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What happens when it's all glass?

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Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#61

Post by [deleted] »

jrockway wrote: post #44
Locke1689 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- A small point, but I think the comparison between a MacBook Pro an a Lenovo is a bit odd. ThinkPads are not far off from Apple in terms of build quality and are certainly more durable. You're going to have to justify that. A case made out of a solid piece of aluminum is about as durable as I can think of in consumer-level products. I beat the crap out of my MBP and it doesn't have so much as a scratch on it.

Yeah, but the Thinkpads are even stronger. You can dump a glass of water on the keyboard and it keeps working, because all the liquid is routed through special drainage holes. You can drive a car over the screen because they put reinforcements (magnesium, I believe) in just the right places. 100% Al is limiting -- you can't use a stronger-but-heavier material anywhere . They're also hard to take apart. Changing a dea…

[deleted]

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#62

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #61
jrockway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the Thinkpads are even stronger. You can dump a glass of water on the keyboard and it keeps working, because all the liquid is routed through special drainage holes. You can drive a car over the screen because they put reinforcements (magnesium, I believe) in just the right places. 100% Al is limiting -- you can't use a stronger-but-heavier material anywhere . They're also hard to take apart. Changing a dea…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#63

Post by shadowsun7 »

There's nothing new here. The truth of the matter is that the UI experience for computers is largely defined by what happens on the screen - be it laptop, iPad or iPhone. There's this cool scene in Gary Hustwit's Objectified where Bill Moggridge talks about designing one of the very first laptops, and the conclusion he comes to is that it didn't matter how usable or how good his physical design was, in the end the user's experience of the laptop came largely from within the screen.

That surprised him, and got him thinking about what we now know as 'interaction design'. (Incidentally, Moggridge coined the term shortly after his experience with the laptop).

He describes his experience as: 'being sucked into the screen.' Which is true, if you pause to think about it: the design of the laptop only matters when you're carrying it around with you - when you're working on it the screen overrides almost everything else.

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#64

Post by botrak »

simonsarris wrote: post #30
ergo98 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The beauty in Android is that it doesn't have to be the best ... it just has to be good enough + shipped on cheaper phones ... just like Windows did." The "cheaper phones" bit has never been Android's advantage, though it always gets brought up as if Android is the poor man's iPhones. It isn't. The Droid isn't less expensive than the iPhone was. Neither was even the miserable G1. The Galaxy S isn't a cheap phone. Th…

> The Droid isn't less expensive than the iPhone was. Neither was even the miserable G1. The Galaxy S isn't a cheap phone. Nonsense. > My Nexus One cost me $550. How much did your iPhone cost you? The iPhone is $599 or $699, depending on model. In the UK it is £499 to £599, equates to $780 or $950. In the UK the Nexus One was just under $550, though VAT could take another bite out of the wallet. Right now in Europe t…

So you spent $599 or $699 on you iPhone? Odds overwhelmingly say no. And in the end every smartphone costs virtually the same $3000 or so.

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#65

Post by mjfern »

mjfern wrote: post #56
danilocampos wrote: post #12

It's interesting insight, but look at it like this... Apple's dominance isn't from hardware alone. But they are exceptionally talented at it. It isn't in software alone, but again, they know what they're doing. They've got a lot of mature, battle tested code and an outstanding developer community who knows how to wield it. It's not in digital distribution alone, but yet again, they got there very early, have a lot of…

What you're describing here is the notion of activity systems! Michael Porter describes the concept in detail in the article "What is Strategy," Harvard Business Review. The crux of the idea is that the strategic position of a product hinges on a system of activities across a range of areas, from marketing, to product development, to distribution. Activity systems are a source of sustainable competitive advantage bec…

I'm excited about the number of upvotes for this post about "activity systems." There are a number of excellent concepts/tools in strategy that could help founders assess and develop their start-ups. Anyone have any thoughts on how to best convey these concepts/tools to generate interest and understanding (e.g., book, blog, app, etc.)?

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#66

Post by cubicle67 »

jasonlotito wrote: post #28

If this article is any indication, Apple needs to seriously needs to improve it's software. I love my Mac, I love the environment, but there are so many lost and forgotten pieces to their software that it's highly frustrating. Take iChat, for example. So limited, even the supposed features it has do not work (Bonjour for iChat fails to work to let me and my wife chat via her MBP and my iMac). Indeed, the entire Bonjo…

And then I have to dig through that folder and find a generic icon just to find the application, and then launch it

Spotlight is your friend. Cmd+Space, first few letters of the app name (first is usually sufficient for new apps) then hit enter. Indexing in OSX is as good as instant, and new apps seem to show up at the top of the results.

Agreed, auto launching with a confirmation dialog would be better, but I find using spotlight preferable to digging about in Applications

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#67

Post by cubicle67 »

amackera wrote: post #8
barrydahlberg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently purchased my first Mac in 15 years of programming. While browsing around the reseller I was struck by just how sexy everything looked. I always try to hide PC's under desks in my home, I'm happy to have the Mac on display.

My ex-girlfriend bought an iMac and proudly displayed it to her friends. She showed them travel pictures, watched movies, etc. The computer had, for her, transitioned from a computer to an attractive designer object that provided utility. It didn't really feel like a computer so much as just a part of the environment of our apartment. That always struck me as Apple's greatest success. There are way fewer hackers and…

And it's silent!

Got an iMac (first Apple product ever, for us) for my wife back in early 2006, and that's the thing that stood out to me the most. Compared to my pc at the time, and every other one I'd ever owned, the iMac was as good as dead silent. You never really appreciate silent computing until you have one (a quiet computer, that is, not necessarily a Mac)

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#68

Post by Groxx »

DougBTX wrote: post #49
jrockway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the Thinkpads are even stronger. You can dump a glass of water on the keyboard and it keeps working, because all the liquid is routed through special drainage holes. You can drive a car over the screen because they put reinforcements (magnesium, I believe) in just the right places. 100% Al is limiting -- you can't use a stronger-but-heavier material anywhere . They're also hard to take apart. Changing a dea…

A bunch of screws, but not overly difficult: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-17-Inch-Unibody-T...

The newer laptops are a lot easier, and they reflect it by labeling the HD as user-serviceable without voiding the warranty.

Meanwhile, I have this: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-MacBook-Pro-15...

Which definitely qualifies as a PITA. Easy enough for me, though, as I've had far nastier, also from Apple (12" Powerbook): http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-PowerBook-G4-A... (they don't have a HD guide, but that's all the screws). And all those screws are different sizes (or close enough).

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#69

Post by megablast »

msbarnett wrote: post #9
bad_user wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The beauty in Android is that it doesn't have to be the best ... it just has to be good enough + shipped on cheaper phones ... just like Windows did. Also, I've got an iPhone 3GS, and I see lots of area for improvement ... the biggest annoyance for me being that all these apps I have (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, yahoo messenger) ... are not using the iPhone's contacts list for storing people profiles ... so even Apple…

> the biggest annoyance for me being that all these apps I have (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, yahoo messenger) ... are not using the iPhone's contacts list for storing people profiles ... so even Apple screws things up in the details department. I'm not sure that's a screw-up so much as a philosophical view of the contact list as being for actual contacts and not random twitter user names with no associated addresses, p…

This is up to the app, the app has complete read/write access to iPhone contacts. Nothing to do with Apple for that problem, although I am going to be pretty pissed if apps start doing this without asking.

Re: What happens when it's all glass?

#70

Post by elai »

mjfern wrote: post #56
danilocampos wrote: post #12

It's interesting insight, but look at it like this... Apple's dominance isn't from hardware alone. But they are exceptionally talented at it. It isn't in software alone, but again, they know what they're doing. They've got a lot of mature, battle tested code and an outstanding developer community who knows how to wield it. It's not in digital distribution alone, but yet again, they got there very early, have a lot of…

What you're describing here is the notion of activity systems! Michael Porter describes the concept in detail in the article "What is Strategy," Harvard Business Review. The crux of the idea is that the strategic position of a product hinges on a system of activities across a range of areas, from marketing, to product development, to distribution. Activity systems are a source of sustainable competitive advantage bec…

Kind of the inverse of the how a disaster happens: A bunch of failsafes cascading into a disaster. 5 things have to go wrong at once in order for something to go really bad.
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