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Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

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Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#371
post #355
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the difference between developers and designers. And why so few designers participate in open-source. 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.

You don't get that something proprietary was stolen and the creators are upset? From a software perspective you can't imagine how you'd feel if a critical piece of your business software was reversed engineered and copied by a competitor? An example might be finance and low latency trading. Or an ML / AI breakthrough. Or anything on the fringe still providing a competitive advantage and not a solved problem on Github…

> From a software perspective you can't imagine how you'd feel if a critical piece of your business software was reversed engineered and copied by a competitor?

Definitely, could definitely understand if it was about money/business. But that is never mentioned when designers get angry about their designs being stolen.

I think it's not about money/business. I think it's a different mindset where a "stolen" design devalues your own contribution. A developer who makes a breakthrough never feels like their contribution is devalued if someone else copies your idea; quite the opposite, copies validates that you made a genuine breakthrough.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#372

This quote from Jony Ive really made me feel for the guy: “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 ai…

I am sick to death of patent trolls, frivolous copyright lawsuits, RIAA/MPAA bullying, the broken and ridiculous patent system, bullcrap like the DMCA, and how obviously bought our lawmakers are in terms of extending and broadening copyright laws. It really makes it impossible for me to have any sympathy for "victims" of copyright violations or patent infringement. They can go pound sand.

This. Patents should be at most 5 years in IT, should they exist at all. The Macbook Air was first published in 2008. It's not a new idea anymore, not a new design, if you want to be the leader then create new products, and be happy if you're the one setting the trend for the whole design industry. For example Apple could remain first by creating an OS that customers trust. I wouldn't trust a Chinese design (not yet, for now) for my professional stuff because of malware, spy kits, bugs and even just the cheap materials.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#373
post #14

Every competitor for Apple is a good thing :)

As a full-time Apple user for the last 7 years or so (not counting my //e days as a kid), I completely agree with this sentiment. 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…

Fedora or Ubuntu running Gnome 3 with Dash to Dock extension are the perfect alternatives to macOS.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple should tell that quote to Xerox for the Xerox Park rip off.. http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

This is nowhere like a Mac other than in the fact that it's a computer with a screen, keyboard and mouse: http://www.righto.com/2016/06/y-combinators-xerox-alto-resto... 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…

Let's not act like Apple has not been known to steal ideas and package them with the Apple logo. It's just part of business.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#375

This quote from Jony Ive really made me feel for the guy: “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 ai…

The same Jony Ive who blatantly copied so many Dieter Rams/Braun designs?

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...)

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#376
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nowhere like a Mac other than in the fact that it's a computer with a screen, keyboard and mouse: http://www.righto.com/2016/06/y-combinators-xerox-alto-resto... 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…

Let's not act like Apple has not been known to steal ideas and package them with the Apple logo. It's just part of business.

Usually they've caved in to the conventions of the market (iOS notifications) or missing features (F.lux). The amount of blatant theft seems minimal. They usually put their own spin on things to differentiate somehow.

Even Microsoft has gone its own way with Windows after some heavy overlap with MacOS and other windowing systems (DESQview in partcular). Windows 3.1 was more different, and Windows 95 borrowed more heavily from OS/2, which was wildly different from MacOS. If anything Apple was forced to adopt the right-click menu popularized by Microsoft since it became the de-facto standard.

Meanwhile other companies have damning memos that say "Make it look exactly like Apple's product".

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, nothing comes close to ThinkPads. I dislike Lenovo a lot and would ditch them at first chance. No vendor wants to be that chance though. (Proper keyboard, 3-physical-button pad/point, not too hot, etc.) I'm not too concerned about Superfish - that was only the consumer junk, right? The BIOS-Windows-auto-install stuff was more concerning. But hey, little choices. Lenovo is certainly incompetent - look a…

What thinkpad would u get today? I looked into the T460 but (a) they seem to have many variants within the same model and (b) I saw too many negative reviews online.

x1 carbon, definitely. i'm using the 1st gen carbon at work, and other than the sadly crappy battery life it's been a wonderful machine

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually stupidly hard. Why do you need to do anything at all?

As opposed to the Windows approach (unless you enjoy being stuck with preloaded malware, such as Superfish, McAfee, or Mac OS X): * WTF, why isn't my NIC registering? I thought we had a standard for this stuff by now. * Download NIC drivers from secondary computer * Put NIC drivers on a USB stick * Install NIC drivers * Nothing happened, turns out you found the drivers for the wrong revision of the chipset, go back t…

You are comparing a 7 year old version of Windows to a recent Linux release. Obviously Windows 7 will not have all the drivers.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#379
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a full-time Apple user for the last 7 years or so (not counting my //e days as a kid), I completely agree with this sentiment. 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…

Off topic, but have you tried Gnome 3? I personally can't stand it, but a lot of my friends who use macOS love it, to the point of saying it's on par with the macOS desktop environment.

I'll give it a whirl. Last desktop I used was whatever Ubuntu has... Unity I think or something like that.

A lot of glitz, but also very glitchy. I'd be happy with plain, consistent, discoverable, comprehisble. The animation eye candy is nice, but it's low on my priority list.

Re: Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm curious, do a lot of people run this setup? does the overhead of running in vm for your daily tasks worth it?

I was running OSX in VMWare every day for a couple of years, did iOS development. With 8 GB RAM and fast Intel SSD in my Windows laptop, the VM was faster then hardware MacBooks I saw. Modern hardware-assisted virtualization is very efficient, BTW that's exactly what allowed those cloud computing.

Doesn't VMware have really lacking graphics support? I remember Yosemite and on with their fancy effects are barely usable.
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