Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by raihansaputra » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 1:06 AM UTC

Const-me wrote: post #140

raihansaputra wrote: post #100

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.

if i knew a few weeks ago i would probably think a bit more of buying another macbook. osx allows vm installs?

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

#422

Post by orky56 » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 1:23 AM UTC

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

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

#423

Post by anexprogrammer » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 1:57 AM UTC

leonroy wrote: post #286

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…

In the 1970s and early 80s nearly everything produced in Japan was a crap copy of a US or European design. Motorcycles, cars, hifi (more lo-fi). Only later did they figure out how to make things reasonably well and start to innovate themselves.

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.

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

#424

Post by Shorel » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 2:54 AM UTC

zapu wrote: post #31

joebergeron wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A laptop that's pleasing to the eyes.

Is this: http://spadkobiercy.nazwa.pl/XPS13/7.jpg seriously not pleasing?

It looks very nice to me.

The question is how it looks after six months of use.

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

#425

Post by Shorel » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 3:05 AM UTC

Nullabillity wrote: post #94

personjerry wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience nvidia has always been much easier to install than amd (fglrx).

Not anymore, these days radeon is far better than fglrx and works great straight out of the box.

For what GPUs?

This is an honest question, and I appreciate your answer in advance.

I have a desktop with an HD 6850 and the radeon driver has always worked well, I used to play DOTA2 on it.

But this is a very old GPU now, and all newer models (HD7xxx and up) were having performance issues with the radeon driver last time I was reading the forums.

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

#426

Post by Shorel » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 3:12 AM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #77

merb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pretty naive. especially since it has a dual graphics with nvidia. which is really akward to "correctly" install on linux. and then there are drivers. pretty sure that there won't be many stuff that directly works on linux.

Use Windows for the metal OS, then run Linux on top (VMware or WSL). Best of both worlds.

Not really, a modern Linux will do a real boot faster than Windows does its fake-boot-it-really-was-hibernation-wake-up thing.

If you do web development it is also a much better development experience than using Windows.

Bluetooth devices work much better in Linux than Windows (at least the ones I have).

USB devices are also much better handled in Linux. I never see an 'Installing device driver for this USB stick' message.

I plug my kindle in Ubuntu, it opens Calibre. I plug my kindle in Windows, it shows a folder.

I lose all these niceties if I run Linux inside a VM.

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

#427

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 3:34 AM UTC

ianai wrote: post #420

yompers888 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you care to elaborate?

well, http://www.zdnet.com/article/former-pentagon-analyst-china-h...

Xiaomi isn't explicitly mentioned in that article and I have no doubt they put backdoors in their products for the Chinese Government. I guess my question is, would you feel differently if they were a US company and it were the the US Government holding the keys to backdoor?

There's a reason China has been investing in developing it's own CPUs and telecommunications hardware and it isn't so that it can more easily spy on others. It's because they themselves no longer wish to be spied on... and maybe so they can spy on everyone else a little too.

I'm not saying it's right. I don't know what I'm saying actually. I'm just going to grab some tin foil...

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

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Post by ProAm » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 5:43 AM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #415

ProAm wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but throughout history Apple has done this plenty. They have never been first to market with a product.

They were never first to market with a category of product, that's just not in their DNA. Even the Apple I was a computer largely similar in terms of features to a multitude of others on the market, but it wasn't a direct copy of any of their competitors. Their ideal product entry point is when consumers are familiar with the product but are unhappy with the current offerings because they lack the right contextual fi…

Apple Maps, Apple Watch, F.lux, Those are just off the top of my head, Apples been around a long time and its happen many times (but as Ive said all companies to this). I just don't like deniers where Apple is viewed as all good and in the light, when they absolutely are not. (and neither are most companies) Apple is just made because its happening to them right now and not the other way around, its eating their potential revenue.

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

#429

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:52 AM UTC

uola wrote: post #382

astrodust wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple literally redefined what a smart phone is. While he borrowed design cues from history, Braun in particular, applying that to the phone space and coming up with a design language that had durability was a big breakthrough. Remember in 2006 Nokia, Motorola, RIM and others made literally everything but rectangular phones. They were covered in buttons and other crap. Ive's vision of a virtually button free phone wa…

The Sony Ericsson P800/P900/P910 had a removable keypad making them effectively rectangular phones. The Neonode N1 had a touch driven interface, including the slide to unlock feature. Then there were PDAs like Sony Clie PEG-TH55. All this a couple of years before the iPhone. The reason phones didn't look like rectangles wasn't because no one had the idea, but because screens were expensive and touch technology (and o…

I had a P-800. I can tell you the iPhone experience was much more than the screen. It was swipe, multi-touch, the smooth animation, the attention to designing applications down to their icons.

The iPhone redefined what a smartphone should be using nothing that wasn't available to anyone else in the market. Except, perhaps, a Jony Ive with a mad man like Steve Jobs pushing him.

That said, the unibody MacBooks set the gold standard for stylish laptops. It's natural someone else would follow the formula many years later. Even with only evolutionary changes, the MacBook is still light years apart from its Windows-running copycats.

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

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Post by ewheeler » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 7:56 AM UTC

mi_sucks wrote: post #181

ewheeler wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. my Xiaomi Mi4C gets an update every week. sometimes some minor regressions, but they're always fixed the next week. i certainly prefer that to the typical android software update cycle from most manufacturers/carriers

the updates pushed by MIUI team are just font size changes of the clock 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.

i got my Mi4C in April 2016 and it has received several OTA android version update and monthly android security patches. there are certainly many insignificant UI changes, but there have been android updates occasionally in the last four months.

similar to what others have mentioned, the place where i purchased it added google apps in a way that prevented regular updates. once i re-flashed and reinstalled google apps, i've gotten updates every week