Hacker News Reader

Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

I've never used a Macbook Air before, but now that I look at its keyboard... wow. I think accidentally pressing the power button because it looks and feels just like the other keys on the keyboard is a bad design. The one on my laptop is isolated from all the other keys, looks and feels very differenet, and recessed to prevent accidental activation.

View on HN

Sometimes I wonder if they moved the power key there just because they couldn't figure out anything else to do with the now-defunct eject button on optical-drive-less machines, as opposed to there being any problem with the old location just above and to the right of the keyboard.

I don't really like it either.

It's also cost reduction: why install an extra dedicated switch in the top case when you could reuse one of the keyboard's keys instead? I'm sure if they wanted to, they could come up with some other, less disruptive function to map to a key there.

The entire machine is milled out of an aluminium block. "Cost reduction" is utterly irrelevant when you're burning through cutting heads like that.

I think it's a terrible, terrible design. I was working on a new Retina Powerbook last week, and I pushed the power key within my first ten minutes. It should not be trivially easy to bring your productivity to a screeching halt.

The soldered RAM is annoying - I'm OK with my computer being a complex tool, not an appliance. The excuse of the soldered RAM to up-sell if you want 16 GB of memory is insulting. The power button is idiotic. Apple wants me to pay three grand for a laptop that can be turned off instantaneously by an overly curious pet?

Really?

Really?

  > It should not be trivially easy to bring your productivity
  > to a screeching halt.

Screeching halt? What heppended, your computer just shut down instantly?

RTFA, particularly the second paragraph.

Apple isn't "upselling" you. They're simply charging you for more RAM, and only more RAM, if you want to buy more RAM. They aren't forcing you to upgrade anything else (this actually would count as an upsell); the RAM can be upgraded independently at the time of purchase.

Furthermore, if you want a really thin laptop and you want them to cut weight from the design and you want the design to be extremely tough (and most of us do), one thing you run out of space for pretty quickly is multiple RAM sockets.

I'm frankly ok with paying for the 16 GB now or never.

> the RAM can be upgraded independently at the time of purchase.

FWIW, RAM cannot be upgraded on newer Macbook models, incl. the retina mentioned. The RAM is soldered on.

I want to agree with you, because what you say is eminently reasonable. But I've never, ever, ever accidentally hit the power button. And I don't consider myself a particularly good typist.

The CR-48 (Google's test chromebook) had the same problem. The last function key was the power button, and it was right above backspace. One accidental move and it fell asleep. It was really the only problem I had with that computer.

On my non retina macbook pro, it's the eject CD key instead; which isn't quite as annoying but still bewildering.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com