Saturday, March 14, 2015

i couldn't live without the ports. i need a mouse, to begin with, and i tend to quarantine my different data types by drive. so, i've got an external drive for mp3s, a usb key for web design, etc. and i'm paranoid about wireless technology. everything in my house is wired. my desktop was built to not have wireless (i paid extra for a board without an integrated chip), i've got it disabled in the bios on my laptop and i actually physically damaged the receiver in my router...

so, i would find this useless.

but, in the end, might they actually be right, regarding the general market? do most people really want more than a glorified netbook?


i don't really know why people think this idea of a "slim laptop" is in any way meaningful in the first place. this ideal is just taken for granted. nobody explains the reasoning underlying it. it's suggested that having less ports is a valid trade-off for a slimmer size [and i don't think this is true - if you make the thing thick enough for one port, it's already thick enough for three], but i see no reason why a slimmer size has any value. i'll take a fat laptop with higher functionality, please.

but, again...i'm not the market. if the market wants a device to stream shit over netflix and access data from the cloud, the peripherals are increasingly useless.

Adam Shay
The reason why sheep's fall for it is because of the marketing strategy look at the introduction video they spend millions on it if they could at least spend that much on the hardware (I would personally pay any price they mention for it)

Zac Spurgeon
Although if the market wants a device to stream shit over Netflix and access data from the cloud, I still think that it's unethical to charge them for a fully-featured machine when they're basically getting a mid-level tablet with a keyboard.

deathtokoalas
dude thinks corporations care about what's ethical. ahahahahaha. do you realize who makes these things?

Zac Spurgeon
I didn't say they care about what's ethical, but normally they keep their unethical practices behind closed sweatshop doors, instead of just being blatantly dishonest to their consumer base.

deathtokoalas
i don't find apple tends to go out of it's way much, really. they just gloss over it with slick advertising. i mean, their operating system is just a tweaked bsd, which is open-source software. a lot of people put a lot of work into that, and didn't get a cut out of it when apple privatized it. everything they've done has been overpriced forever. it at least made some sense when they were selling power pcs, but since they switched to intel they're literally selling dells with freeware for three times the price. so, this is absolutely consistent with everything they've been doing for years.

Zac Spurgeon
True, but I think this is also the worst they've gotten so far. Whenever I've looked it up, you're paying a little less than twice as much for the same specs on a machine that's more difficult to service and overheats more easily. This is just a whole other level of ripoff. To be clear I'm not shocked or surprised, just increasingly annoyed.

Philip Kwok
Most people can't live without it. I can see people who buy this new MacBook and find no problem of is are those who don't really use computer more than a few hours a day, only surf webs, email, youtube and such. For anyone who even want to do lite office things will not even consider this piece of expensive paper weight. Yea. 1 to 2mm thinner and I don't have a USB port.... sorry, I don't really mind that extra 100g or 1 mm. I rather get 2 USB ports. Do they really think that matters more than versatility? Yes, people want thinner laptop but nobody told them they want to trade off usb ports and other ports for the extra 1 to 2 mm reduction. Who cares about that 1 to 2mm seriously?