My concern is with neither usability, compatibility, nor portability.
It’s with the point of the thing. A laptop has no reason to be touchscreen, as its UX is designed explicitly otherwise. A tablet has no reason to have a laptop form factor, as its UX is designed explicitly otherwise. The product is DBA.
Tablets are tablets. Laptops are laptops. The latter is dying a slow death.
And yet the Lenovo Yoga has been a success story. Not everyone thinks the way you do. Go figure.
My concern is with neither usability, compatibility, nor portability.
It’s with the point of the thing. A laptop has no reason to be touchscreen, as its UX is designed explicitly otherwise. A tablet has no reason to have a laptop form factor, as its UX is designed explicitly otherwise. The product is DBA.
Tablets are tablets. Laptops are laptops. The latter is dying a slow death.
The laptop segment has stopped growing but that doesn't mean it's dying. They're still selling in the same numbers..
Quote: "... along with a new chassis that's expected to be thinner and lighter than ever."
I remember when this obsession among designers started. It was the 2004 Motorola Razr, of which Wikipedia says:
Because of its striking appearance and thin profile, it was initially marketed as an exclusive fashion phone, but within a year, its price was lowered and it was wildly successful, selling over 50 million units by July 2006. Over the Razr's four-year run, the V3 model sold more than 130 million units, becoming the best-selling clamshell phone in the world to date.
It was also a piece of junk and many of those sales were replacements. I know. I owned two and both quit working soon after I got them.
That's why the similarly built MacBook Air is ""hampered by low yield rates." That's corporate-speak for the fact that a lot of them aren't even working at the end of the assembly line. You can imagine what thanks likely to mean two or three years out. Apple could be looking at a production disaster here, a failure rate so high, it has to waive that one-year warranty.
Since the Razr fad began in the fall of 2004m I do think it is time that Apple design team abandoned a fad that, were it a child, would be entering middle school. If they need artistic jargon to justify that, how about, "Solid is the new thin."
There's also no practical reason for ultra-thin laptops. It doesn't assist in their transport. Anyone who has any sense carries one around in a well-padded case, particularly given the frailness of those ultra-thin designs. A more solid MBA would need less protection and thus a smaller case for transport. It'd be a better design in every way.
And if Apple insists on sticking with archaic design principles, it could at least offer customers a choice between thin and solid. Create a EL (for extended life) version of the MBA where the added thickness holds an extra-large battery and makes the unit more solid and reliable.
The whole of your argument hangs on the idea that "hampered by low yield rates" applied to Apple. It is the new Intel chip that is "hampered by low yield rates".
By carving the MBA out of a single block of aluminum Apple builds the strongest and most rigid structure of any of the ultrabook laptops. The design goal of the MBA is portability, not necessarily thinness. Portability includes overall dimensions and weight.
However, the screen size and keyboard dimensions dictate two of the three dimensions, so thinness is the only dimension left. The MBA is one of the lightest ultrabooks on the market and also leads in the specification of battery life. The new Intel chip, "hampered by low yield rates", is highly anticipated to extend battery life, which will allow Apple designers to use a smaller battery, reducing both size and weight from the new MBA.
I can't say that I've ever seen padded cases for MBA computers, but I have seen some nice covers designed to prevent scratches and wear. Weighty laptops are more prone to being damaged by dropping just due to their mass, but dropping any laptop can be a disaster depending on how it lands. The current and 2015 MBAs won't be so light as to flutter to the ground, but it's getting closer to that with every new iteration.
What if this device replaced the 11" and 13" MBAs and the 13" MBP and Apple re-introduced a 17" retina MBP? So you'd have 13" MBA (or whatever Apple decides to call it) and 15" and 17" MBPs. I know that's probably never going to happen but I think there is a niche market for a larger screened laptop.
You are absolutely correct; there is a niche market for a larger screened laptop. Not plural, but singular.
Apple will, in the spirit of latest Disney hit, "Let it go."
Wonder how Apple would price this. The original Air was quite expensive compared to the rest of their notebooks, even though it was relatively underpowered. Now we already have the fairly svelte 13" Retina Macbook Pro, and rumor also has it that a 12" iPad is in the works — if so it's a given that it too will sport a Retina display. Hard to imagine either of these speculative devices starting in the same ball park as the 13" MBP ...
You ask a good question. But since we lack any real breakdown of how the current products sell, we don't know how Apple values keeping them in the line, nor how Apple wants them to line up price-wise.
When Apple came out with their latest iPads I was surprised that they kept in the old iPod Touch... the squeeze in price between it and the low-cost iPad mini is almost non-existent. However, the old iPod Touch may be still selling like gangbusters.
When Steve Jobs came back to Apple his first order of business was to slim the product line down to eight products. While Apple can now afford to have more products, they do seem to piling up within a narrow range of pricing.
For me, I do use the iPad quite a bit differently than I do the laptop. In some ways the iPad is just doing what I used to do on the laptop, but there is a whole range of new things I do on the iPad that I can't do on the laptop, and many things I do on the laptop that I prefer to keep doing there. Perhaps Apple is not in a big hurry to influence the migration to tablets and letting people sort it out naturally. After all there are people still using manual typewriters, fountain pens and wooden pencils.
The thing which I’m hearing about for the first time from you, you mean. Never seen on TV, online, or been shown it in stores.
If you haven't seen an advert for the Yoga then you must have had your eyes closed for the past 2 years. They've been everywhere. I don't even watch TV at home and I've seen enough of them to know exactly how they go.
I have no idea what stores you frequent, so couldn't possibly comment on that.
Pretty cool design actually. Only downside is, is that it's using the new Broadwell-based CoreM processor which means performance is so so, especially when it has to push a 4K screen.
All these assumptions because you fail to realize that production is hampered by low yield rates of BROADWELL CHIPS?
Actually it appears that Intel has put its yield issues behind them. If there are yield issues (a big IF) it isn't Intels hardware. The reality is we here this nonsense about yield issues with every new Apple product of late. Any new production system has a ramp up time involved as bugs are worked out. That includes new components for the device and and the device itself.
Surface is actually a great idea, albeit poorly executed. Windows 8 Metro was bold and different, but also crappy and horrible. Nice they tried being original though got to give them that. But convergence is not a good business strategy for Apple, because it's much more profitable to sell you all an iPad and a laptop instead of just a laptop with touch and iOS mode. As much as that would be a great product, I don't see it happening until iPad sales start tanking perhaps due to market saturation or Android competition, either of which may or may not happen.
But seriously where is the 14 or 15" MacBook Air that's all I care about. Ready for Apple to take my money on a new laptop but only when MBP prices aren't insane again or when MBA screen is >14".
Funny but as my old Mac recently died I've been trolling eBay for an entry level 13" Retina Macbook Pro. Overnight a couple units of the current model, new sealed in box, appeared for less than at the Apple Store (and they're usually actually [I]more[/I] at the tat bazaar). Then this morning B&H lists them at even less, $1149. What's most interesting is that they are not even advertising this as a markdown. Which leads me to believe they are quietly clearing out inventory in advance of the release of the new MBP — could this one will be "it"? What's the general lead time in such a case? I'm tho exthited!
Comments
My concern is with neither usability, compatibility, nor portability.
It’s with the point of the thing. A laptop has no reason to be touchscreen, as its UX is designed explicitly otherwise. A tablet has no reason to have a laptop form factor, as its UX is designed explicitly otherwise. The product is DBA.
Tablets are tablets. Laptops are laptops. The latter is dying a slow death.
And yet the Lenovo Yoga has been a success story. Not everyone thinks the way you do. Go figure.
My concern is with neither usability, compatibility, nor portability.
It’s with the point of the thing. A laptop has no reason to be touchscreen, as its UX is designed explicitly otherwise. A tablet has no reason to have a laptop form factor, as its UX is designed explicitly otherwise. The product is DBA.
Tablets are tablets. Laptops are laptops. The latter is dying a slow death.
The laptop segment has stopped growing but that doesn't mean it's dying. They're still selling in the same numbers..
The whole of your argument hangs on the idea that "hampered by low yield rates" applied to Apple. It is the new Intel chip that is "hampered by low yield rates".
By carving the MBA out of a single block of aluminum Apple builds the strongest and most rigid structure of any of the ultrabook laptops. The design goal of the MBA is portability, not necessarily thinness. Portability includes overall dimensions and weight.
However, the screen size and keyboard dimensions dictate two of the three dimensions, so thinness is the only dimension left. The MBA is one of the lightest ultrabooks on the market and also leads in the specification of battery life. The new Intel chip, "hampered by low yield rates", is highly anticipated to extend battery life, which will allow Apple designers to use a smaller battery, reducing both size and weight from the new MBA.
I can't say that I've ever seen padded cases for MBA computers, but I have seen some nice covers designed to prevent scratches and wear. Weighty laptops are more prone to being damaged by dropping just due to their mass, but dropping any laptop can be a disaster depending on how it lands. The current and 2015 MBAs won't be so light as to flutter to the ground, but it's getting closer to that with every new iteration.
You are absolutely correct; there is a niche market for a larger screened laptop. Not plural, but singular.
Apple will, in the spirit of latest Disney hit, "Let it go."
You ask a good question. But since we lack any real breakdown of how the current products sell, we don't know how Apple values keeping them in the line, nor how Apple wants them to line up price-wise.
When Apple came out with their latest iPads I was surprised that they kept in the old iPod Touch... the squeeze in price between it and the low-cost iPad mini is almost non-existent. However, the old iPod Touch may be still selling like gangbusters.
When Steve Jobs came back to Apple his first order of business was to slim the product line down to eight products. While Apple can now afford to have more products, they do seem to piling up within a narrow range of pricing.
For me, I do use the iPad quite a bit differently than I do the laptop. In some ways the iPad is just doing what I used to do on the laptop, but there is a whole range of new things I do on the iPad that I can't do on the laptop, and many things I do on the laptop that I prefer to keep doing there. Perhaps Apple is not in a big hurry to influence the migration to tablets and letting people sort it out naturally. After all there are people still using manual typewriters, fountain pens and wooden pencils.
.
Just suppose for a moment it runs OS X and iOS ?
Maybe even a removable touch screen.
Buy a Surface
Said the physical keyboard lobby.
The thing which I’m hearing about for the first time from you, you mean. Never seen on TV, online, or been shown it in stores.
With electronics, that’s dying.
The thing which I’m hearing about for the first time from you, you mean. Never seen on TV, online, or been shown it in stores.
If you haven't seen an advert for the Yoga then you must have had your eyes closed for the past 2 years. They've been everywhere. I don't even watch TV at home and I've seen enough of them to know exactly how they go.
I have no idea what stores you frequent, so couldn't possibly comment on that.
Said the physical keyboard lobby.
The thing which I’m hearing about for the first time from you, you mean. Never seen on TV, online, or been shown it in stores.
With electronics, that’s dying.
The Lenovo Yoga is already on its 3rd iteration - Yoga 3 Pro.
http://shop.lenovo.com/ca/en/laptops/lenovo/yoga-laptop-series/yoga-3-pro-laptop/ ;
Pretty cool design actually. Only downside is, is that it's using the new Broadwell-based CoreM processor which means performance is so so, especially when it has to push a 4K screen.
Ops, done alreay.
Surface is actually a great idea, albeit poorly executed. Windows 8 Metro was bold and different, but also crappy and horrible. Nice they tried being original though got to give them that. But convergence is not a good business strategy for Apple, because it's much more profitable to sell you all an iPad and a laptop instead of just a laptop with touch and iOS mode. As much as that would be a great product, I don't see it happening until iPad sales start tanking perhaps due to market saturation or Android competition, either of which may or may not happen.
But seriously where is the 14 or 15" MacBook Air that's all I care about. Ready for Apple to take my money on a new laptop but only when MBP prices aren't insane again or when MBA screen is >14".