news of 2004-07-20



Is there a competitor? At all?

Today I was talking with a colleague. About how some luxury cars are different from others. I won't tell what each of our favourite was, because I don't want to start a flame about luxury cars. However: We both agreed that once you enter a certain segment of luxury, the product starts to feel finished, complete yet simple and - of course - beautiful.

Now you might wonder what this has to do with macnews.net.tc, and we'll get straight to that. I took out my 15" PowerBook when we hit that point in our talk. Now, we all know that product design is a strength at Apple. However, we often forget how incredibly good these people are. And although my colleague is actually using some Dell notebook and doesn't like Mac OS X very much, we could both agree that Apple has done this (the finished, complete yet simple and - of course - beautiful look & feel) right.

We then thought about the other notebook makers. Dell, Toshiba, IBM, Sony... Yet we couldn't find one (!) notebook that could match the aluminum PowerBook(s). Not at any price, really. They might feel like a nice car with every bit of technical mumbo-jumbo that's fab this decade, but that's exactly how they fail the 'complete but simple' approach.
Apple does this very well, we have to admit, but it could also easily be copied. The main features, we think, that give this 'luxury car' feeling: No description of features on the notebook (we both hate the Intel inside, WiFi/Bluetooth enabled, DVD-R stickers that other brands can't seem to get rid of, Apple simply 'has' those things, and of course the user knows it), no additional (and never even used) application buttons, no LEDs other than the one indicating the sleep function (and the charging LEDs are on the power cable), no optical drive trays, no fancy design experiments but 'simply beautiful'.

Now my question to you, dear readers, is a strange one - as I know you love Macs like I do. Still, I think it's an interesting one: Is there another brand of notebooks that does manage?

[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-20 at 12:31 CET ]
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60 GB drive speculation around the web

With Apple _not_ releasing a 60 GB iPod today, people are currently driving crazy, it seems, around the web. Apple's inofficial statement: No 60 GB iPod. There are several possibilities now. The most probable one: The 60 GB iPod will come, but later on (Apple Expo Paris?). The less probable ones include video iPods and a more simple 'PowerPod' (aluminum) with additional 'professional' features like 'home on iPod'.

[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-20 at 01:04 CET ]
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