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Dell (and Others) Trying to Catch Up with Apple's Style

In my opinion, the Dell XPS One's design does not measure up to the iMac at all. It just isn't cohesive and with the speakers sticking out the sides (while it may be better for sound quality) I really think it detracts from the design. While Dell is showing some signs of life in their design department, the Dell XPS One really just doesn't measure up to the iMac in my opinion.
 
iMac

11800506 said:
In my opinion, the Dell XPS One's design does not measure up to the iMac at all. It just isn't cohesive and with the speakers sticking out the sides (while it may be better for sound quality) I really think it detracts from the design. While Dell is showing some signs of life in their design department, the Dell XPS One really just doesn't measure up to the iMac in my opinion.
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I second that.......... looks cheap, angular, and flimsy. Looks like a DELL.
 
At the time, Dell only employed 6 designers, but this number has been increasing in recent years and is up to 90 as of today.

Rampant wannabe-ism.

The problem with Dell and other PC makers (and for that matter, Microsoft) isn't their lack of designers, but their lack of design philosophy. I try to make this point with Windows fans when they claim that Vista is just as nice looking as OS X so we Mac users have nothing to gripe about anymore and should shut up. It's not that it's just as nice looking, but rather that Microsoft borrowed every idea in Vista from some other source (mostly OS X, but elsewhere too.) It's not the design elements per se that people respond to. It's the design philosophy that leads a company to discover that kind of thing.

When I read that Dell is hiring loads of designers, I know where it's going. A pool of designers will just descend into committee-based thinking and will produce bland, uninteresting products that ape whatever is popular at the moment. A single designer or two with a real design philosophy, a truly developed aesthetic, is what these companies need if they're serious about it.
 
law guy said:
crystal_overview1.jpg


This, whatever it is, could be beautiful. Instead, it's busy - too many elements interfering with the tranquility of the glass. Whoever threw it together took the design from a glasstop table from B&B Italia, which is a clear glass rip version of an Arne Jacobsen table design from 1958. I'm definitely of the old school Mies Van Der Rohe less is more design philosophy.

Now, if it had just been a clean, clear, beautiful piece of glass...we'd be talkin'.
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Is good that other companies are more aware of their product design. After all, technologies under the case are pretty much the same across the board. Big prop to Dell.
 
some competition will do apple good i think. Hopefully they'll come up with some new products and update their existing ones.
 
It's not just PC companies who are being influenced by apple. I work for a company which designs and engineers stuff (not computers) and the ID dept worship Jon Ives and apple. So much so that apple design ques are everywhere. Trouble is, everything is starting to look like the ipod mini, (full rad curves etc) ie i was out when a lot of the stuff released now was first on the drawing board. It's no way to go, what companies should do is evolve their own style, copying others only looks desperate and dated especially as apple new ipods look nothing like their old ones. I love Industrial Design but companies should find heir own voice.

Look at Lexus who blatantly copy BMW-their image is forever tarnished as plagerists (which they quite obviously are)
 
Don't get me wrong, I love OS X but Apple hardware design leaves a lot to be desired. Put OS X on the HP nw8440 chassis and you have a design that will take Apple past 7% market share.
 
Dell have improved. at least their stuff isnt ugly as it used to be.

But Dell just seem to copy cat Mac or even Vaio (glass and small laptop design). Doesnt give their designs much substance and weight. Something which Apple always manage.
 
this is good news people

Competition is a good thing. Having other companies trying to one up Apple on a design level will only force better products from Apple.
 
The XPS One really does look like a solid offer from Dell, and on many occasions I've been able to fully recommend Dell computers to people, particularly their Latitude computers (as I find them to be solid as rocks). However, I can't bring myself to recommend this. Design aside, it's just a poor deal compared to the rest of the XPS lineup, even if this is an all-in-one, but then, being an all-in-one, it's easily bested by the iMac in terms of sheer value. The iMac can just as well run Windows, but the sad part is that it does so for less money, even if one opted for VMware Fusion, so that they can run both OS's simultaneously, and has discrete graphics across the board. This alone totally blows apart these hokey claims that Macs are always more expensive yet offer less. I will give Dell credit for putting Blu-Ray disc as a BTO option in this machine though.

As for design, this thing looks better on paper (or computer screen) than it does in person. There's just no rhyme or reason about the looks of it, and those flashy glowing buttons on the side really detract from the overall look, especially the crescent that represents a disc when it's inserted. That is just too cheesy for words.

I'm not sure what Mossberg is talking about. There just doesn't seem to be much about this that makes it any better than the iMac whatsoever.
 
As soon as I saw the television ad for the Dell XPS 1, I loudly proclaimed to my family that it was a total copy of apples architecture and design. It still doesnt compare, our iMac is beautiful, their dell is just a slimmer "dull" computer.

Bastards, they realized people like beautiful machines.:apple:
 
whit1009 said:
Why doesn't Dell, and other computer companies try to make something better than Apple, rather than copying it!
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Because they're pushing volume, not style. They may not be as pretty, but they sell in far greater numbers. They also generally have shorter product life-cycles then Apple - around six months (when a new CPU series is released) versus the twelve to twenty-four months of Apple. So they can't necessarily invest in a more "boutique/unique" form factor and both recover the costs plus generate the necessary RoI that Apple can with their much longer sales periods.

Although price might hurt how fast this happens, I would not be surprised one bit if the Dell XPS One starts to outsell the iMac on a monthly basis and then overtakes it in total units sold.
 
flashframe said:
This, whatever it is, could be beautiful. Instead, it's busy - too many elements interfering with the tranquility of the glass. Whoever threw it together took the design from a glasstop table from B&B Italia, which is a clear glass rip version of an Arne Jacobsen table design from 1958. I'm definitely of the old school Mies Van Der Rohe less is more design philosophy.
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The Dell display could be even more spartan, but it already reminds me of a Mies Van Der Rohe design. Here's a photo I took last year of the lobby of one of the towers at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. (He designed the lobby and its furniture as well as the buildings themselves.)

But Apple's own designs can be compared to Mies Van Der Rohe as well. Here's a Mac stock photo compared with my photo of the outside of the Lake Shore building.
 

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homeboy said:
Welcome to earth dell. With exceptional service and a great level of customization they have most targeted businesses and upper middle class consumers. With the pale and very boring designs they have neglected the traditional home user.

Thankfully they have realized why their computers aren't a hot topic amongst the cool kids. They are walking on the right path now, the XPS and MX1530 looks really good. But since many here are apple fan boys you will use this thread to bash Dells instead. All they need now is a design chief to create a uniform design or image for their future computers.
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I'm not a fanboy, but you will probably construe the following in that light anyway, because you're an antifanboy.

These new Dell designs are not clever, or interesting, or even aesthetically appealing. They are bulky and rigid, with harsh angles and wasted space, and they did very little to make it look like they weren't ripping off the imac wholesale.

None of this really matters to me. What annoys me is the commercial that they're airing now. This commercial features the "imac killer" sitting in the middle of a room that is modeled like a museum, with computers sitting on top of white pedestals. All the other computers in the room are the beige boxes of the 80's and 90's, and a wrecking ball is exploding them.

The ad is meant to imply that Dell is somehow "blowing up" those old, boring PC companies with their "fresh and exciting" new design. But in fact, Dell is the company responsible for all of those old, boring computers, because Dell was always too arrogant to compete against Apple directly and they just contently dominated the commodity PC market competing directly against other uninspired companies like HP, Gateway, and Acer on economies of scale, supply chain management, etc. They didn't compete on product at all, they just competed on business model.

Now that Apple is moving past them, they are pulling their head out of their butt and racing to copy the company that they arrogantly ignored for years. There is still not true innovation, however; these new designs are just a crossbreed between the black/silver design they've had for about 5 years now and the imac computer-behind-screen concept.
 
flashframe said:
law guy said:
http://i.dell.com/images/global/products/monitors/crystal_overview1.jpg

This, whatever it is, could be beautiful. Instead, it's busy - too many elements interfering with the tranquility of the glass. Whoever threw it together took the design from a glasstop table from B&B Italia, which is a clear glass rip version of an Arne Jacobsen table design from 1958. I'm definitely of the old school Mies Van Der Rohe less is more design philosophy.

Now, if it had just been a clean, clear, beautiful piece of glass...we'd be talkin'.
Click to expand...

Also, what's the deal with the tripod stand?? I like the desk space that a flat panel saves me. That tripod is doubling the desk area you have to devote to that monitor.
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I didn't read the whole thread, but I want to comment on the article. I just hate the the world still thinks that Apple only makes the iMac... no towers, no laptops, no monitors.... just iMacs. That is all.
 
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