Our brains automatically associate things with the thing they most look like.

“Blue is great color, I don’t understand why we shouldn’t all dress in blue.”
On to the next stupidity:

“Being a doctor is a very important position – it saves lives, why shouldn’t we all be doctors?”

Do you honestly think there is only one kind of design language? Wouldn’t the better idea to try to make people think “Oh, that’s an HP laptop. Looks nice.”, rather than “Oh, silvery. Is it one of Apple’s laptops, perhaps?”

It’s like there is suddenly some design rule that “laptops have to be silver, with black highlights all of a sudden” – is that the follow up to “only so much you can do with a small slab with a screen in it” when the iPhone look-a-likes dropped in (before you all rage I’m not talking Samsung here). Nokia sure as hell didn’t find the iPhone the only look in town, neither did Palm (r.i.p.) and many other manufacturers. HTC even made one in “Apple signature colors”, if you wish to call them that, that had its own, distinct design language that I certainly wouldn’t take for an iPhone.

So, which scenario do you think would be the most beneficial to HP (assuming that the person in question would want a laptop and didn’t mind it being a HP)? The one where a potential buyer recognizes the HP computer and likes it enough to possibly buy one, or the one where Apple comes to mind?

Look at furniture. We probably have hundreds of ‘Sjuan’ knock-offs (as in the chair by Arne Jacobssen – is it ‘seven’ in English?) 

People sure do buy them (I have to confess that I would, for economic reasons if nothing else), but there is no one pretending that the knock-offs are somehow unique. They are a cheaper alternative to the original that looks good enough, that’s why we buy them.

Also, it turns out that chairs can take many shapes and colors and still be liked and actually usable! This includes progress in engineering and manufacturing of said chairs. Who would have thought, eh?

Why on earth should electronics be oblivious to this? Especially since those kind of products, for better or worse, are taking a center stage in our lives nowadays.

tl;dr Bollocks.

“Hewlett Packard (HP) — Hewlett Packard owns Electronic Data Systems, which is in charge of the technology monitoring checkpoints inside of Palestine. In addition, HP monitors the Israeli Navy’s entire IT operating system, which enabled last year’s attacks on the Freedom Flotilla.”

Evil assholes with no originality.

this thread proves that people are more concerned about looking cool with their technology, than actually the features of the technology.

Your post proves you didn’t really read this thread very well.

I’m still mad – at myself, and at Dell for perpetrating this. 768 has not been an acceptable vertical resolution for the last 10 years. Big deal, it’s 300 wider than 1024×768. That sucked then and it sucks now.

Noble effort on your part, but the !fanbois are not even trying anymore. The wind’s gone out of them since we lost Steve.

I don’t give a shit.  As long as Ive is alive and most of the amazing engineers at Apple stay there for a while, I’m set.  ^_^

Steve was brilliant and helped steer the company in the right direction when it needed it, but he took credit for a lot of stuff that others within the company produced. While I’m saddened by almost anyone’s passing and I respect aspects of Steve’s career and vision, I’m just as happy using the best laptops now and in the future as I was before his death.

If someone makes a better product, I’m switching to it and I’d do that whether Steve was dead or out yelling at someone in an Apple HQ elevator.

It’s business for me. The Apple logo is coincidental.

This current ThinkPad iteration with a “carbon-fibre rollcage” still won’t stack up to the durability and sturdiness of a unibody metal Mac laptop.  They should just give in and copy Apple.

slavishly copying apple’s worst design decisions

I’m using the latest MacBook Pro keyboard right now and it’s the best, most accurate and comfortable to use keyboard on any laptop I’ve ever used.  And, I’ve got an HP and Dell sitting here next to me right now by the way.

Have you actually USED the Mac keyboards for an extended amount of time or do you just not like how they look or something?

Whoops… I’ll be right back… one of the keys popped out of the Dell laptop again. Funny how that has NEVER happened on my Mac laptop… ever….

f’gods sake, could you freaking Mac addicts stop acting like everything was invented in Cupertino?

Everything was invented there and it eats you up inside.  I’m sitting here at a Starbucks with a bunch of other people with Macs and we are all laughing at you and your sad jealously because as we all know Apple invented everything.

HP had a… mediocre…

Then who cares?  Hahahahaha… whoops, I spilled some coffee on my MacBook Pro while chortling at you.  But it doesn’t matter because my Mac product runs off of Starbucks coffee and it even makes it go ridiculously faster than your PC.

[cow cheers all the other mac "addicts" at the starbucks who think apple invented everything]

From the article: “I’m not praising Apple here.”

Well, I am, for making pretty much the best laptop out there.

Since Apple hasn’t bothered to update the Macbook line in a while,

They just updated MacBook Pros literally 3 weeks ago..

There are no longer MacBooks (-Pro) except for educational purchases, so don’t expect any updates for those anymore.

The MacBook Air is the superior replacement for the MacBooks and that was updated only 3 months ago.

I will concede that the Air costs more than the discontinued MacBooks by 300 dollars though and that stinks for those on a tight budget.  But, then again, if you are on a tight budget you should probably just buy a used MacBook Pro anyway and just make sure it still has Applecare on it.

ASUS for an example, did well with their UX Series notebooks.

If you mean by “did well” they made a cheap ripoff that has far less hardware/software features and is getting pretty horrible reviews compared to the MacBook Air, then yes.

ASUS needs to step it up quite a bit beyond what the UX is so far.

Comparison (this was even before the horrid reviews came out which show even less value)

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/13/asus-zenbook.html#comment-334110979

Hey I see some divisions on that touchpad for the two buttons Mac’s don’t have those…

In case you’re not kidding (it’s really hard to tell in this thread)

That was the basically the OLD 2007 MacBook.   The newer Macbooks are more advanced and the entire trackpad is a physical button and on top of that use superior touch gestures for everything else.  Pretty much blows this shit away, that’s for sure.

Here’s the OLD MacBook from almost 5 years ago…  goood going HP, you’re only half a decade behind Apple now…

Because they typically knock them off in such laughably poor ways that it makes them look like cargo cults.  They gave engineering the top 5 bullet points from someone else’s winning product and gave it to engineering, along with a 3 week development schedule. If you don’t have a basic understanding of what makes a successful product successful you can’t make a rip-off. You can only waste your time.

Dominant Design
New Breakthrough
Disruptive Design
You’re taught in business school, that when it comes to technological innovation that if you don’t have a New Breakthrough nor a Disruptive Design, imitate the leader as best you can for the market you’re targeting.

Those are the three categories that products can generally fall into. And it’s pretty safe to say that if something looks like a horse, sounds like a horse, and walks like a horse: it sure as hell isn’t a zebra. Anybody who is in denial about companies imitating design, especially in the personal technology market is way off the mark. Forget about Mac vs. PC for one second.

THAT laptop has clearly been designed to follow the MacBook Pro design. Just look at the Outer Keyboard Groove and Coloration. Everybody KNOWS it’s been built to imitate.

… I can’t believe I went to business school. Fuck this, I’m going back to study Genetics.

With regards to hardware differences, I think it’s important to note that Apple’s trackpad isn’t really that unique in terms of hardware. What’s important are the drivers and OS work together well. Have you used a mac trackpad in bootcamp? It’s a uniquely horrible experience and Apple even wrote the driver.

That may have been true a couple of years ago, but until they invent a multitouch track-stick the future belongs to pads.