Xiaomi’s first laptop is a Macbook Air rival
techcrunch.com
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[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/motorola-confirms-tha...
or a new wall paper in the stock
or a new option on swipe right
They have sold millions of phones , ask them, on how many phones have they given
--- android version update.
similar to what others have mentioned, the place where i purchased it added google apps in a way that prevented regular updates. once i re-flashed and reinstalled google apps, i've gotten updates every week
Keeping up with the monthly updates would likely be preferable, but batching them is still a long way off from how you've characterized it.
But while you are doing so, please avoid misrepresentations as egregious as Motorola announcing that they will stop updating their phones with the new security updates. (and less egregious ones too).
For instance, you can mischaracterize something by not understanding it or by not being informed at all about it or by intentionally lying.
Considering how cheap the Nexus line is, I'm not sure why people even both with the super-budget phones. You get a lackluster experience, few if any OS updates, worse everything, etc just to save $75 or so. A Nexus can last you years compared re-buying a new budget junker annually.
I really wish the mobile market and buyers could mature to the point where we start talking about environmental responsibility here. We shouldn't have to buy phones this frequently and filling up landfills with this stuff. My Nexus is getting old and is still fine. My laptop is at least 6 years old and after an SSD transplant, runs like a a top.
(No doze support and it revoked my root access but still nice!).
My guess is that Xiaomi already has a similar feature (perhaps less sophisticated) called "Autostart". Most app aren't allowed by default to wake up in the background and kill your battery. Only some (e.g., whatsapp) are whitelisted and, of course, you may whitelist additional apps yourself.
Overall, I'm happy with the battery usage of my Mi3. I prefer the Xiaomi Apple-like UI over Google's standard -- but that may be just a habit...
Might only be true in the US. At least in my country, it is neither accessible to buy nor cheap.
I love their hardware, it's a frugal premium grade that's hard to come by. I just wish it were more open and their software wasn't so questionable.
There's a reason China has been investing in developing it's own CPUs and telecommunications hardware and it isn't so that it can more easily spy on others. It's because they themselves no longer wish to be spied on... and maybe so they can spy on everyone else a little too.
I'm not saying it's right. I don't know what I'm saying actually. I'm just going to grab some tin foil...
Mi Band vibrates on incoming connection, sms and apps so maybe that's why it requires permissions to phone, sms and notifications.
The official app has more features admittedly, but nothing that justifies the level of permissions it asks for. At most it should need access to the camera/photos to allow you to set a profile photo, and full network access to create/sync your account data to the "cloud".
Nothing that the official app does justifies the following permissions it asks for:
Device & app history
retrieve running apps
read sensitive log data
Identity
find accounts on the device
Location
approximate location (network-based)
precise location (GPS and network-based)
SMS
receive text messages (SMS)
Phone
directly call phone numbers
Photos/Media/Files
access USB storage filesystem
Wi-Fi connection information
view Wi-Fi connections
Other
view network connections
connect and disconnect from Wi-Fi
read Google service configuration
draw over other apps
control flashlight
reorder running apps
modify system settingsIt's not as slick as the official app, but requires much less in the way of permissions and is more flexible.
“When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it’s copied. I have to be honest, the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn’t. I think it’s theft, and it’s lazy.”
Xiaomi have done this to others. Their new air filter for example basically clones a Japanese design and sells it for a fraction of the price: http://www.gizmochina.com/2014/12/09/xiaomis-air-purifierbor...
There is so much code copied around these days. This is all just the way it is and how we have decided to move ahead as a society. Making judgments on others is uncalled for.
He said exactly that: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/tech/2014/10/jony-ive-lessons...
And yes innovation is incremental but this is Xiaomi not simply borrowing design cues but literally cloning a design. See for yourself - here's their take on Japanese company Balmuda's air purifier: https://www.balmuda.com/jp/airengine/
Xiaomi's version: http://www.mi.com/en/air/
Imagine if I said: Atom is such a rip off and the sublime guy must be feeling that GitHub is lazy and a thief. I wonder if GitHub compensated the sublime author who is a small indie dev!
http://cache.filehippo.com/img/ex/2794__Sublime_text_2_1.png http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9QBldnFnock/U3PgeKnq-SI/AAAAAAAASt...
Edit: my original comment wasn't very constructive.
My issue with the analogy is that Xiaomi openly copies the design of competing products that have gained success, at least in part, due to having differentiated designs. Usually they copy without providing even incremental innovation or product differentiation.
In the case of Sublime Text vs. Atom, GitHub developed an editor with a fundamentally different underlying architecture. Github also made Atom open source, which addressed one of the main complaints against Sublime Text. Atom offered obvious and non-trivial product differentiation.
Also, Xiaomi specifically targets products that have distinctive designs. Sublime Text's design doesn't look that distinctive. What are the components of the design (excluding configurable parameters like a light/dark theme) that Atom copied? The main similarity I see are the tabs, but neither look distinct from most other tabs (i.e., Chrome browser tabs).
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2858592/xiaomi-faces-copycat-...
Meh. Him and Apple have stolen plenty! Isn't Steve Jobs famously quoted as saying "great artists steal"?
Anyway, what's the fucking difference if you steal a few pieces here and there or the whole thing? Nothing.
(EDIT: A piece of something is still a whole piece that you've stolen. And Apple has also stolen entire apps, like Konfabulator. They get no sympathy from me.)
Remember in 2006 Nokia, Motorola, RIM and others made literally everything but rectangular phones. They were covered in buttons and other crap.
Ive's vision of a virtually button free phone was strikingly different at the time, a device even simpler than the Star Trek communicator pad.
>Anyway, what's the fucking difference if you steal a few pieces here and there or the whole thing? Nothing.
It's very hard to strip something down to the essential components and integrate those into a package that becomes obvious in retrospect. The steering wheel in a car, the magnetic seal on a refrigerator door, these are all obvious now but at the time were huge breakthroughs.
If you can't see the difference between copying and working to reduce something down to the fundamentals you're obviously unaware of how one is lazy and the other is crazy hard.
The reason phones didn't look like rectangles wasn't because no one had the idea, but because screens were expensive and touch technology (and other technologies like data) wasn't mature yet. That's why you had something like the LG Prada come out at the same time (or even slightly before) the iPhone.
Just because you are first to adopt something (e.g. because your customers don't mind paying a premium and you've secretly developed it for years including controlling the supply chain) doesn't mean you should have the sole right to use a concept derived from evolution of components.
P910 http://pdadb.net/img/sony_ericsson_p910.jpg
Neonode N1 http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Neonode_N1_Sept_2004.jpg
Sony Clie PEG-TH55 https://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2010/08/03/b26d3392-67c...
LG Prada http://image.cellphones.ca/images/phones/74/767/lg-prada-ful...
Don't get me wrong: Apple deservingly got tons of credits (literally, in their bank accounts) for the combination of great hardware/software/ui design/marketing of the past 10 years. They still do.
But their success means that just like Jony Ive got "inspired" by Braun, Apple is not inspiring everybody else.
If you look at the mock-ups people made of the hypothetical and long-rumored "iPod phone" that Apple was working on you'll see how many of the design decisions Apple took were completely unexpected: https://www.engadget.com/2009/12/28/how-early-iphone-predict...
Apple didn't invent everything under the sun, and they didn't even "invent" everything they use. What they do is try hard to come up with a striking, simple design that they know will differentiate their products. They also get very upset when people steal their design without even trying to make it their own.
Notice how Apple's been quiet about the Microsoft Surface device, and even though it directly competes with the iPad, they're still partnering with Microsoft to build Office apps. I think they respect Microsoft here because re-inventing the tablet and making a compelling notebook product of that sort takes a lot of bold engineering.
Apple's appropriation of the keyboard cover (http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/9/9297805/apple-ipad-pro-micr...) is one of those things that's inevitable. I'm not sure what else they could have done here, they were boxed in, so it ends up being 'theft' by some definition of that term. Microsoft doesn't seem to have raised this as an issue, so I'm sure there was some communication here between the two parties to make sure it didn't poison the waters.
Xiaomi "thin, machine-metal" laptop looks as much like an Macbook as iPhone's 6 antenna lines look like HTC One M7.
Apple has been quiet about Microsoft (and vice-versa) because if Samsung v Apple design patent wars taught us anything is that it's pointless and expensive to engage in these fights.
Since it was released so close to the launch of the iPhone that it's not like Apple could have possibly dropped everything and rebuilt their entire design strategy around it. The protracted lawsuit with Samsung showed how Apple had been working on that design for some time and had already settled on a number of key design elements, the "rectangle" being one.
Those are interesting historical artifacts, but none of those had any lasting impact on the market, they were merely historical curiosities that nobody ever copied.
> Just because you are first to adopt something...
No, it doesn't give you an exclusive right per-se, but there's a lot of ways you can make a touch-screen phone short of copying Apple's design millimeter for millimeter like Samsung did.
So long as there's such a thing as a design patent then, legally speaking, yes, you do have the sole right. That's what patents are for. I'm generally not a fan of patents, but you can't argue that they don't exist.
There was incredible variety in the phone space prior to the iPhone, phones came in all shapes and sizes with vendors exploring increasingly implausible formats out of desperation. Post-iPhone they all converged, coincidentally I'm sure, on Apple's design. It's only now we're seeing some divergence from that.
Today we're seeing the same ridiculous convergence with keyboards where everyone plus dog is using the Apple layout. This hurts consumers since there's far little choice than there was before.
There's a huge difference between "copying" meaning "taking a good idea and giving it your own spin and making it even better" (e.g. Android vs iOS) and "copying" meaning "making a shitty knock-off version of a thing that looks almost identical to the other thing superficially", as in all the bargain-priced knock-off phones that are sold using Apple's branding (http://mashable.com/2016/06/17/apple-china-knockoffs/#qO0bF3...). Most companies fall in the middle here, but some skew very close to the bottom.
"Of those only the Prada is close"
No, the P900 was a smart phone and therefor a rectangular phone like the iPhone, but with a hardware keyboard in addition to the virtual one since touch technology wasn't very good. The Neonode had a touch interface because they had developed their own touch technology. The Sony PDA has a very similar design since it was made for using applications similar to what would later become common with phones when larger screen and faster processors became available. The LG Prada was also a premium phone, which is why it could look similar to an iPhone.
"they were merely historical curiosities that nobody ever copied."
Except Apple then I guess.
"There was incredible variety in the phone space prior to the iPhone"
Not really. Most phones looked largely the same with a keypad and maybe a joystick, because that was the state of technology at the time. Just like most phones look the same today, because of the state of technology today. Even if you wanted to make a different phone today there wouldn't be much point. Because you would have to create your own parts, your own operating system and your own application ecosystem just to be 99% similar to everyone else since you're using the same technology. Look how things went for Google Glass, which isn't surprising since the technology isn't ready.
"Today we're seeing the same ridiculous convergence with keyboards where everyone plus dog is using the Apple layout."
Do you mean the Sony layout? Because that's where the chiclet design was copied from.
http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-vaio-x505/
"as in all the bargain-priced knock-off phones"
Those are novelty phones, you literally have to search them out to find them. They have about zero percent of the market.
By that definition the Ford F-150 is a copy of the Porsche 911. I mean they both have four wheels and an engine and things like door handles and windows.
The Sony x505 has "chiclet" keys, but they didn't invent them. These things were on calculators decades prior, and infamously the IBM PC Jr.'s wireless keyboard.
What I'm talking about is the peculiar arrangement of the arrow keys and other subtle things that are very distinctly Apple. Given how quirky some keyboards can be, where seemingly every vendor has their own spin on how big the Caps Lock key should be or where backspace should be positioned, they're all using Apple's keyboard as a blueprint going forward, literally copying it.
Apple's fairly unique arrow key layout showed up in early versions of the iBook and other Apple machines in the 2000-2001 era, possibly earlier.
Apple has always copied, just like they copied much of the current iPhone user interface from their competitors.
The iPhone redefined what a smartphone should be using nothing that wasn't available to anyone else in the market. Except, perhaps, a Jony Ive with a mad man like Steve Jobs pushing him.
That said, the unibody MacBooks set the gold standard for stylish laptops. It's natural someone else would follow the formula many years later. Even with only evolutionary changes, the MacBook is still light years apart from its Windows-running copycats.
This quote is meant to make you think about the differences between stealing and copying ideas. It isn't literal. It doesn't even make sense literally. Stealing means you make it yours. It is no longer theirs. How do you do that with an idea? You make it so much better that people forget about the previous idea you took.
Imagine if someone complained because a tire manufacturer came out with a gasp round wheel.
Alto: http://s7.computerhistory.org/is/image/CHM/500004657-03-01?$...
Lisa: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/apple-lisa2xl/ap...
Mac System 1: http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/images/screenshots/syst...
Not reinventing the wheel is a great business strategy. Everyone copies everyone in the tech space. Apple didn't invent lightweight laptops.
Read history, then comment, okay?
The PARC machine barely scratched the surface of what could be done, and it was far from being packaged in a way that could be marketed to consumers. It was inspiration, and any engineer knows that's a long, long way from a working product.
Even Microsoft has gone its own way with Windows after some heavy overlap with MacOS and other windowing systems (DESQview in partcular). Windows 3.1 was more different, and Windows 95 borrowed more heavily from OS/2, which was wildly different from MacOS. If anything Apple was forced to adopt the right-click menu popularized by Microsoft since it became the de-facto standard.
Meanwhile other companies have damning memos that say "Make it look exactly like Apple's product".
This is pure conjecture, but every company does it. My point was let's not act like Apple is innocent and does not.
Xiaomi has built its entire company on blatant theft of designs. Let's not say "oh, it's okay because Apple once did X" which is like saying murder is no different from a speeding ticket since both things are illegal.
Their ideal product entry point is when consumers are familiar with the product but are unhappy with the current offerings because they lack the right contextual fit.
Maybe if you have a specific example here of where Apple's flagrantly copied something like Xiaomi has we can talk specifics.
Apple Watch: It's a smart watch, they didn't invent the category, but it's a novel form-factor, instantly recognizable. The operating system is also highly distinct from others. You'd never confuse an Apple Watch for anything but an Apple Watch. Some of the Android based ones are going out of their way to look like non-smart watches. At least Motorola has their own design language here.
F.lux: Significant functional overlap but these sorts of tools have been around since the 1990s. It's not like F.lux invented this, they just popularized it. Maybe it was a dick move on Apple's part, or maybe it was just a thing they thought should be core to their product.
When Microsoft wanted to add faxing functionality to Windows they could have bought WinFax, but they instead made their own thing. Is this stealing?
I think your definition of stealing and copying is extremely loose, to the point where the term has lost all meaning.
Your comments use words similar to mine like "the" and "a". Are you stealing my words?
It's either lower wages, better productivity or both, either way, it's better for us, consumers, which now have additional money to spend on other products and services which further enrich our lives (where additional money = Price of the Japanese product - Price of the Chinese product).
The Japanese company should have recouped their additional costs between the product launch and the Chinese company's product launch. If that interval was too short for them to do so it means that, as I said before, their "costs to create the product in the first place" were too high to begin with. For society's greater good we should put no premium on "I was here first/I did it first!", but only on "I build this product using less resources, hence it has the lowest price!".
I disagree completely.
If we didn't care about being there first we wouldn't have patents, and without patents, why would companies bother spending any money on R&D?
If you spend money on R&D, you have to recuperate those costs. If a competitor could just make an exact copy, then even if they made it in the same exact way that you did, they'd be able to sell it at a lower cost because they spent nothing on R&D.
Patents aren't perfect, but they exist for a good reason: to promote innovation for "society's greater good"
Yeah, it does seem like we're on two different sides of the barricade. Patent-related discussions never seem to end once they get going (even more so on HN), but I just wanted to add that I was surprised to read recently that James Watt himself was being criticized during his lifetime for holding patents for too long and for too important an industry.
Can't find the exact quote right now (it doesn't help that the book I read it from was a 500+ page Italian translation of a history of the Industrial Revolution, originally written in French - https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9CEeAAAAIAAJ), the closest that I could find was this, which is a contemporary view on it: https://fee.org/articles/do-patents-encourage-or-hinder-inno...
> By patenting the separate condenser Boulton and Watt, from 1769 to 1800, had almost absolute control on the development of the steam engine. They were able to use the power of their patent and the legal system to frustrate the efforts of engineers such as Jonathan Hornblower to further improve the fuel efficiency of the steam engine. By way of contrast, and fortunately, Trevithick did not patent his equally innovative high-pressure design.
> Ironically, not only did Watt use the patent system as a legal cudgel with which to smash competition, but his own efforts at developing a superior steam engine were hindered by the very same patent system he used to keep competitors at bay. An important limitation of the original Newcomen engine was its inability to deliver a steady rotary motion. The most convenient solution, involving the combined use of the crank and a flywheel, relied on a method patented by James Pickard, which prevented Watt from using it. Watt also made various attempts at efficiently transforming reciprocating into rotary motion, reaching, apparently, the same solution as Pickard. But the existence of a patent forced him to contrive an alternative less-efficient mechanical device, the sun and planet gear. It was only in 1794, after the expiration of Pickard’s patent, that Boulton and Watt adopted the economically and technically superior crank. The impact of the expiration of Watt’s patents on his empire may come as a surprise as well. Far from being driven out of business, Boulton and Watt for many years were able to charge a premium over the price of other steam engine manufacturers.
And I'm pretty sure that our industrial past includes many such cases in which the greater good was sacrificed for the interest of the few, like it happened even in Watt's case.
Parasites depend on their hosts survival, since if the host dies, the parasite dies too.
I'll never understand designers. I don't mean that as a criticism, I literally don't understand the mindset. This is my problem for not understanding.
If someone copies my software work, I don't go around calling them lazy. Even I spent all my weekends on this lovely piece of code, only for someone else to "steal" it.
And if you do, good for you.
How can you paint such a broad stroke, like THOSE DESIGNERS, I'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND THEM! With the implication being those designers aren't open and collaborative and willing to share and don't understand iterating in the open like us developers. The quote is from one specific designer.
UX is fleeting. Even the best UX will grow stale over time as styles change, and it's style propagates (as it will if it is truly revolutionary) it will become mundane.
Technology breakthroughs are hacks in the laws of physics. Humanity hasn't fundamentally redesigned the Steam Engine since James Watt. It just can't become more efficient. Nobody cares steam is mundane, or well understood. We still use it in nearly ever power plant.
So no I don't stand why people feel the need to own something as fleeting as a singular moment in the pseudo-cultural-artistic space Product/UX design fits in knowing that it'll pass and forever be looked on as an out of style relic of a by-gone age. To do so honestly and earnestly makes you sound like a diva.
One analogy is brute force searching for an approximate solution to an optimization problem.
It's problematic when others take your solution if you did all the brute forcing.
Design is only fleeting inasmuch as an approximation could be fleeting. Others build off an approximation to find better solutions. But without the earlier solution, we'd find ourselves in a much different part of the sample space.
Definitely, could definitely understand if it was about money/business. But that is never mentioned when designers get angry about their designs being stolen.
I think it's not about money/business. I think it's a different mindset where a "stolen" design devalues your own contribution. A developer who makes a breakthrough never feels like their contribution is devalued if someone else copies your idea; quite the opposite, copies validates that you made a genuine breakthrough.
In Xiaomi's case, what they're doing is, more or less, that last bit: the only work they're putting into their designs is the work necessary to make them look like somebody else's designs, expressly because the designs they're copying are successful in the marketplace. If I was a designer they copied I wouldn't be very thrilled by that. Money definitely plays into that, but credit for the design work is a big part, too.
It sounds really undemocratic (why shouldn't everyone have their say?). And it undoubtedly contributes to the sterotype of the designer as diva or precious about their work. But can you think of an open source project praised for it's visual and interaction design that was colloboratively develeoped with dozens or more participants? If you can, it will be an exception, not the rule.
When there are too many participants in the design of a program, you end up with a project pulled in every direction and pleasing to no-one. But if you go the opposite route and limit design decisions to a dedicated UX team, you end up generating resentment from contributors or users who feel their input is being ignored (just look at Ubuntu for an example of this).
From a designers perspective, either of these scenarios will seem like a no-win situation.
http://b-i.forbesimg.com/anthonykosner/files/2013/11/jony-iv...
(I'd use the phrase "has been inspired by and has applied to the contemporary times" instead of "copied", but if he likes that verb more...)
Now it's China's turn. In ten years it'll probably be someone else as Chinese development continues. Just as Hollywood got their start years ago.
Apple will just have to lower the greedy margins a bit.
And yeah this laptop looks nice anyway.
In any case, what does being a fan have to do with appreciating good design? I'm no fan of Apple either, but I appreciate their product design nonetheless. I'm not sure why your reaction was that sharp.
Sure, it's a lot sleeker than most laptops (not made by Apple), but its design leaves me asking a ton of "why did they choose that?" kind of questions.
The question is how it looks after six months of use.
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&q=samsung+serie...
Don't get me wrong, it's a really good laptop and I've chosen it over so many others on the market. I would probably still choose it for my linux laptop (lenovo x1 is neat but I'm done with lenovo with all the stuff they've done lately). It just looks poorly to me in a direct comparison.
Though to be honest there is a small issue with coil whine in very quiet settings. I hear Dell has addressed this in newer models.
Clearly it's not a cheap product, but the Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 is razor thin, high powered, well built, and very good looking.
Maybe I'm missing something?
And Carbon Fibre is certainly more lightweight than aluminium, and may be stronger as well. As such, the Carbon X1 certainly qualifies.
I'm not too concerned about Superfish - that was only the consumer junk, right? The BIOS-Windows-auto-install stuff was more concerning. But hey, little choices. Lenovo is certainly incompetent - look at the X240/T440 with the terrible pad design they backtracked on (obvious). Or the Carbon keyboards they ended up ditching.
The X1 Carbon is much cooler but also less powerful ;)
The X250 is pretty good, though you get a keyboard at random and will need to replace the part (always get next business day warranty) if you get one of the junk ones. Otherwise it's a nice laptop - I've not seen anything I like more (though it could be better, of course; a 3:2 screen for starters).
I've used a T450s, and the keyboard feels fantastic on it. At 3K res it'd probably real nice. Unless you need a specific CPU/GPU, stick with the X260/T460s (s for slim). Perhaps compare reviews to the X250/T450s to see if it got worse?
Assuming you don't need high-end power (like quad core), it's more of a preference if you want a small 12" or a larger screen. I dock my X250 and it seems fine, even driving a higher-pixel external monitor. I'd go for the X260, but if software support was better for hiDPI I might consider the T450s. (If they had centred keyboards without numpad, maybe even a 15" model.)
Edit: FWIW when using it in laptop mode, I run CPU throttled to 50% or less to keep it cool. I have the cheaper i5-5200U option and it's fine for emacs/VS/browsing. At full power it can play Dolphin emulator Smash Brothers Brawl and Melee at full speed, but just barely.
HP's ZBooks? You can even replace almost any component inside. I got the first generation model (15") and it's very good. Sure, it's not light and slim.
On some Lenovo models they are the same size (and can be swapped), but not on the Carbon X1.
I've been getting ThinkPads on corporate refresh cycles for 15 years and after they sold to Lenovo, I never know if a new machine will turn out to be a flaky piece of junk or totally solid and well built. Seems like it's always one or the other.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/12/lenovo-used-a-hidde...
At least this issue should be solved.
It was certainly a giant blunder, but like all of these issues they are Windows only, and usually only if you use the factory OS image.
Like most(?) of the HN crowd not using Apple products, I run Linux, so that kind of stuff doesn't affect me at all. I assume the remaining ones reinstall using their own installation-media too?
It doesn't excuse Lenovo's behaviour and certainly can make you question their judgement, but all in all, I'm one of those who are putting less weight on this issue than others may do.
What matters most to me, are the practical aspects: what can this product do for me? And Carbon X1 Thinkpads are among the best lightweight laptops out there.
Don't forget that your hardware vendor is also responsible for firmware. Not saying that Lenovo is special in any way here, but delivering terrible software on the factory OS image might have implications for software quality in general.
ThinkPad hardware is OK, but it's very hard to trust Lenovo with anything these days. A good summary I found while looking for the above link is http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malware...
That was not on the business line. I.e. it did not impact thinkpads, which is what people usually buy on HN anyway.
[1] http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...
That said, I still find complaints about the X1's price from an Apple-user funny. Whenever people in the past people was critical towards the pricing of Apple products, the response was always "Real quality costs money" and "It's worth it".
Is that no longer so? And is a quality higher than that provided by Apple unimaginable?
I now own a 3rd-gen X1 Carbon for personal use. After my experience with it, I'll never buy or recommend Lenovo again. Months of waiting on backordered parts (for their flagship laptop), repeat visits from their service center, and the end result is finally a laptop that mostly works, but is starting a slow death very early because of cheap plastic construction and tight tolerances that aren't so tight after a few months of use. I've had it a year and a half (I bought it the week it came out); I'll be lucky if it makes it to two years without another significant problem.
Terrible experience all the way around. It looks pretty on the website, but it's not built to last like their older products were, and their service is a shadow of its former self.
Xiaomi is a Chinese company they don't care since if they ever do get sued the Chinese court will always side with the Chinese company.
The again if the clone works just as well as the original I don't really care but this would have been a really good chance to copy and improve.
And Acer is Taiwanese.
And Lenovo is a Chinese company, but I guess they've made the cost-benefit analysis that they have more to lose getting sued by Apple in the US for copying their products than they have to gain by selling a cheap Macbook knockoff in an already very competitive Chinese market.
Taiwan has robust rule of law, unlike china.
Xiaomi is the new kid on the block and just copies Apple designs. Some examples:
http://www.iphonehacks.com/2014/07/xiaomi-copying-apple.html
Also they have no legitimate sales channel in the US/EU, so there's a jurisdiction issue with a lawsuit. Apple knows it can't just march into China and win a lawsuit. Acer and Lenovo sell in the US/EU, so they have to play ball with our IP laws.
The eeepc was the thing that proved there was enough interest for a low-power-but-mobile computer, which ended up turning into the tablet market. Crappy build quality, but people went berserk for them.
Really? Here's one [0] from approximately when the Air came out and looks not even remotely similar to me in shape.
[0] https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ASUS_Eee_PC_PIC_09...
And how!!! My ex-boss read the press announcement on a flight (sometime in 2011?) and went gung ho. On coming back, he got me to inquire with our regular/local hardware vendors. Turned out nobody (in our small city) had even heard of it, so the inquiry was escalated to the largest city of our state. Still nothing. Finally, he actually got a staffer to fly to Mumbai and get him a piece.
Within the next few weeks, he bought not less than 7 more, to gift them away to family and friends!! Yes, berserk is right. :-)
Last laptop I bought was due to needing something for occasional DJ and projection graphics projects. Since it needed to be mobile, even a small form factor desktop build was not really feasible so I went looking for the best thing I could grab at Microcenter for under a grand.
Now this was a few years ago so the specs aren't top notch anymore but for just under $1000 I got an Asus that's not quite all metal (bottom half of the shell is plastic but the rest is aluminum), 1920x1080 screen (but worse viewing angles than a premium display), an i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and the mobile variant of the then-current class of nVidia GPUs (because I needed something that could handle all of the OpenGL stuff I was messing with). The only other sucky part was it came with a HDD instead of a SSD but at some point I'll upgrade the SSD in my desktop and hand that one down to the laptop.
The nearest competing Apple notebook at the time (at least 1920x1080, i7, 16GB RAM, and discrete graphics) would've run me about $2500. Build would've been better, display would've been a bit better, and if it had a SSD or one of those hybrid drives, that obviously beats spinning platters.
But none of those things (or all of them together) was worth spending more than double. If it was going to be my only machine for everything I'd have probably paid the premium for an Apple or another higher-end notebook with nicer display and SSD but for a secondary computer at around $950-ish it is still running perfectly when I need to take something on the road.
Ew. What purpose does that serve?
Not much otherwise.
Thinkpad's battery is 42 Wh with a wifi surfing run-time of almost 7 hours [0], although it being sold as a 11 hours run-time. It hasn't a dedicated graphics chip.
Xiaomi's battery is 40 Wh and it sports dedicated graphics. Macbook Air's battery is 58 Wh and it has integrated graphics, lasting around 10 hours [1].
Assuming a similar consumption, Xiaomi's would last less than 7 hours for surfing. But it has dedicated graphics (NVidia 940M) with a consumption (30W) that doubles integrated options (Intel HD in Lenovo and Apple laptops). So, probably it will last 5 or 6 hours of just wifi surfing, even less.
[0] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-13-Ultrabook-Re...
[1] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-13-2015-Noteb...
I know Ubuntu can still be installed on the Windows version, but I expect it to be a hacky path with installation issues, getting the hardware to play nice and the backlit keyboard to work, and finally maybe even battery life issues.
An out of the box solution like the XPS 13 at a lower price point might work.
I'm not sure how true his thought is in relation to china,but neither here nor there.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-other-hidden-cost-of-runnin...
If you intend to run Linux on the thing, buy things that Linux supports out of the box. That probably means sticking to the working Intel stuff for now. You'll thank me later (or not, because you won't miss the problems you don't have).
The binary blob provided by Nvidia have been quite reliable across the years (and I think they've been available for more than 10 years) while the open source ATI/AMD drivers have frequently failed to deliver.
My current (and only) working solution is to disable the Nvidia GPU on a host and use it PCIe passthrough to assign it to another Linux or Windows VM. That's the only stable solution that doesn't break the world when enabling/disabling the discrete GPU.
We shouldn't have to revert to such extreme measures...
Both are somewhat annoying, but far less than only being able to use it in a VM. That said, I'm curious about how you manage the VM output, considering that PCIe passthrough requires a dedicated screen.
In the even rarer case that I wish to play a game, I have an HDMI connection between the GPU and my projector, which I can enable with a remote control.
Learning how to use qemu is a bit of a pain (hint: use qemu directly, virus is a huge waste of time) but after the initial learning curve the setup is seamless for my use case - and I feel safer without the GPU drivers having access to my normal desktop. I much prefer this setup to dual-booting Windows for gaming. The VM spins up in a few seconds and shuts down when not in use (turning off the GPU in the process).
In my experience, the open-source radeon drivers are significantly more stable. Fglrx was a stinking pile of crap that has officially been abandoned - the whole driver team has switched to the open-source drivers, now.
Linking to Theano-CUDA is always a nightmare.
Forget about optimus. That has never worked correctly on Linux.
The only reason I can see someone wanting nvidia on linux is for CUDA. And in that case, you can't just use the ubuntu pre-built version of the drivers.
If you are not doing neural nets locally on Linux, you shouldn't get a discrete graphics card. And if you do get a discrete one, make sure it's not Nvidia since their open source drivers are much inferior to AMD's.
This is an honest question, and I appreciate your answer in advance.
I have a desktop with an HD 6850 and the radeon driver has always worked well, I used to play DOTA2 on it.
But this is a very old GPU now, and all newer models (HD7xxx and up) were having performance issues with the radeon driver last time I was reading the forums.
Not sure about compatibility with the recent OSX, though. I used lion and mountain lion, and those worked well. AFAIR I’ve used vmware tools from Fusion.
Legally no. VM or not, the real hardware needs to be made by Apple.
In the host machine, you need reasonably fast Intel CPU, hardware-assisted virtualization enabled in BIOS/UEFI, enough RAM, also unofficial VMWare patch to unlock OSX guests on PC hosts.
In the guest OS, you need VMWare tools for OSX, they exist because VMWare supports OSX guests when running on OSX hosts.
If you do web development it is also a much better development experience than using Windows.
Bluetooth devices work much better in Linux than Windows (at least the ones I have).
USB devices are also much better handled in Linux. I never see an 'Installing device driver for this USB stick' message.
I plug my kindle in Ubuntu, it opens Calibre. I plug my kindle in Windows, it shows a folder.
I lose all these niceties if I run Linux inside a VM.
* WTF, why isn't my NIC registering? I thought we had a standard for this stuff by now.
* Download NIC drivers from secondary computer
* Put NIC drivers on a USB stick
* Install NIC drivers
* Nothing happened, turns out you found the drivers for the wrong revision of the chipset, go back to square one
* Download Nvidia drivers
* Try to install, nope, you need to find the Intel drivers first
* Download and install Intel drivers
* Install the Nvidia drivers again
* It's 2AM already, go to sleep
* You forgot to turn off Windows Update, and now you're stuck with Windows 10
* Reformat again, and start over
As opposed to:
$ sudo pacman -S nvidia bumblebee && sudo usermod -aG bumblebee $(whoami) && reboot
The linux comparison isn't recent either. That was the exact same procedure I had to do on an nVidia-stricken laptop (thankfully not mine) four years ago.
http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-hea...
Things that really hurt are short battery life which is ~1.45hrs, and that it misses the modern CPU extensions which will obsolete it soon. Both of this issues obviously won't be present in a Core M3, so I see no reason why you wouldn't dev on an M3 unless you compile big native projects with great frequency.
[1]: https://m.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/45q90s/is_anything_b... [2]: https://m.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2uxt46/rust_vs_c_inc_co...
My primary concerns are:
- not to have open it up and clean from dust. That's what all of my laptops, except Air, suffered from. They get dust inside and then get hot and loud. I move around a lot and it's inevitable. I don't want noise and I want as little heat as possible.
- Multitouch Trackpad like on Macbook Air. It's wonderful!
- Long battery life with moderate to high power cpu.
- Great 13" monitor that you can see what's going on in direct sunlight.
- As much as possible of internal fast storage.
- Lots of RAM.
- Great typing experience. I'm fine with chiklet on Air. It's just fine. I write a lot, more than typical programmers - treatments, instructions, screenplays on a daily basis.
Currently, only Air fits the bill, but it's getting old.
So, a high(er)-powered Air 13" with longer battery life and more RAM and disk space and better screen with updated CPU and graphics would be great. I haven't found one. I don't care which OS it runs. They're all the same these days.
With your criteria, only the Lenovo X Carbon series comes to mind. (Maybe the Dell XPS series?)
That and that it's compact (13") and lightweight and that it makes coffee! I know, but that's what I want. As for high-powered CPU, I would be OK with some super-duper i5 mobile or something. i7 is not a must. Also, I was under the impression that CPUs, these days, do not drain battery more than low-powered one if you're not hitting the gas pedal?
I'm typing on a Razer Blade Stealth right now that I've had since February and it is already falling apart, with most of the screws on the bottom plate falling off and a trackpad that constantly sticks. The fans buzz and brush against their metal grills often enough that you have to gently slap the side of the laptop to make it stop. I've also had its USB-C charger literally fall apart when the USB-C connector came off, which then had to be replaced in its entirety. The 2015 MacBook charger at least let you swap the cable, which was a lot more sane since it appears USB-C is fragile.
After 10~ years of owning Apple laptops, this was a rude awakening of how bad it can be not buying one. I'm hoping moving to a Thinkpad next will not be a similar disaster.
This is all ignoring the insanely bad support from the Razer Web store, which was probably the worst ordering experience I've ever had. Their support is so infamously bad, that even the fans on /r/razer usually defending the company beyond any sense of proportion will admit it is bad.
Not to mention, you don't have to look very far to see others with the same issues. Here's a sample from /r/razer.
USB-C issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/4b6gj5/razer_blade_s...
Screws falling out: https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/3vq4pu/do_not_buy_a_...
Fans buzzing: https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/4eoh15/razer_blade_s...
Sticking trackpad: https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/4l1v00/razer_blade_s...
Various threads complaining about their support: https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/search?q=support&restrict_sr=...
Hope your Razer laptop never has a problem.
Um, this is what _you_ said -- "Currently, only Air fits the bill, but it's getting old."
Sorry, I still have no idea why are you're looking for a MB air replacement instead of upgrading to a newer model.
I'd get a new MBA if there were a new one with updated specs and a better screen.
Pros:
- Almost unbeatable specs for the chassis size
- 14" display, which seems to be getting rarer now, but I really appreciate the extra inch of screen space
- High quality display, if you get a good IGZO panel. Some panels have color issues, but this seems to be common to all IGZO type panels--my Nexus 6 has the same issue. You can return it until you get a satisfactory panel.
- Can dual boot to Windows and play modern games at high quality if that's your thing
- Clean and simple chassis (excluding the silly bright green logo)
- Excellent Linux compatibility
- You can purchase an aftermarket SSD and upgrade it yourself if you're OK with voiding your warranty
- Very nice trackpad with multitouch that even works in Linux. It has physical buttons which I personally prefer, and that's also getting harder to find
Cons:
- Absurdly expensive
- Parts are proprietary so you have to mail the unit in for even the most basic repairs (changing the battery for example), and repairs are expensive
- Matrix-green keyboard and logo color scheme is a little silly and might not look professional. I put a matte black round sticker over the lid logo which helps
- A poster below mentioned screws falling out; I've noticed this with mine too. I think since the chassis is aluminum and is itself part of the system's heat sink, the heating and cooling expands it and gradually pushes the screws out. But pulling out your Torx screwdriver once every few months is enough to fix the issue
Overall I very much like the machine and even moreso since it supports Linux without headaches.
In this case the machine is excellent and compatibility could be much worse. Wifi, Bluetooth, multitouch trackpad, touchscreen, etc., all work out of the box. The Nvidia card might also, I just don't use it at all so I don't know.
God, I wish that was true. I cannot keep screws in my Razer Blade Stealth at all, not for lack of trying.
Only three of the eight screws remain on my back plate: The two in the back by the hinge vent and the left-hand middle screw. Possibly these areas suffers less thermal stress? Who knows.
Also: Good luck finding replacements when one pops off and you lose it.
Superb Linux compatibility...and can be charged using the Dell companion battery pack !!
And if I might add - excellent swag appeal.
If I want a Linux dev box, there are other options too.
Screen is much, much better than Macbook Air screen though. Battery life is very good. I use Arch Linux and With a bit of tweaking, everything works (bluetooth, wifi, keyboard backlight, suspend/resume etc).
I can also dual boot into ChromeOS which is quite nice in it's own right. Lovely machine for the money ...
[0] Yes this is an affiliate link through my Amazon account.
I'm very happy with my Xiaomi piston earbuds, good sound quality, survived 1 year of use so far and only ~£10.
I've had one of their phones a few years ago and found it to work well. Just annoying that they'd skinned Android rather than providing stock.
And I have the earbuds too. Sure another $10, but the sound is very mediocre compare to the stock headphones I got.
I also have one of their TVBox, bought it mainly for my Chinese parents. None of the channels work anymore oversea.
Sure, $10 who cares. But I would rather spend bit more on something that last longer than a manufacturer producing more electronic junk to this already-polluted planet.
If there was anything that comes close to Macbook's 12 hours run time, I would have seriously considered switching.
Android though would rock.
This is the same argument that Windows Phone (ironically) make, but most people want the same programs that all of their friends run. Computers and most other electronics are appliances to most people they just want them to work without any thought.
I think however, it is misleading at best to say that it doesn't have many native apps.
'well known' is implied by basic logic: users don't want apps they haven't heard of before.
Cool. Where's Word, Tinder, Instagram, Google Maps, Google Mail, Outlook and WhatsApp?
I think there's a Linux Spotify, so you've got that.
I love Linux (I'm ex Red Hat and IBM's Linux team) but Linux (as mentioned, Linux/glibc/X/whatever) lacks apps.
> Is that a troll?
Seriously?
Where are any of these apps on Windows or OSX? Word is the only one with a native app, the rest are either mobile only, or browser based.
And that's not even taking into account the market demand for such a thing which is negligible.
You can always decline the EULA and try to get a refund for the bundled Windows license. In Europe it is supposedly easy to get a refund due to a European Union directive on unfair commercial practices: http://no.more.racketware.info/en/europe
I doubt a $540 machine running Windows will match it.
I very much dislike Windows, but I realize that's just me. Linux on this machine would be awesome.
Plus I have the magic touch of making every Mac to crash while I am trying to get a contracted job done on the customers location. It is seriously so frustrating. (Mostly it is video/music production related)
> It's hardware and software working together to make the experience.
> Linux on this machine would be awesome.
I ran linux as my primary os for 10 years. This was never true for me. Something was always broken, or wonky. 10 years of platitudes about how "it will get better", but it didn't. There is always new hardware to support to various degrees.
I got a mac, because I wanted to be able to listen to music and print at the same time. Also, I was tired of all my photos coming out pink.
The printer is a classic linux desktop experience. CUPS wouldn't recognize the printer, not even as generic postscript or something, or maybe it did, but wouldn't take advantage of its high resolution because binary blobs being evil or some other high horse. Either way, binary blobs figure into this. So I had to actually buy a driver and color profiles from some company in Germany that had paid a license to make a closed source driver. While I could now print at high resolution, all the photos had a pink cast, that no amount of correction could take away. Boot into Windows, thing prints fine. Ironically, the company touted its color profiles as being better Windows.
In 10 years, I never had a machine that had all of it's hardware working correctly. But hey, maybe 2016 is finally the Year of Linux Desktop!
Sysdamining is not my favorite thing.
It’s gaining polish with every point release. Desktop search is finally quick. The UI stack (QML) is nimble and powerful. Breeze is the best looking flat design, both beautiful and clean. Even the default desktop wallpapers are gorgeous.
The only thing remaining is the Akonadi legacy, which is being replaced. The rest is details. KDE is the best desktop Linux has to offer now, and it’s the best platform to build upon in the future.
I tried to like KDE, but every time I tried it, one of the first apps I tried would immediately crash. Plus it's default looked like a bad copy of Windows XP, which was a bad copy of the Mac, so it looked really bad. (That was a long time ago.) Unfortunately, GNOME looked nice, but had no features, so I just gave up and went to a bare window manager and realized I have no need for anything a DE offers. Then the problem became that sawfish became unsupported, and nothing else had the same customizability.
I’m not going to claim KDE didn’t deserve that reputation in the past. The architectural changes are to blame, but they weren’t frivolous. You can’t build on shaky foundation.
I also think it’s not fair to criticize it based on some snapshot from the past. You’ve seen the beta. It’s really good now!
I've used Linux for over ten years, on dozens of machines. I'm not a newbie. And yes, it's horribly difficult and broken compared to OS X, unless you get lucky.
The ThinkPad X250 I'm using right now with Linux would disagree. The Sony Vaio I had in 2010 and put Linux on would disagree. The Dell Inspiron I had last year would fit the description of "broken" but not "badly broken".
Are there poor pairings of hardware and software outside the Apple garden? Sure. Does that mean everything outside Apple's garden is poor?
For my part, I've had perfect, smoothly-running Linux workstations for decades now, and for me its a no-brainer to select hardware for the purpose of running Linux. Like I said, if this has decent Linux support, I'll switch from Apple in a moments' notice. Linux can do just as well, if not better, than OSX for many, many things ..
They should have dropped the Nvidia chip all the way, it is a shitty compromise. Nobody is going to play games on this machine and the Intel IGP handles all other workloads just fine. Also, the 12.5 version coming with 4GB is a bit disappointing.
When you have a captive audience and no competition, it is easy to become complacent.
If Linux had a compelling desktop UI alternative and a compelling seamless device integration, I'd be very happy to switch.
I realize there is a lot of subjectivity to what is pretty, but Apple has opened the door for competitors to come out with a more self-consistent UX and address the shortcomings that Apple has introduced in their UX. Such as reduced discoverability, the loss of at-a-glance comprehension.
A lot of glitz, but also very glitchy. I'd be happy with plain, consistent, discoverable, comprehisble. The animation eye candy is nice, but it's low on my priority list.
http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/27486/security/xiaomi-ha...
Frankly PC hardware is going through a drawn out second system period. First there was ACPI replacing APM, and now we have UEFI replacing the BIOS. In both case we have simple and straight forward systems that can hardly be implemented wrong being replaced with complex and convoluted systems where each implementation have its own quirks and gotchas.
On top of this we have the issue of most OEMs barely testing for Windows, and Microsoft is anything but good at getting their implementations right (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish anyone?).
Your argument ignores a number of truths.
Much of the original BIOS was being replaced with proprietary extensions by vendors to overcome it's limitations and it was in dire need a replacement. At one point Western Digital was shipping what was basically a boot sector virus to overcome the Hard Drive size limitations imposed by the BIOS.
ACPI doesn't just replace APM, but also PnP and MPS. None of which support newer buses or interfaces and would have to be patched or extended to do so.
Microsoft has no love for ACPI and even went so far as to disable ACPI by default and only enable it for a small whitelist of machines with earlier OSes. Vista was the first OS from Microsoft to actually require ACPI, that means it took them over a decade to come to terms with it.
UEFI was meant to replace both ACPI and the BIOS but hasn't replaced either. Unfortunately vendors have been using UEFI to just load BIOS and ACPI implementations. This isn't at all how it was intended.
You can't blame Microsoft for these standards because PnP and APM are the only ones they had a hand in implementing. It also sounds like they're the ones you actually prefer which is funny. If there's anyone you should be blaming then it's Intel because they championed all of them.
The whole setup is a house of cards and no one seems to like it. Why you choose to blame Microsoft for it is beyond me.
I get the feeling you're speaking from your own experience. In the same vein: my experience has been the opposite. But then again, I'm speaking from experience on a ThinkPad X250 with Arch Linux and tlp vs. ThinkPad X250 with Windows 10 (upgraded from Windows 7).
If my experience had been with poorer hardware that don't stick to standards, I'd probably have a similar (though far less extreme) view as yours.
Yes they are ready to take over large segments of the market but not yet the high end segment.
Also, there should be scratch code on the packaging which will reveal a code you can enter on the website and it will tell you if the product is genuine. This worked well for me.
Also, no mention of battery life, which is the sine qua non of laptops. Unless I missed it, and I read the article twice to be sure.
I'm always sorry when I click on a TC link.
Here's Engadget's take, and they do mention the 9.5 hour battery: https://www.engadget.com/2016/07/27/xiaomi-mi-notebook-air-l...
You cant compare a KIA to Bugatti and say cheap as $xxx.
The point is create a product people speak about and has a value
Regardless, KIA's reliability and repair-ability ratings trump all three of them. So I'll let your original comparison stand.
For robotics work I always end up wanting a small but decent computer to run my ROS visualizations/algorithms and to make small code edits. This has a decent c/gpu, good battery, small form factor, ssd slot, and isn't ungodly expensive. I usually end up running a VM on my primary development laptop but that is very annoying, a dedicated and less valuable machine would be better.
Hm? "Sony" doesn't begin with "A".
The colors, the squarish shape and the keyboard (Sony used that style before Apple) look much more like a Sony Vaio than any Apple laptop.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/csm_Probo...
That being said I have no experience with such a keyboard, so I can't say
Friend of mine has one, he is happy with it, never particularly mentioned the arrow keys as a negative
If you can run Hackintosh on it, I don't see why I wouldn't go with it instead of paying $2500 on Apple computer with similar specs.
So yeah, they've convinced multiple courts in multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries that yes, consumers are, paraphrased from their words, "pretty stupid and get confused easily."
to be fair, that is what Apple sued Samsung for, and it won :(
Also, visual similarities do not always translate into legally-pursuable patent violations, or similar.