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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

#331

Post by merpnderp »

paganel wrote: post #328
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…

If it's got the same functionality and the same design as the Japanese product but only "sells at a fraction of the price" compared to the original product then they must be doing something better than the Japanese. It's either lower wages, better productivity or both, either way, it's better for us, consumers, which now have additional money to spend on other products and services which further enrich our lives (whe…

Or not having to pay all the R&D costs for the original development.

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

#332

Post by javier2 »

razed_in_blecch wrote: post #254
naspinski wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Razerblade Stealth? http://www.theultimateultrabook.com/

Terrible suggestion. Razer's products do not remotely meet the fit and finish of Apple's products. I'm typing on a Razer Blade Stealth right now that I've had since February and it is already falling apart, with most of the screws on the bottom plate falling off and a trackpad that constantly sticks. The fans buzz and brush against their metal grills often enough that you have to gently slap the side of the laptop to…

The whole Thinkpad rootkit debacle has ruined all prospects for Lenovo in my home.

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

#333

Post by logic »

josteink wrote: post #35
puranjay wrote: post #8

People shit on Xiaomi here but even imitation requires some level of artistry and finesse. This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet.

> This looks like a good clone of Air, and I haven't seen Acer/Lenovo/Dell manage to do that yet. Clearly it's not a cheap product, but the Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 is razor thin, high powered, well built, and very good looking. Maybe I'm missing something?

In a life long ago, I was responsible for an office full of Thinkpads, not long after Lenovo spun off from IBM. These were machines that "just worked", and if there was a problem, their on-site service was legendary. I never had to worry about them.

I now own a 3rd-gen X1 Carbon for personal use. After my experience with it, I'll never buy or recommend Lenovo again. Months of waiting on backordered parts (for their flagship laptop), repeat visits from their service center, and the end result is finally a laptop that mostly works, but is starting a slow death very early because of cheap plastic construction and tight tolerances that aren't so tight after a few months of use. I've had it a year and a half (I bought it the week it came out); I'll be lucky if it makes it to two years without another significant problem.

Terrible experience all the way around. It looks pretty on the website, but it's not built to last like their older products were, and their service is a shadow of its former self.

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

#334

Post by deno »

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…

Actually it was always quick, just the indexing sometimes would be a little resource intensive.

I’m not going to claim KDE didn’t deserve that reputation in the past. The architectural changes are to blame, but they weren’t frivolous. You can’t build on shaky foundation.

I also think it’s not fair to criticize it based on some snapshot from the past. You’ve seen the beta. It’s really good now!

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

#335

Post by nathanasmith »

paganel wrote: post #328
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…

If it's got the same functionality and the same design as the Japanese product but only "sells at a fraction of the price" compared to the original product then they must be doing something better than the Japanese. It's either lower wages, better productivity or both, either way, it's better for us, consumers, which now have additional money to spend on other products and services which further enrich our lives (whe…

I would imagine at least some of the additional cost comes from putting in the work to create the original product in the first place. If Xiaomi can just come along and clone an already successful air filter with a proven market, it doesn't surprise me that they could sell it for less. And we do lose when companies stop taking risks in innovating new products for fear of the copycats.

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

#336

Post by digi_owl »

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…

From the guy that is basically re-purposing 60s German designs...

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

#337

Post by freehunter »

paganel wrote: post #328
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…

If it's got the same functionality and the same design as the Japanese product but only "sells at a fraction of the price" compared to the original product then they must be doing something better than the Japanese. It's either lower wages, better productivity or both, either way, it's better for us, consumers, which now have additional money to spend on other products and services which further enrich our lives (whe…

But you have to weigh the costs of the damage it does to the business they're copying. If it makes that company less willing to innovate in the future, we're at a loss. If the copy is so successful it runs the other company out of business, we're at a major loss.

Parasites depend on their hosts survival, since if the host dies, the parasite dies too.

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

#338

Post by leonroy »

nullcipher wrote: post #289
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…

I don't know if he actually said that but isn't all innovation incremental? I understand he put his heart and soul into it, but there has been tons of people who have worked equally hard before him to get to where he got (Apple itself copied it's UI from Xerox). Apple has also blatantly copied and consumed many companies in the past. There is so much code copied around these days. This is all just the way it is and h…

> I don't know if he actually said that but isn't all innovation incremental?

He said exactly that: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/tech/2014/10/jony-ive-lessons...

And yes innovation is incremental but this is Xiaomi not simply borrowing design cues but literally cloning a design. See for yourself - here's their take on Japanese company Balmuda's air purifier: https://www.balmuda.com/jp/airengine/

Xiaomi's version: http://www.mi.com/en/air/

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

#339

Post by digi_owl »

webtechgal wrote: post #171
vacri wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if we're talking copies, then Airs are just a scaled-up version of the eeepc - same 'sharp wedge' shape (that is apparently why Lenovo X1s are being called clones of Airs). The eeepc was the thing that proved there was enough interest for a low-power-but-mobile computer, which ended up turning into the tablet market. Crappy build quality, but people went berserk for them.

> ...but people went berserk for them (eeepc). And how!!! My ex-boss read the press announcement on a flight (sometime in 2011?) and went gung ho. On coming back, he got me to inquire with our regular/local hardware vendors. Turned out nobody (in our small city) had even heard of it, so the inquiry was escalated to the largest city of our state. Still nothing. Finally, he actually got a staffer to fly to Mumbai and g…

The original Linux based 701? Or more recent XP based variants?

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

#340

Post by klackerz »

maxerickson wrote: post #183
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...

How did you go from However, because of the amount of testing and approvals that are necessary to deploy them, it's difficult to do this on a monthly basis for all our devices. It is often most efficient for us to bundle security updates in a scheduled Maintenance Release (MR) or OS upgrade. , which is a quote from Motorola, to Motorola announcing that they will stop updating their phones with the new security update…

Well that phrasing is misleading I admit. But what would the reaction be if Microsoft started to have security updates every three months or so for Windows.
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