop is at least 6 years old and after an SSD transplant, runs like a a top.
(No doze support and it revoked my root access but still nice!).
Might only be true in the US. At least in my country, it is neither accessible to buy nor cheap.
or a new wall paper in the stock
or a new option on swipe right
They have sold millions of phones , ask them, on how many phones have they given
--- android version update.
http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-hea...
Things that really hurt are short battery life which is ~1.45hrs, and that it misses the modern CPU extensions which will obsolete it soon. Both of this issues obviously won't be present in a Core M3, so I see no reason why you wouldn't dev on an M3 unless you compile big native projects with great frequency.
I'm not sure how true his thought is in relation to china,but neither here nor there.
The ThinkPad X250 I'm using right now with Linux would disagree. The Sony Vaio I had in 2010 and put Linux on would disagree. The Dell Inspiron I had last year would fit the description of "broken" but not "badly broken".
Are there poor pairings of hardware and software outside the Apple garden? Sure. Does that mean everything outside Apple's garden is poor?
They should have dropped the Nvidia chip all the way, it is a shitty compromise. Nobody is going to play games on this machine and the Intel IGP handles all other workloads just fine. Also, the 12.5 version coming with 4GB is a bit disappointing.
I ran linux as my primary os for 10 years. This was never true for me. Something was always broken, or wonky. 10 years of platitudes about how "it will get better", but it didn't. There is always new hardware to support to various degrees.
I got a mac, because I wanted to be able to listen to music and print at the same time. Also, I was tired of all my photos coming out pink.
Thinkpad's battery is 42 Wh with a wifi surfing run-time of almost 7 hours [0], although it being sold as a 11 hours run-time. It hasn't a dedicated graphics chip.
Xiaomi's battery is 40 Wh and it sports dedicated graphics. Macbook Air's battery is 58 Wh and it has integrated graphics, lasting around 10 hours [1].
Assuming a similar consumption, Xiaomi's would last less than 7 hours for surfing. But it has dedicated graphics (NVidia 940M) with a consumption (30W) that doubles integrated options (Intel HD in Lenovo and Apple laptops). So, probably it will last 5 or 6 hours of just wifi surfing, even less.
[0] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-13-Ultrabook-Re...
[1] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-13-2015-Noteb...
If I want a Linux dev box, there are other options too.
I'm very happy with my Xiaomi piston earbuds, good sound quality, survived 1 year of use so far and only ~£10.
I've had one of their phones a few years ago and found it to work well. Just annoying that they'd skinned Android rather than providing stock.
And I have the earbuds too. Sure another $10, but the sound is very mediocre compare to the stock headphones I got.
I also have one of their TVBox, bought it mainly for my Chinese parents. None of the channels work anymore oversea.
Sure, $10 who cares. But I would rather spend bit more on something that last longer than a manufacturer producing more electronic junk to this already-polluted planet.
Screen is much, much better than Macbook Air screen though. Battery life is very good. I use Arch Linux and With a bit of tweaking, everything works (bluetooth, wifi, keyboard backlight, suspend/resume etc).
I can also dual boot into ChromeOS which is quite nice in it's own right. Lovely machine for the money ...
And that's not even taking into account the market demand for such a thing which is negligible.
You can always decline the EULA and try to get a refund for the bundled Windows license. In Europe it is supposedly easy to get a refund due to a European Union directive on unfair commercial practices: http://no.more.racketware.info/en/europe
Android though would rock.
I doubt a $540 machine running Windows will match it.
I very much dislike Windows, but I realize that's just me. Linux on this machine would be awesome.
Plus I have the magic touch of making every Mac to crash while I am trying to get a contracted job done on the customers location. It is seriously so frustrating. (Mostly it is video/music production related)
> It's hardware and software working together to make the experience.
> Linux on this machine would be awesome.
When you have a captive audience and no competition, it is easy to become complacent.
If Linux had a compelling desktop UI alternative and a compelling seamless device integration, I'd be very happy to switch.
I realize there is a lot of subjectivity to what is pretty, but Apple has opened the door for competitors to come out with a more self-consistent UX and address the shortcomings that Apple has introduced in their UX. Such as reduced discoverability, the loss of at-a-glance comprehension.
http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/27486/security/xiaomi-ha...
Yes they are ready to take over large segments of the market but not yet the high end segment.
You cant compare a KIA to Bugatti and say cheap as $xxx.
The point is create a product people speak about and has a value
Regardless, KIA's reliability and repair-ability ratings trump all three of them. So I'll let your original comparison stand.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/csm_Probo...
That being said I have no experience with such a keyboard, so I can't say
Friend of mine has one, he is happy with it, never particularly mentioned the arrow keys as a negative
Also, visual similarities do not always translate into legally-pursuable patent violations, or similar.
I know Ubuntu can still be installed on the Windows version, but I expect it to be a hacky path with installation issues, getting the hardware to play nice and the backlit keyboard to work, and finally maybe even battery life issues.
An out of the box solution like the XPS 13 at a lower price point might work.
If you can run Hackintosh on it, I don't see why I wouldn't go with it instead of paying $2500 on Apple computer with similar specs.
If there was anything that comes close to Macbook's 12 hours run time, I would have seriously considered switching.
Also, no mention of battery life, which is the sine qua non of laptops. Unless I missed it, and I read the article twice to be sure.
I'm always sorry when I click on a TC link.
Here's Engadget's take, and they do mention the 9.5 hour battery: https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/27/xiaomi-mi-notebook-air-l...
For robotics work I always end up wanting a small but decent computer to run my ROS visualizations/algorithms and to make small code edits. This has a decent c/gpu, good battery, small form factor, ssd slot, and isn't ungodly expensive. I usually end up running a VM on my primary development laptop but that is very annoying, a dedicated and less valuable machine would be better.
Hm? "Sony" doesn't begin with "A".
The colors, the squarish shape and the keyboard (Sony used that style before Apple) look much more like a Sony Vaio than any Apple laptop.
