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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

#451

Post by peyton »

valarauca1 wrote: post #367
ctvo wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe I'm a bit too much of a STEM-headed engineer but I think you are making a false comparison. UX is fleeting. Even the best UX will grow stale over time as styles change, and it's style propagates (as it will if it is truly revolutionary) it will become mundane. Technology breakthroughs are hacks in the laws of physics. Humanity hasn't fundamentally redesigned the Steam Engine since James Watt. It just can't beco…

Trust me, a lot more work went into the iPhone's design than you'd think.

One analogy is brute force searching for an approximate solution to an optimization problem.

It's problematic when others take your solution if you did all the brute forcing.

Design is only fleeting inasmuch as an approximation could be fleeting. Others build off an approximation to find better solutions. But without the earlier solution, we'd find ourselves in a much different part of the sample space.

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

#452

Post by raihansaputra »

Const-me wrote: post #441
raihansaputra wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Technically yes. Not sure about the latest OSX, but when I used that, everything worked fine for me. Legally no. VM or not, the real hardware needs to be made by Apple.

no need to tweak kexts like you do with a hackintosh?

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

#453

Post by chj »

prewett wrote: post #291
deno wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve been through two technology changes, rebuilding basically from scratch every time. This (Plasma 5 and KDE Frameworks 5) feels like the final evolution stage. It’s gaining polish with every point release. Desktop search is finally quick. The UI stack (QML) is nimble and powerful. Breeze is the best looking flat design, both beautiful and clean. Even the default desktop wallpapers are gorgeous. The only thing r…

If two technology changes is an excuse for unimplemented features, that sounds like some pretty unusable software to me. "The rest is details" was exactly the problem the parent was referring to. "Desktop search is finally quick"--I think most users would want it to be quick first, and then the devs can do whatever "technology changes" they want. I tried to like KDE, but every time I tried it, one of the first apps I…

which window manager do you use?

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

#454

Post by arvinsim »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #209
klackerz wrote: post #26

The best thing about Xiaomi is that they support their products very well. Almost all of their phones get security updates each month. That is a rare thing in Android nowadays especially with Motorola announcing that they will stop updating their phones with the new security updates. [1] [1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/motorola-confirms-tha...

Everyone I know with a Xiaomi is on an ancient version of Android and their phones are largely considered disposable. They might do the monthly security updates (all Android OEMs should be doing this) but that's very different than keeping up proper OS updates. 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 update…

> Considering how cheap the Nexus line is, I'm not sure why people even both with the super-budget phones.

Might only be true in the US. At least in my country, it is neither accessible to buy nor cheap.

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

#455

Post by aembleton »

xbeta wrote: post #293
aembleton wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with them? 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.

I have the MiBand, and it drops hundreds of times. I had eventually lost it. Sure, it's only $10, but it doesn't make sense to buy anything just because it's cheap. 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. Bu…

What stock headphones do you have that are better than the Xiaomi Piston 3? I didn't specify 3 in the last post, but they're the model that I have.

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

#456

Post by [deleted] »

xbeta wrote: post #293
aembleton wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with them? 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.

I have the MiBand, and it drops hundreds of times. I had eventually lost it. Sure, it's only $10, but it doesn't make sense to buy anything just because it's cheap. 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. Bu…

[deleted]

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

#457

Post by nailer »

hcal wrote: post #323
clmckinley wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes lots of alternatives, you can argue that there is an alternative for virtually everything that is available if you are willing and know how to find it. This is the same argument that Windows Phone (ironically) make, but most people want the same programs that all of their friends run. Computers and most other electronics are appliances to most people they just want them to work without any thought.

It is fair to say that certain software doesn't run (or run well) on Linux. It is also fair to say that most people don't want to learn how to use new software especially when they already know something else that works. I think however, it is misleading at best to say that it doesn't have many native apps.

>I think however, it is misleading at best to say that it doesn't have many native apps.

'well known' is implied by basic logic: users don't want apps they haven't heard of before.

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

#458

Post by paines »

fapjacks wrote: post #446
paines wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey man, could you elaborate on that a bit or point to a tutorial? I am running Kubuntu 16 on a Skylake+950M laptop, and I can either use Intel or Nvidia but not both at the same time. There is Bumblebee, but my machine freezes on startup....

Hey, I'm not sure what to tell you. My Optimus functionality has been working since installing the "newest" version of the official Nvidia drivers (nvidia-352) on LM17.3. I turned it on in the BIOS and have been able to select from the "NVIDIA X Server Settings" utility ever since. I remember trying out Bumblebee on LM17 and having similar issues as you mention, and was unable to boot with Optimus enabled in the BIOS…

I see, so I guess Mint has some combination of drivers (kernel + nvidia) which just work for your system. Good for you! Thanks for answering. Maybe I will take a look into LM!

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

#459

Post by 627467 »

astrodust wrote: post #403
627467 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post should be marked as reference anytime some Apple-zealot brings the "Apple invented everything under the sun" argument. Don't get me wrong: Apple deservingly got tons of credits (literally, in their bank accounts) for the combination of great hardware/software/ui design/marketing of the past 10 years. They still do. But their success means that just like Jony Ive got "inspired" by Braun, Apple is not inspiri…

I use air-quotes on inspired because while it's obvious in hind-sight the way the Braun styling was adapted, distilling the design language of a blender or a pocket calculator made in the 1960s into a cutting edge product launched in the mid 2000s is not exactly a straight-forward exercise. If you look at the mock-ups people made of the hypothetical and long-rumored "iPod phone" that Apple was working on you'll see h…

It's stylistic exercise which may be (or not be) enabled by technological advances but it's no different than when 80s cloths coming back now. Understand that I'm not saying it's trivial to accomplish this exercise. Specially to achieve global cultural icon status. But I'm arguing that part of journey to achieve that status requires other's following your lead.

Xiaomi "thin, machine-metal" laptop looks as much like an Macbook as iPhone's 6 antenna lines look like HTC One M7.

Apple has been quiet about Microsoft (and vice-versa) because if Samsung v Apple design patent wars taught us anything is that it's pointless and expensive to engage in these fights.

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