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Comment by robotresearcher | Hacker News Reader

If the tech specs were the same, which form factor do you prefer:

https://i.imgur.com/dV7WHCD.jpg

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kfOpFgAZ4kfdK8vNUNMOlKjuYwc=...

I've owned both of these. They both have good specs for their time. The ThinkPad keyboard was wonderful. The trackpad of the MBP is wonderful but so is its size and shape. The ThinkPad was a brick.

You say no one cares about thin, but once you have seen the MBP, the ThinkPad is a hard sell. (Though you youngsters should try one of those keyboards to see what you missed).

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I think this is a bit of a disingenuous comparison. That ThinkPad looks to be around the mid 1990s (maybe early 2000s?). Meanwhile, if you looked at a modern ThinkPad (regardless of your opinion on Lenovo as a company), the keyboard is still category-leading, the weight is almost identical to a MacBook in the same class, and the thickness likewise. Look at, say, the X1 Extreme.

Replaceable RAM and SSD. 4.06 pounds. The MBP 15" is 4.03 pounds.

Now, the keyboard definitely isn't as good as it was (RIP old keyboard, may you rest in peace), but it's definitely still very competitive.

We agree. The fact that ThinkPads and MacBooks are both slim today suggests that people want slim laptops, contrary to the claim of the grandparent.

That TP 340 I bought in 1994. It was a marvel for its time and much more affordable than the contemporaneous Mac: a more stylish brick like so:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/540c_ope...

That's a Thinkpad 750 from 1993.

Either way, arguing against "consumers don't really care about having the thinnest brick on the market" by invoking early 90s hardware by comparison is of course a B/S way of arguing things.

I was arguing against "Noone cares about thin laptops." That's a direct quote and different from yours. Not 'thinnest', but 'thin'. Since almost the laptops went thin, someone cared about it.

Wow, the X1s have come a long way. Possibly the only non-Mac 15" with a tenkeyless right now.

X1 is 14". It's actually noticeably smaller than a MacBook Pro, other than thickness.

MacBook is actually really bad in the keyboard department when you consider that it's 15" - it has tiny up/down arrows, and no PgUp/PgDown/Home/End. Which is a shame, since these all would easily fit if speakers went elsewhere, and the touchpad was just a wee bit smaller (I mean, seriously, does it really need to be bigger than a 6" smartphone?). For a productivity laptop, these are very weird trade-offs.

Thinkpad X1 Extreme is 15.6"

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/Thi...

Ah, I see, I was thinking about the regular one. Yeah, this one looks like it could have a numpad without reducing the key size, although it would be a very tight fit at the edges.

The thing is that I don't want a tenkey keyboard.

Actually, the Dell XPS 15 has a 15" screen and a tenkeyless keyboard as well.

I don't think anybody truly believes "customers don't care at all" like your example illustrates.

But I think it's fair to say customers don't care about the last 2-3mm of thickness that Apple is sacrificing the ability to repair in order to squeeze out.

I've heard plenty of complaints from ultrabook owners that they find the "knife point edge" design that many of these have unconfortable to handle.

Generally speaking, maxizing a single aspect of a design is rarely a good choice. Making notebooks or smartphones as thin as possible (or pretending to do so, the strategies used here are borderline gaslighting) is not an intrinsic good.

The core of the nobody cares argument is that the utility of shrinking the device is incrementally less and the costs incurred are increasing incrementally more.

I had a Panasonic CF-Y5 back in the day, a 1.5kg 14" laptop (including a DVD burner!) https://www.notebooks-center.com/img/laptop/regular/laptop_p... and due to that screen protection hump it was some 1.5" thick overall. No need to drag the nineties into this. That sort of laptop, lightweight because of quality materials but enough space for cooling is what laptops should be.

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