What? So are you suggesting that Mac makes solid, simple laptops that you have to finish yourself, and sells them at prices lower than other furniture stores? Or are they Walmart, and sell what ever crap they can get cheapest? The first is obviously false, because Ikea usually has lower prices on comparable products than, for example, the Room Store, and Apple is more expensive than, say, HP, and HP also makes a better product.

So Apple is Walmart. Got it.

Probably not a great analogy, as IKEA products tend to snap together and be solid one time. If you ever take it apart don't expect it to go together again.

Arguably that's true of lots of (smaller) furniture. And, hell, it's not like it's simple to take apart and reassemble a big-name store's merchandise without a bit of carpentry knowledge. The flaw in the Ikea design is, same as the boxed things you get anywhere else, that initial self-assembly. Properly glued biscuits and rods are going to be stronger than those locking-nut things no matter who's selling it.

biscuit joints are stronger than the wood.

Uh, I have looked. I've looked into it severals times. There is nothing special about macbooks. At best, it's different and more pricey -- nothing more. The design & engineering is just "meh" and doesn't adhere to many industry standards.

I come from a development team that mostly uses macs. When it came time that I needed a new machine to develop on, I was asked to spec out the machine. They preferred that I looked at a mac so I did. However, I found that getting a Mac with average hardware was going to cost me $2500+. On the other hand, I went to a different provider and spec'd out a top-of-the-line machine with twice the RAM, a better video card, better screen, better processor and a SSD for <$1800.

Why the **** would I spend $700 more for a crappier machine?

Because pretty

It's so shiny.

Because windows is part of the vast rightwing conspiracy and really owned by dick Cheney and the illuminate!

And apple is... Hip...

That's what she said!


And that's all I got. Thanks for checking out my post, see ya next time.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

TOTAL ACHIEVEMENTS: 14/46

Are you keeping track of peoples achievements? >_>

I tihnk you mean PEOPLE'S acheivments? Proofread, please.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

TOTAL ACHIEVEMENTS: 11/46

You're correct in that I was primarily referring to the former. I agree that Apple doesn't stand out when it comes to many of those arenas but they do a decent enough job in all of them (decent enough that the flaws typically go unnoticed by the average user). They do however stand out aesthetically. This is why I made the comparison between IKEA & Walmart. I don't understand the purpose of the posts after yours that are obviously misrepresenting what I meant by the comparison.

There's nothing special about Apple if aesthetics mean little to you. However, there are actually those of us, for bad or good, that actually do take aesthetics in to consideration. Apple isn't the only company that focuses on this area but they certainly stand out in that arena. In that particular sense there is something "special" about various Apple products (arguably the MacBook line).

MacBooks have a few genuinely good things going for them. The new track pads are great, even if it's annoying that it gets harder to click on the top of the pad. The magnetic power socket is wonderful. They often have high quality IPS displays that are hard to find in most laptops, etc.

Please make this links to the main list from now on, I forgot where it is.

Done.

Thanks.

I thought my efforts were going unnoticed until now. Thanks:neckbeard:

Did you actually pay no attention to your own grammar or did you do that on purpose? =p

I'm going to keep stressing this a lot, despite it making me look like more of an arse than usual.

I don't think that anyone wouldn't argue that Apple is great at "borrowing" designs & technologies from other sources & improving upon them. That's part of what makes them so successful. For instance, let's take the photo that Baconfish posted as an example. Let's assume that Apple borrowed directly from those sources. It would be difficult to argue that the associated Apple products aren't more aesthetically pleasing. Apple isn't unique in that they borrow the designs & technologies of others (it could be argued that most companies do this to an extent).

Apple's only great at being litigious.

It's fair to point out that Apple never had good industrial design before they started using Dieter Rams' designs as a basis:

It's actually just Jonathan Ives borrowing from Dieter Rams. Even the calculator on the iPhone is based off a Braun pocket calculator from the 60s.



And they're only more aesthetically pleasing because they're updated designs from 50 years ago, which were just as aesthetically pleasing then.

I don't disagree w/ any of that.

I've just noticed that that calculator has a percentage difference function. I've never seen that before. O_o

The iPhone calculator has square buttons. Is that a 'shop or an older version?

Great. Now they're stealing squares too. What's next? Circles?

Older version. It used to look like that, but they changed it at some point. Can't remember when.