Amusing to see PC vendors try to copy the MacBook Air right down to stealing the MacBook Air's wallpaper 😆
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MacBook Air copy cats
- Thread starter DHagan4755
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Virtually all PC laptops are - to some extent - copies of Apple designs. That was one thing that Apple got right before the second coming of Jobs…
Apple didn’t invent the laptop as such, but the 1991 PowerBook introduced the set-back keyboard + pointing device + (almost) full-height display layout that everything else adopted.
Later, the distinctive Titanium PowerBook clearly “inspired” most of the industry.
The chiclet/island keyboard on the Unibody MacBook was likewise widely adopted.
The original MacBook Air spawned the “Ultrabook” PC form factor.
Some are more blatant look-alikes than others but the laptop industry has a long history of relying on Apple for new ideas in laptop design.
Apple didn’t invent the laptop as such, but the 1991 PowerBook introduced the set-back keyboard + pointing device + (almost) full-height display layout that everything else adopted.
Later, the distinctive Titanium PowerBook clearly “inspired” most of the industry.
The chiclet/island keyboard on the Unibody MacBook was likewise widely adopted.
The original MacBook Air spawned the “Ultrabook” PC form factor.
Some are more blatant look-alikes than others but the laptop industry has a long history of relying on Apple for new ideas in laptop design.
There hasn’t been a real new design in over a decade.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
As long as the basic GUI paradigm holds, a laptop needs a large-as-possible screen, a QWERTY (or regional equivalent) keyboard and a pointing device. Apple and Sony got the basic ergonomics of that right with the PowerBook 100 in 1991 and everything since then has been refinements & miniaturisation.
We've had developments in phones, tablets, phablets (& now folding devices) etc. which have all come with new, touch-based UI paradigms, some of which have found their niche, but have failed to replace laptop PCs.
In terms of new laptop designs, although there haven't been any great physical developments, Apple Silicon has been a major development for Macs, pretty much removing any significant performance disadvantage vs. all but the most expensive desktop Macs... and, yes, although Windows-on-ARM still looks like a bit of a busted flush, Intel and AMD have responded by upping their game when it comes to mobile performance (particularly mobile GPUs).
I'll leave this here as a minor counter point to some of your claims.
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the Samsung 2012 notebook was the exact chassis of the 11" MacBook air to the t!
someone placed their logic board inside and launched Mavericks on the notebook in. 2013.
we found out sold the chassis to Samsung then as they made too much!
(geez I wish I had the links to this story, video (account deleted) and other credentials, but I don't)
someone placed their logic board inside and launched Mavericks on the notebook in. 2013.
we found out sold the chassis to Samsung then as they made too much!
(geez I wish I had the links to this story, video (account deleted) and other credentials, but I don't)
Well, Sony were the other company pushing laptop design (and, of course, they actually designed and made the original PowerBook 100…).
I’ll give you the chiclet keyboard (on a laptop) but apart from that it’s a throwback to older designs with the keyboard at the front, and the “pencil eraser” pointer in the keyboard instead of a forward trackpad/ball. Thing is, even Sony didn’t stick with that layout… it certainly didn’t get picked up by the industry the way successive Mac/PowerBook designs did.
Wow, I forgot about Sony laptops. I really wanted one when I was younger. I remember seeing my first gaming laptop which was a friends Sony that he used to play WoW. It was gigantic!
This is my one issue with 15 and 16in. MacBooks. A premium large laptop at those prices with no numeric keypad while every other mainstream 15in+ laptop has it. You shouldn’t be having to buy a plugin keypad at that price for your video or audio editing or 3D modelling or whatever.
Using the line of numbers at along the top is nowhere as convenient as a keypad.
Let me refresh you with what Steve Job's and by extension Apple philosophy is "Good artists copy; great artists steal"
Also Apple has on more then one occasion taken a design, product or idea that someone else had and copied it
As for that laptop design, most laptops follow the same exact for factor, and layout.
It’s based on perceived market leadership by the public. An average punter in the street would never buy some of those wacky concept we see at CES every year because they veer too far from the standard template. The same also applies to phones. Thus PC vendors closely ape the standardised laptop form up to its modern implementation. To do otherwise would mean ostracisation.
What I find interesting is that you see absolutely zero comments from anybody online about how Laptop designs have essentially been the same for 35 years yet they constantly complain phones all look the same.
Well, you do have to look beyond the superficial to see the design commonalities between a PowerBook 100 and a M5 MacBook Pro...
OTOH, people who were born on the day that the iPhone was announced are now old enough to vote (your jurisdiction may vary) and have always known phones as a palm-sized black slab with rounded corners and stereotypically see laptops as grandad-stuff anyway.
Plus, I think phones have always been more of a fashion item than laptops, anyway - esp. with phone plans encouraging annual upgrades.
I didn't know that this laptop design existed😂
Who thought that the design of the keyboard and trackpad was good?😂
Folks should leave the mushrooms in the forest instead of eating them…
Ridiculous! They should have swapped the trackpad and the screen.