Fingerprint sensors included in our notebooks / desktop computer keyboards (in combination with a clever software communicating with our Internet browsers) to finally get rid of typing/saving passwords for every online account is SO overdue. It's by far the safest, easiest and fastest way, we wouldn't even need password managers like 1Password anymore.
Unless you want every website to store your fingerprint (ok, a hash of your fingerprint), you'd still need password managers. Now, could websites and browsers communicate in a way that handles the equivalent of a password auto-fill in the background? Yes, but that has nothing to do with fingerprint sensors. There is good reason why on iOS devices the fingerprint (or rather a hash of it) is store in a physically separate part of the hardware that cannot be read by other parts of the hardware. What is stored locally cannot get into the wrong hands by hacking a server (and getting millions of datasets in one go). What is stored in a physically separate and inaccessible location cannot get into the wrong hands by hacking into the device.
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That's a damn fine looking machine. Weak points vs MacBook look to be battery life and screen resolution. Surprised they didn't put in a second USB port to avoid all the drama Apple is facing over their decision to go with just one.
The reason there is no (or much less) drama over ASUS shipping a laptop with only one USB port, is that if Apple offers a product, it is claimed that Apple is forcing people to follow the Apple way but when ASUS (or any other PC manufacturer) does, the answer is that nobody is forced to buy that model because there are plenty of other PC laptops to choose from.
A common complaint is that one might like the MacBook One screen but would like the MBA CPU and port selection (ie, Apple is not offering the combination of features one wants). With PC laptops, there is the notion that if you don't like the combination of features of a particular model, surely there must be a laptop out there that does have the wanted combination of features. But that notion is never really tested (not least because it is a lot of work to prove the absence of something, in this case the absence of a laptop with a specific set of features).
But the biggest unspoken element here is that a certain price point is often part of that desired set of features, which is another way of saying that people want something but don't want to pay for it.
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I don't get it why notebooks like these is able to put Intel Core i7 in it while the MacBook gets a crippled Intel Core M?
I remember the original MBA launch where SJ showed why netbooks is horrible and one of the points was Intel Atom (or along low powered processor or something) Guess what Apple, Core M is the new Atom, and you're using it in your MacBooks!
Maybe the answer is that the Core M isn't actually horrible. It's about as fast as a three-year-old MBA. Where those horrible?
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The screen!!!! When are they going to realise they need to match the MacBooks resolution!!! Ffs
Lower-res screen allows them to undercut the MB on price. They obviously thought that there is a demographic that values cost more than screen quality.
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About the only thing this has over the Macbook is that it has Thunderbolt, seriously Apple why didn't you put thunderbolt in?! and the i over the m processor. But just wait for another iteration or two and Intel will deliver lower power i5/i7's that can run fanless and these will be in the Macbook.
Intel has i5/i7 mobile CPU at three different TDP values: 15 W, 28 W, 45 W (Core M is 4.5 W). Their performance spans quite a wide range. Thus labelling something i5/i7 is merely saying that it is not in the lowest of four performance brackets.
