

Ultrabook: Intel's $300 million plan to beat Apple at its own game - jsnell
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2011/09/ultrabook-intels-300-million-plan-to-beat-apple-at-its-own-game.ars

======
raganwald
> Is the MacBook Air actually an Ultrabook? Intel told us that that's up to
> Apple—the MacBook Air is an Ultrabook in all but name.

Riiiiight, Apple’s marketing plan is to take a successful and strongly
differentiated product and then say it is interchangeable with its
competitors' products. Actually, they will say it is inferior because it lacks
goodies like VGA ports.

Joel Spolsky wrote a long time ago that companies like to commoditize their
complements[1]. Apple wants to commoditize the CPUs and the applications,
Intel wants to commoditize tablets and notebooks. Intel is going to fight like
a dog in a cage to get people to think that notebooks are all pretty much the
same, provided there’s an “Intel Inside” sticker plastered on the case.

Apple is not going to play along, period. Instead, they are busy trying to get
people to ignore the bits and pieces inside. How much RAM is in an iPhone? Who
makes it?? How fast is the CPU? Apple is working hard to make these questions
irrelevant for mobile devices, and Intel’s behaviour is going to encourage
them to do the same in notebooks.

I don’t see this article as being about Apple vs. the cloners. I see this
article as being about Intel vs. the entire notebook manufacturing sector,
with Apple being the biggest target.

[1]: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html>

~~~
mscarborough
No kidding.

I'm not an Apple fanboy but I use their laptop products. And according to the
author, they should completely change their keyboard layout to better support
UK-specific idioms (while ignoring other markets, but still keeping the
production costs all under $1000 per unit), as well as to accommodate at least
four new dedicated keys and a tiny mouse nipple.

That's just not going to happen.

~~~
ionfish
The missing # key _is_ annoying, although it's not the kind of thing that
would make me change operating systems. Apple's chosen shortcut for the '#'
character is Alt+3 which is frustrating for terminal users who use Alt as the
meta key—for example, it makes it hard to enter channel names in Irssi.

~~~
leon_
Get Ukelele and change the keys' locations. I did that for #, @, \ and |.

~~~
DrPizza
That's what I do on my MacBook Pro. It was much more palatable than discarding
years of typing experience.

I don't dispute that it works. But it does rather detract from, well, the
aesthetic elegance of the machine. Apple has these fancy backlit keyboards--
it's a great shame to make the keycaps wrong.

Plus, it also causes big problems when I let others use my machine. Hunt-and-
peckers don't stand a chance when your keys are mismatched. Though they
probably struggle even with the regular Apple layout--good luck finding # on
the keyboard, since Apple doesn't deign to print it. Sure, once you know it's
option-3 it's not so bad, but I don't know how you're meant to just figure
that out for yourself.

And the thing is, it's all just gratuitous. Apple's layout isn't in any
meaningful sense better. It's just... different.

~~~
jvdongen
... currently typing on a MBP with a clearly visible #, @, \ and | all
reachable by merely using shift.

Is this only an issue with a US keyboard layout perhaps (I've a Dutch layout)?

~~~
splidge
It's an issue on UK keyboards.

UK keyboards on PCs have a dedicated key for #/~, " is shift-2 and @ is
shift-'. £ (currency symbol) is shift-3.

On a Mac the " and @ are the wrong way round (shift-' and shift-2
respectively), and the key that should produce # instead generates \\. The
only way to get a # is option-3, which is not marked on the keys. The Mac "UK"
layout is basically the US layout with £/# reversed.

------
ctdonath
Yawn. (Admittedly at a glance...) They still don't get it.

Apple doesn't sell spec sheets. They sell end-to-end integrated systems. A 7
second boot time doesn't mean as much when it gets me to a relentless stream
of "the webpage you're at wants to open a webpage you trust - are you sure?"
and other user-unfriendly operations. Total experience sells. The iPad is
beating the pants of tablets with twice the specs - but half the user
experience.

Intel is aiming at where Apple is now. When Intel arrives there, Apple will
have moved on. Don't build what I want, build what I'm going to want a year
after I buy it a year from now.

And for that $300M plan, Apple has $30,000M cash to counter it. Get in the
right order of magnitude first before picking a fight.

~~~
sunchild
Having spent about 1 hour installing a clean copy of Snow Leopard and then
Lion, followed by a seven hour SNAFU trying to get Vista > Win 7 upgrade to
work on a Boot Camp partition, the misery of Windows is fresh in my mind.

In the Apple paradigm, I click on the Lion upgrade in the App Store (it knows
I already purchased it). It installs, and we're done – no reboot. Just a video
tutorial on new features.

In the Microsoft paradigm, I'm digging up DVD cases to manually type product
codes that require me to needlessy recreate my upgrade path and make decisions
about things like 32bit vs. 64bit. It's still installing Vista I type this,
and the progress bar has been stuck at 75% for about an hour. The user
experience: a scaled-up 640x480 installer that has been on the "Completing
installation..." step for two hours.

It baffles me why anyone would affirmatively seek out this experience. As for
the Intel "ultrabooks" – more vaporware from the 1990's-era PC industry. The
"rest of us" have moved onward and upward.

EDIT: Windows installer just spit the DVD out and froze. Can't move the mouse.
Time to start over! (I can almost hear them: Have you tried turning it on and
off again?)

EDIT 2: If anyone is following this, attempt #2 failed the same way. This is
hour 10 of trying to install Vista on a clean MacBook Pro 2010.

EDIT 3: Gave up and installed a VM through Fusion. Ironically, this is easier
than a native Windows install.

~~~
pilgrim689
"This is hour 10 of trying to install Vista on a clean MacBook Pro 2010."

Have you tried installing Lion on a non-Apple notebook? You seem to be making
a very unfair comparison.

~~~
sunchild
Why? Are other Intel-based laptops _better_ at installing Windows?

FYI – I've had Vista/Win7 installed on this machine before. It's a question of
how horrible the process is. Typing in product codes, inserting DVDs,
activation codes, warnings about anti-virus, etc.

~~~
sid0
Yes, _all_ of them are. Apple notebooks are the _worst_ at running Windows.

You don't have to type product codes -- you can install without one and
copy/paste from a text file works fine once you're all set up. You don't have
to insert DVDs, Windows installs fine from a USB stick (except on Apple
notebooks, so there). Installing Microsoft Security Essentials will shut up
any AV warnings.

Besides, you don't even need to install Vista to get an upgrade copy of
Windows 7 working. A Google search would have told you that.

~~~
sunchild
I don't get it. If my boot drive is wiped clean, what are the hardware
barriers that explain the differences that you point to?

EDIT: Not sure why I'm downvoted for asking this. Can anyone advise as to what
hardware issues would make a 2010 Macbook Pro more difficult to install
Windows on?

~~~
sid0
The EFI firmware with "legacy" BIOS support that Apple uses. It doesn't help
that Windows actually supports booting from UEFI but not the EFI 1.1 hack that
Apple uses.

~~~
sunchild
Thanks for pointing me to that. I wasn't able to determine the real-world
impact of the limited BIOS support.

Anyway, I use Windows for exactly one thing: accessing (horrible) web apps
that require IE. My original point was that the installation process is a mess
from the perspective of a licensed user – Apple hardware or not.

------
Adrock
Apple is always one step ahead of the game. All their competitors are
constantly trying to get to where Apple's products are, but by the time they
get there, Apple has moved on to something even better.

Intel is scared about Apple becoming the dominant PC maker, especially because
Apple has been using non-Intel chips in their new premier products (iPad and
iPhone). My guess is that Apple's next big move is to start selling something
in the laptop space that uses either the A5 processor or the next generation
of it, which I guess would be called the A6. This will be huge. Intel
processors are major power hogs and there's no way they can make them
significantly better. Apple is poised to release a laptop with the Air's form
factor that runs iOS on an A5 or A6 that Apple manufactures.

This could be an absolute coup if it happens. They will be selling something
like the 11" Mac Air for between $600 and $700, possibly less. It would have
sick battery life that nobody could touch. It will run all of the iPad apps,
have Safari and all of Apple's Office replacement software. The best part is
that nobody could compete with it, because the only way would be to also ditch
Intel's x86 processor, but there's no other OS or developer ecosystem that
could run on it. Maybe Android on an ARM processor. Microsoft has nothing
lined up in this space. They are dead in the water.

The best part is that you don't need Jobs to make this happen. What you need
is the manufacturing knowledge and capacity that someone like Cook can
deliver.

~~~
nl
_Intel processors are major power hogs and there's no way they can make them
significantly better._

This simply isn't true - or at least it ignores half the issue.

For their performance, Intel chips _aren't_ powerhogs. A i5 uses a lot more
power than a Tegra2/A5, but is a lot more powerful.

An Atom use a bit more power than Tegra2/A5, but is a bit more powerful.

Intel is pushing Atom down into ARM territory in terms of power usage, and ARM
is moving up towards Atom - and, to the surprise of no one who knows what they
are talking about - the power usage at the same level of performance is
roughly the same.

Arstechnica had an excellent article about this back when NVidia started
talking about their desktop ARM push:
[http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/02/nvidia-30-and-t...](http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/02/nvidia-30-and-
the-riscification-of-x86.ars)

A good quote:

 _It's also the case that as ARM moves up the performance ladder, it will
necessarily start to drop in terms of power efficiency. Again, there is no
magic pixie dust here, and the impact of the ISA alone on power consumption in
processors that draw many tens of watts is negligible. A multicore ARM chip
and a multicore Xeon chip that give similar performance on compute-intensive
workloads will have similar power profiles; to believe otherwise is to believe
in magical little ARM performance elves._

Intel isn't out of this game by a long shot. For example (Intel powered)
Chromebooks perform roughly as well as an iPad in terms of battery life. There
is little evidence that an ARM powered Airbook would do any better if it
offered similar levels of performance (unless you believe in the magical ARM
performance elves mentioned above).

~~~
crander
The biggest concern Intel has is that moving down market, shrinking products
and lowering margins almost never works in any industry when a disruptive
competitor is moving upmarket into the same space (Innovator's Delimma).

If Intel could move down market successfully don't you think we would have
seen a reasonable IA facsimile of an iPhone or an iPad after all these years?

Soon everyone on earth, except perhaps the bottom billion poorest, with have
Internet access via ARM and Intel will peak at the top 2-3 billion. That's
what scares the hell out of them.

ARM,as a mobile optimized architecture, will never compete on performance
grounds with IA. IA is the push rod V8 of computing and ARM is the hybrid.

~~~
nl
_If Intel could move down market successfully don't you think we would have
seen a reasonable IA facsimile of an iPhone or an iPad after all these years?_

No, chip design doesn't work that quickly. Intel has accelerated their
development program for Atom[1], but at the moment Intel doesn't have a
processor that competes at the power usage of current smart phones. Atom is
supposed to get there in 2012 - they are usually pretty reliable (see Intel's
Tick/Tock strategy[2]), but we'll see.

They are planning to do 22nm Atoms in 2013, and 14nm in 2014. TSMC is supposed
to start shipping ARM on 28nm in Q4 2011[3], but historically they are usually
late. TSMC is allegedly planning a 20nm fab, but it is unclear how far off
that is.

Nokia (remember them?) was signed up to do smartphones on Atom in 2012, but
then they switched to WinMo (which is ARM only).

I personally don't think they'll do well in smartphone, but tablets is a whole
other market.

 _ARM,as a mobile optimized architecture, will never compete on performance
grounds with IA_

That's not what nVidia think[4]. There are 32/64bit issues with ARM, but
beyond that there is little in the _architecture_ itself that means it can't
compete with IA.

[1] [http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4216089/Intel-
rewrit...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4216089/Intel-rewrites-
Atom-road-map)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Tick-Tock>

[3]
[http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20110201212245_TS...](http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20110201212245_TSMC_Reaffirms_Plans_to_Ship_28nm_Chips_Commercially_in_Q4.html)

[4] [http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/nvidia-announces-
project-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/nvidia-announces-project-
denver-arm-cpu-for-the-desktop/)

~~~
ssp
The problem for Intel is not so much that they can't make a competitive chip,
but that they can't make one at margins that will sustain their fabs.

~~~
nl
I think it's premature to say that.

Intel has the best fabs in the world, and they can make chips as cheaply as
anyone.

It is possible that at some point in the future Intel's margins won't sustain
the continual investment in new fabs. That's a fair way off at the moment
though.

------
crenshaw
The big thing the article misses is most people who buy PCs don't want a
MacBook Air. Or rather, they don't want to pay for a MacBook Air. If they did,
they'd already own one.

My cousin was just looking at laptops -- most she'll pay is $400. Even $799 is
a luxury machine. Apple skims the users who are willing to pay more for
intangibles. The PC market just isn't flush with users who want to pay $1000
for a laptop -- regardless of battery life and form factor. Just ask Dell and
it's 10mm Adamo, which may have sold more poorly than the JooJoo.

~~~
dagw
Had the Adamo been $1000 it would have sold amazingly well. The problem was it
was close to $2000.

------
mgkimsal
There's something that gets missed in most of these discussions, and it makes
me think that _no one_ will be able to stop Apple's growth for many many
moons. I don't know if there's a particular business word for this, but for
me, it's 'trust'.

When buying a Macbook, I know I'll be able to get parts and service for it -
often from a local Apple store - for several years. If I buy a Dell N5040
today, and need service for it 2 years from now, will I be able to get it?
Dell's got a reputation for good service for _businesses_ , but that's because
they're paying a lot extra for service contracts and such.

Looking at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Inspiron> then looking at
<http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-laptops> \- I don't see some of the Dell
models on the Wikipedia site (granted, they may not be 100% up to date all the
time) but I also see a long litany of model variations, none of which inspire
much confidence in me. With all the differing parts that change between
models, will _Dell_ even be able to get the same parts for my model in, say, 3
years?

Some of this is just trust in the brand - I know Apple's changed their macbook
lineup several times, but rarely enough to warrant an entirely new name change
- usually just spec upgrades. There's a certain amount of trust I and many
other friends seem to have in Apple because of the simplicity of the product
line. Yes, it's better for Apple as well, to streamline cost/operations, but
from my standpoint simpler == less cognitive dissonance. I say this as someone
who grew tired of building my own desktops years ago, speccing out parts (and
trying to find linux drivers for them during my linux years), and have gone
more mobile. There's usually far less "build it yourself" in the laptop world,
so you go with what's available from manufacturers. Apple's models have a
consistency between them and over time which builds confidence in the brand
itself, not just any one particular model.

Trying to compete on specs with new models being introduced quarter to quarter
will _not_ work - Apple competitors need to rethink their long term strategy
if they want to win back customers. I still run Windows sometimes, but I don't
need a dedicated Windows machine from HP/Lenovo/Dell to do it on, and I'm not
sure what would ever get me back to that camp.

Would I pay a 'premium' price for a Lenovo? Possibly, but there's gotta be a
bigger faith in the brand, and I don't have that right now.

~~~
vacri
This is nonsense. It's buying into the Apple mythology. Having supplied Dells
at a previous company, yes, they stock parts for several years. They're
reasonable PCs for the price point, but the build quality isn't great. At
least with a dell you have the option of servicing it yourself - I've got half
an office of mac users here who aren't too keen with the lead times on Genius
Bar servicing. They all (well, mostly all) love Apple gear, but their stories
about getting service are actually pretty mundane.

 _I say this as someone who grew tired of building my own desktops years ago,
speccing out parts (and trying to find linux drivers for them during my linux
years), and have gone more mobile._

Building your own PC these days is nothing like it used to be. Buy
mobo+cpu+ram, buy gpu if you're a gamer, done. Everything pretty much just
works together, not like the old days. Pretty much everything is on the mobo.
Linux supports almost everything these days, too - _almost_ gone are the days
when you had to chime in with 'ah, but does it support linux?'

 _Would I pay a 'premium' price for a Lenovo?_

I would. I love their laptops. They take a licking and keep on ticking.
Unfortunately the dream run came to an end recently - I bought an x201 and the
screen is absolutely woeful. The viewing angle is so narrow that I can't watch
a movie without some of the blacks being wrong, despite sitting square in
front of the screen. It's not so bad with non-blacks, but with the light bleed
and visual angle issues... ugh...

~~~
protomyth
"they stock parts for several years"

I have some experience buying servers from Dell and I gotta say that I don't
believe their hype about being supplied with parts long term. We got hosed
pretty bad when we couldn't buy power supplies. Their sales staff refusal to
treat the place I worked as an educational institution (2 year accredited
college) was just icing on the cake.

~~~
vacri
I guess the story is that service in most places kinda sucks. The mac guys in
my office report losing their laptops - their business machines - for several
weeks for what should be simple repairs (hard drive replacement and the like),
with no replacement offered.

There was a study on laptop repairs done a year ago or so, reported on
Slashdot, that said the repair rate was the same for Dell and Apple, both of
which were the middle of the pack. The best laptops in terms of repair rate
were Asus, Toshiba, and one other I can't remember - I don't think it was
Lenovo. I can't recall who was the tailender for that study, either, sorry.

I can also say that while Toshiba make nice laptops, when you need support you
really need a crowbar to get them to help you if you're out of warranty - they
won't even talk to you (even "Where can I find a link to a manual" simple
stuff) until you pony up money beforehand. At least that was the case ~5 years
ago or so in Aus.

~~~
safeaim
Is this the study you're referring to?
[http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/315387/asus_apple_pr...](http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/315387/asus_apple_provide_most_reliable_pcs_survey_says/)

~~~
vacri
Nope, that's not _laptops_ \- it was specifically a laptop study.

The slashdot story may have been representing this article, but I honestly
can't recall [http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/laptop-reliability-
survey...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/laptop-reliability-survey-asus-
and-toshiba-win-hp-fails/)

------
cletus
For people who have been following the tech scene since the 80s, the evolution
of the tech space is bordering on hilarious.

In the 80s, Apple was dominant in the GUI space. Windows 3.1 put a huge dent
in this. By the time Windows 95 came out, Apple was essentially dead.

During all this, Intel and Microsoft had an uneasy marriage of convenience.
They were dependent on each other but had clear lines of separation between
hardware and software.

Microsoft tried to branch out. The original versions of NT ran on other
architectures, like Alpha and MIPS. Under Steve Jobs (many may remember that
Steve Jobs was only interim CEO for years after the NeXT purchase while the
Apple board searched for a replacement for Gil Amelio).

5+ years ago, with a resurgent Apple in the PC space, Apple abandoned Motorla
for Intel, killing the PowerPC in all but name. Microsoft had long since
abandoned all the non-x86 architectures.

Intel was so dominant that they sold their low-power chip division (XScale)
and seemed to have an answer for low cost computer devices in the form of the
Atom as the netbook market just exploded.

Intel basically discounted any device smaller than this. So did Microsoft.
Apple completely transformed the mobile space with the iPhone and then the
iPad, catapulting ARM from a niche embedded product to something eating away
at Intel from the bottom end, potentially threatening their entire business.

In the 90s the churn of forced obsolescence made MS and Intel a lot of money
and solved a lot of problems. There were no old versions of Windows to support
as the market for PCs was growing at a huge rate and hardware just didn't last
that long.

Now the CPU power that the average user needs has plateaued. Any PC made in
the last 5 years (maybe longer) will be fine for most people. The trend now is
towards lower power and more mobility, which is why ARM is a strategic threat
to Intel.

It's incredibly funny ("the ironing is delicious" as Bart would say) that
Apple is now one of Intel's biggest customers while being the driver to the
threat to Intel.

And now Microsoft, once an unstoppable juggernaut, just doesn't get it when
Ballmer describes tablets as "just another form factor". They failed for 10
years to make tablets just another way to sell more Windows licenses. They're
still kicking that dead horse with Windows 8.

All the while Apple is making money hand over fist and HP, Dell, etc are
struggling to make a buck or, in HP's case, getting out of the PC business
entirely.

All of these companies try to imitate Apple releasing vaguely copycat products
but none of them get it. They're engaged in what I call "shotgun marketing" as
they have no idea what the market wants and just fire off a shotgun blast,
hoping something will stick.

Only Apple seems willing or able to put the consumer first. The Apple-haters
will I'm sure violently disagree with some or all of this.

Microsoft I believe will continue a very long but now inevitable slide into
irrelevance (companies that large take many years to die). The jury is still
out on Intel.

The only companies that seem to have a long future ahead of them are Apple,
Google and _maybe_ Facebook.

~~~
ansy
A few nits to pick...

1) PowerPC is pretty alive and well. The Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii (U), and
Playstation 3 all use PowerPC chips. There are a lot of these. IBM's Linux/AIX
servers are all PowerPC and IBM incidentally makes the chips for the above
game consoles as well. Not to mention the number of PowerPC chips in cars and
other embedded devices dwarfs all the above in units sold.

2) Intel (probably) got out of the Xscale game not just because of hubris, but
because it was necessarily enriching its competitor through licensing fees of
the ARM architecture. Unless Intel could buy ARM, which it couldn't due to
anti-trust, it should probably seek out a home grown solution instead of
sealing its fate as another fab for ARM's designs. I'm not sure Intel didn't
see the writing on the wall, it just failed to execute on a solution. Intel
was probably very wary of trying to make a new architecture after the failure
of the Itanium so it concentrated its efforts on a low powered x86 aka Atom.
Unfortunately this was and still is a colossal failure. Intel still has no
products for low powered devices and the arguments for an x86 solution are
starting to fall apart fast.

3) Apple's success is a culmination of Steve Job's vision and Tim Cook's
operational mastery. Apple's products before Tim Cook were beautifully
designed, over priced, and under performing. Apple's product line without
Steve Jobs was boring and unappealing. These last few years have been a golden
age for Apple. To expect things to only get better from here would be to place
all the emphasis on the company and ignore people inside it, not to mention
history. I expect Tim Cook to keep Apple in a very competitive place while
he's around, but companies have a tendency to lose their way. Just ask HP.

~~~
supercanuck
Regarding #1, The video game console market is in decline and has been since
2009.

~~~
sherkund
Um, what do you mean by "decline"? That the rate of growth has plateaued (
<http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38279676/ns/today-today_tech/> )? Or something
else?

I'm not trying to be a pissant, I just haven't heard such an opinion before.

------
notatoad
if the PC makers want to make a successful air replacement, they have to
realize that apple makes their designs clean and small by sacrificing things.
you can't support all the legacy PC hardware all the time. the supposed
ultrabooks i've seen posted on engadget this past week still have VGA ports,
ffs. that's not a thin & light component. also, 1366x768 needs to die in a
fire.

------
artursapek
Funny to see this in the news today after yesterday I scoured stores all day
looking for a good PC laptop for school (with a few models already in mind),
determined to end up with a PC and not a Mac (for software reasons), and
eventually caved for a Macbook Pro anyway. It's true that there is no good
middle-ground PC laptop with potential for performance and efficient design,
most models I looked at were over-sized tanks. The industrial design language
was mostly just carelessness. I wish Intel luck with this venture. They seem
to share the same frustration as I.

In regards to this Brit, it sounds like his only option is to just keep using
his Thinkpad if he wants to stay happy. Such inflexibility.

------
jeffool
Maybe I'm crazy... But why are puerile still trying to catch up with Apple? Go
off in a new direction. Integrate the PC into the home entertainment system
like thirty promised all those years ago.

Give me a tower I can hook up to a 1080p TV, give someone a million dollars to
create a lap board that doesn't suck, and give me a wireless kbm to set on a
desk somewhere in case I want that experience.

Also, give me a wireless touch monitor, that can double as a tablet in the
house, or even a smart remote for my home entertainment system. Maybe even let
me access my data over wifi... But that's just aiming high for a first
generation product. Anecdotal evidence tells me most ipad owners don't even
take them out that often.

And if I can think of this, someone at these companies can think of something
even better than "follow the leader."

------
rdl
My main takeaway from this article is to be glad to be from the US vs. UK;
almost all of his concerns were UK specific (crappy Apple UK keyboard layout;
bad websites for UK products).

~~~
archangel_one
The websites don't seem to be a UK specific problem; dell.com offers me the
same kind of annoying choice between "Design and Performance", "Everyday
Computing" and "Thin and Powerful". Plus there's the stupid home/business
distinction which offers even more options...

Also, does anyone else find the apparently marketing-led commandment to
describe all laptops as 'less than 1" thin' (rather than the more usual
"thick") incredibly awkward?

~~~
rdl
I guess I've followed thinkpads long enough to know 1) the "X" series is the
small fast kind, T-series is the normal kind, W kind is workstation-type, and
the rest can be ignored and 2) all non-apple non-thinkpad laptops can be
safely ignored.

~~~
watmough
The Dell Precisions are, or at least were, huge and ugly, but very very solid
performers with ultra hires screens. Think MacBook Pro made by Dell.

I carted one around for ages, and it ran like a tank. Awesome machine.

There's at least one other option not in the ignore pile.

~~~
rdl
That's true -- I was tempted by them (and they came with trackpoints, too).
Also there were specific models of HP which were nice, and some of the Sony
laptops were "ultrabook" before the macbook air. But, in general, only the
thinkpad is consistently good, and only the T/X/W category.

------
mscarborough
I don't understand the point of this article. It could have benefited from
some editing by someone who knew more about the subject.

On the first page, the author complains about having to type 'our' instead of
'or' for some British spellings, key mapping requirements, inclusion of the
TouchPad but exclusion of a TrackPoint (keyboard nipple), Macbooks not having
dedicated home/end/page up/down keys (which is just function + each arrow key,
and should not really require four extra dedicated buttons), Bootcamp not
being good enough to run multiple versions of Windows, etc...

I can't speak to the # symbol being on a different key, but the author
complains about not having the return key taking 3 spots instead of two. And
framing that as some kind of US-centric thing!

Plenty of keyboards designed for the US use a giant return key, and others do
not. It's a design and user choice issue which optimizes for space, not some
conscious US-centric, ignoring-international-design-standards type of
decision.

~~~
pat2man
I was following along until he said he loved the TrackPoint. No one who uses
one of those can be taken seriously.

~~~
jseliger
Why? I like them: they're much more precise, in my experience, than trackpads.
And I say this as someone with MacBook who, if he could get one with a nipple
mouse, would.

------
nl
(Regarding premium PCs):

 _Dell, with the purchase of Alienware and with its in-house XPS brand, and
HP, which bought VoodooPC, have both tried to carve out premium niches. At one
time or another, both of these bought-in brands were producing gaming-oriented
hardware. Though this makes some sense—PC gamers tend to have relatively high
hardware demands, and so aren't going to be satisfied by bargain basement
prices—but it also leaves the products marginalized, with styling that's not
exactly mainstream (especially in Dell's case) and website promotion that
leaves them segregated._

This is _so_ true. I want a _good looking_ laptop that doesn't look like a
Macbook. Gaming laptops are horrible, but I want the features.

HP has some reasonable looking laptops, and so does Samsung, but both fall
into the "make a nice case then cover it with stickers" thing. I realize they
get paid for it, but _please_! I'd pay $50 for no stickers...

~~~
innes
I'd peel those stickers off for you, for $49.

------
ghempton
I use an Air as my primary dev machine. I love it, but my allegiance has
nothing to do with OS X. In fact, I would kill for a laptop with Air's form
factor that was running Ubuntu as the primary OS.

~~~
bergie
The Air runs Ubuntu pretty well. I only saw OS X on my 2010 11" on the initial
boot and never since :-)

~~~
2mur
How's the battery life compared to OSX?

~~~
bergie
Slightly worse, I get about 3-4 hours.

------
samyvilar
Apple might eventually place an A chip, maybe A6 on it's MacBook air, if
intels upcoming ivy bridge doesn't live up to it expectation, which I doubt it
won't, the new 3d transistors are awesome! The pressure that apple has placed
on intel is quite serious and I thank them for that to long has intel made
power hungry chips!

This ultra books are meant to compete against tablets which are growing quite
fast and where intel has no solution yet afaik, I say take that 300 million
dollars and invest in even more efficient and powerful architectures that
could be placed in tablets and smartphones!

------
Dramatize
Ultrabook? They couldn't think of a better name? Sounds straight out of the
early 2000's.

~~~
marshray
Would you have preferred them to name it after some river you've never heard
of?

~~~
Dramatize
Ultrabrook?

------
twodayslate
The Toshiba Portege has been out for a while and can compete with the macbook
air right now. It's expensive but gets the job done.

~~~
adamc
That's a good point, and you can get one below $800 (Core i5), although I
doubt it's thin enough to meet the ultrabook spec. But some of what they are
aiming at is styling, no? Have only seen it in pictures, but it didn't make me
think of a MacBook Air. It wasn't beautiful.

------
jeffthebear
I'm guessing even if they do make a laptop like the Air it will probably come
preloaded with a ton of crapware that nobody wants, utility programs that take
over functions I would rather have Windows maintain, and lots of stickers
telling consumers what features it has that will inevitably become obsolete.

------
cageface
The gratuitous variety of models offered by PC manufacturers is definitely a
problem. If I'm confused by all the overlapping options I can only imagine how
difficult this must be for non-technical people to understand. Apple is
careful to steer you through two or three meaningful choices instead.

------
three14
Anyone know where to find a laptop with a screen with something x 900
resolution, 8G RAM, and a non-crazy markup for an SSD? Preferably without
various other upgrades that drive the price to $2000? Thanks for any tips.

~~~
silverlake
A used Vaio Z.

------
MatthewPhillips
Don't Macbook Air's run on intel chips?

~~~
sliverstorm
Perhaps today, but Intel might be getting a little nervous about the A4 and
the A5

~~~
RyanKearney
Ah, it will be the PPC -> x86 mess all over again. Can't wait!

~~~
nicholasjbs
Apple seems to be getting better at this: The transition from 68k to PPC was a
nightmare. The transition from PPC to x86 was surprisingly smooth.

I bet the next one will be close to seamless.

~~~
ams6110
They had already had NEXTSTEP running on 68k, SPARC (I think) and i386 before
Apple bought NeXT. Architecture independence has been baked in all along.

~~~
protomyth
HP-RISC also. The old compatibility guide was kinda big to get faxed to you.

------
timjahn
I'm constantly amazed at how these companies spend all their time, energy, and
money on copying Apple, or trying to catch up to Apple.

Maybe throw all those resources at innovating?

------
Triumvark
Ok, the OEMs offer such customizability that it hurts margins and offers a
silly customer experience.

But they might have chased this model for a more complex reason than "all
these companies are idiots."

Maybe OEMs found, with the ubiquity of components, that if they don't compete
with customization, they invite competition from homebuilt PCs, or PCs built
and shipped out of some guy's basement. Maybe they're walking an awkward
tightrope which Apple avoids by making its own OS.

------
dhruvasagar
I couldn't agree more! I ended up settling for a Dell XPS laptop instead,
although I was contemplating buying a macbook pro and hope to get comfortable
on it. I am glad I didn't go ahead with it, there are so many such simple but
significant differences in a mac that just don't seem to justify spending time
trying to get comfortable with a machine when I can easily get a better one at
half the price and not have to spend any effort on getting comfortable with
it.

------
rfugger
Lenovo's Thinkpad T420s does a pretty decent thin-and-light (under 4 lbs.) for
Macbook Air prices, with a bigger screen:

<http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/t-series/t420s>

~~~
initself
To the point of the author, the only difference between all the different
types of T420s series systems is CPU and GPU. Why list all the other
components in a list when they are all exactly the same?

------
justin_vanw
Makes sense. Intel would certainly want people to use PC laptops that use
intel chips throughout, rather than Apple computers that use intel chips
throughout.

Don't interrupt, it's on a website, it must make sense somehow.

------
rrrazdan
So Apple should accommodate your special layout and your mouse nipple, and yet
the PC manufacturers that do so should change and standardize their systems. I
don't get it.

------
dhughes
I once heard or read "competing with a rival gets you nowhere at best you're
equal, to succeed you have to be better you have to excel beyond what they
do."

------
wtracy
Any startups thinking of using this as an opportunity to get funded by Intel
and break into the computer hardware industry?

------
entrepreneurial
Okay, so there is one customer who is buying this new Anti-Airbook... Any
others??? Don't think that there are many people searching, and I quote, "to
find a 13" MacBook Air that isn't made by Apple." You have to just laugh this
off...

~~~
adamc
Oh, I don't know. Not anti-, exactly, but... I'm typing this on a 13" Macbook
Pro. But I have bootcamp installed to play games, and I often use remote
desktop to other machines -- I'd certainly be open to buying an ultrabook. I
like the more common PC key arrangements better (particularly home, back, and
delete keys, rather than just a delete key).

He's right, though, that's it's difficult to even find competitive machines in
that space; I've been looking. I'll probably wait a month or two and see what
(if anything) develops, then give up and buy a Macbook Air.

~~~
NaOH
_I like the more common PC key arrangements better (particularly home, back,
and delete keys, rather than just a delete key)._

In case you don't know, FN+Left/Right Arrow gives you Home/End and FN+Up/Down
Arrow provides Page Up/Down. Unfortunately, Apple removed these key markings a
few years. And FN+Delete provides Forward-Delete.

~~~
adamc
Yeah, I know, but having to hit FN isn't as convenient. Thanks, though.

------
rokhayakebe
I am waiting for someone to make a great notebook with _detachable_ keyboard.
It's a notebook. It's an ipad. It's a notepad.

~~~
nmridul
Asus has one.. Or you could go for some of the tablets with docking station...

[http://www.amazon.com/Transformer-TF101-A1-10-1-Inch-
Tablet-...](http://www.amazon.com/Transformer-TF101-A1-10-1-Inch-Tablet-
Computer/dp/B004U78J1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315279063&sr=8-1)

------
wavephorm
Someone should remind him the original Macbook Air came out in Jan 2008. The
PC industry isn't even trying to catch up with Apple anymore. They're trying
to catch to where Apple was three and a half years ago. It's like the iPhone
all over again, but this time applied to laptops.

------
georgieporgie
Every time I think about Wintel laptops, I'm reminded of this piece:

[http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/simplicity_is_highly_overrated.htm...](http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/simplicity_is_highly_overrated.html)

(summary: people buy things with more knobs and lights because the illusion of
control gives them the impression that it is more powerful)

My Toshiba Satellite has five LEDs in a row on the front. Three of them are on
continuously (one turns orange, I think, when it sleeps). One represents hard
disk activity, though Task Manager's I/O graph is vastly more useful. One of
them has never turned on. I have no idea what it's for. It has an icon above
it that sort of looks like a piece of paper. I'm sure someone at Toshiba
thought it was a good idea to forgo the anti-reflective screen coating in
favor of a few more LEDs. "Consumers will love all the extra power afforded by
the paper-light!" he said.

~~~
FxChiP
> One of them has never turned on. I have no idea what it's for. It has an
> icon above it that sort of looks like a piece of paper.

Totally off-topic, but have you happened to start a print job on your machine
and look at that light on Windows? That's my closest guess.

~~~
georgieporgie
I think it might actually represent the built-in SD reader, which at least
makes sense, though it's still useless to me.

