Same for me. Been looking to replace my dell notebook and was looking into the Macbook Air with ubuntu as the alternative. Was just comparing prices and specs on the Apple's website last week.
I used to think Apple's success was great for us consumers because it's more choice, and competition is why companies are innovating in the first place, right? But this latest injunction made me realize, if I give money to Apple, there will be less competition and not more. They're unfairly anti-competitive and will use any immoral hole in legislation to make sure consumers have no options. To make sure there is no competition. That is driving innovation backwards, not forward. Summing the pros and cons. Their own technological innovation is not worth their effort to stop the whole rest of the world from innovating. Their balance to the world is on the negative.
I'm not gonna give money to a company that is driving humanity backwards. My 0.00001% missing contribution will have the same value as my vote for the country's president. I'm voting with my wallet.
Currently typing from a ~13" "ultrabook", I think having an extra inch of space is probably the best compromise between this and a bigger laptop, especially if it's light. And that resolution, in my experience, is exactly what I need for programming comfortably.
Finally, and this is obviously subjective, but I've always liked the way touchpads look best. There's something about matte black which just appeals to me.
i actually returned a macbook pro retina yesterday over this. i know it's insignificant to apple's bottom line, but their tactics against competitors seem to be growing increasingly unsavory.
i think in many tech patent cases if someone were found in violation, as the nexus apparently is, the normal strategy would be for the violator to pay the holder of the patent some licensing fees. maybe it doesn't always work out this way...
but even if licensing were an option and google and/or samsung were willing to pay to license the technology, with apple's very publicly stated goal of destroying android, i don't think they'd ever go along with it.
so this is basically bad for non-apple consumers and good for apple. i mean, it's rational that they'd try to maintain their competitive advantage, and even though multi-source search has existed in android as far back as donut and longer than that as a programming/computational task, i guess apple planted their flag first with this [IMO, obvious] patent
regarding the X1 carbon, ... i'm very excited about it myself. i currently have a T420 and thinkpads have great support for linux, which is my primary operating system. i'm just hoping they give the X1 carbon a decent display. the one on the T420 is pretty lousy.
They have a 256 gb ssd / i7 model for $1800, and a 128gb / i5 for a cheap $1300 (both are on Amazon, look for model number np900x4c). We played with one in a Best Buy before purchasing online, it definitely felt pretty comparable to the mba's I've used.
Just skimmed the review and that does indeed look like a fine device.
Completely unrelated: Why do vendors (including Apple) insist on plastering their ugly company logos on the back? Both the macbook and the zenbook would look much better without that white scar.
Branding in the strongest selling point of Apple products. They may have their flaws, but they're genius in their branding. They put an Apple logo in the back, for the same reason they give out Apple stickers for your car. For the same reason they put "sent from my iphone" at the end of an email. For the same reason their billionaire campaign insisted to "think different". Even their pixel placement choice has branding in mind. Apple engineering sacrificed multi-tasking to make sure scrolling could be displayed at 60fps, just so that holding a competing product "just doesn't feel like an Apple". That's ingenious branding being consistent at every layer of the company.
They want to you feel emotionally and better than others, and proud to show off the Apple logo. And they're the best in the world at doing this. That's why you saw all those posts angry at instagram when they launched for Android, claiming it wouldn't be as great now that the unwashed masses could touch it.
Maybe that's great for getting people to like the brand, but it's incredibly annoying to non-Apple users. Frankly, I think the whole "sent from my iPhone thing" is extremely obnoxious.
My roommate had a macbook freshman year. Whenever he used it at night (with the screen turned away from me), the stupid logo would light up the whole room. Really? Not only is it garish, but it's actively inconvenient.
I like what Thinkpad does here--they have a relatively unobtrusive logo in the corner with a red led for the dot over the i. It's cute and unobtrusive. My Vaio is also good in this regard--it has an elegant logo made up of metal on a matte blue background. Quite importantly, it does not light up. It might be a little pretentious, but it is elegant. It also has too many vowels, but that's not really related to the discussion :P.
There is a cut off for that, the moment the market hits a reasonable tipping point on that understanding, they will have to come up with something fantastic. Can't wait.
What do people think about Toshiba z930? Haven't done much research, just saw it (or the z830 - predecessor, not sure) in a shop and liked the look and feel (apparently lightest Ultrabook).
There are plenty of innovative laptops if you don't mind spending some money. Most of the options you see at stores like Best Buy are cheap consumer devices--of course they're not going to be innovative!
Take an example--I have a Vaio Z-series (and I've had it for a while now). It's lighter than an MBA (yay for carbon fiber), has two SSDs in Raid 0 and up to 1080p on a 13" screen. It also has a good touchpad and a dock with an external graphics card connected via a light peak port. That part is admittedly wonky without drivers (that is, it doesn't work great on Linux or Windows 8), but it is really cool nonetheless. It also looks just great, and nothing like a mac. If that isn't innovative, I don't know what is. You just don't see it competing with the $600-$800 Windows laptops at Best Buy.
There are some other similarly innovative laptops like Thinkpads that you can get. Apple is not the only company with interesting notebooks!
I used to think Apple's success was great for us consumers because it's more choice, and competition is why companies are innovating in the first place, right? But this latest injunction made me realize, if I give money to Apple, there will be less competition and not more. They're unfairly anti-competitive and will use any immoral hole in legislation to make sure consumers have no options. To make sure there is no competition. That is driving innovation backwards, not forward. Summing the pros and cons. Their own technological innovation is not worth their effort to stop the whole rest of the world from innovating. Their balance to the world is on the negative.
I'm not gonna give money to a company that is driving humanity backwards. My 0.00001% missing contribution will have the same value as my vote for the country's president. I'm voting with my wallet.