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HP Defends New Ultrabook Design Against Noted Similarities to Apple's MacBook Air

On some level I agree

If it's thin, it's going to be thin, right?

If you've got connectors (and IF you don't need it that thick the whole way) one end has got to be thicker and you're not going to make it the front. Plus, you've got the hinge, so that points to the back too.

Re: Chiclet keys, I always thought of that as smaller keys. I don't think of my MacBook or BT keyboard as having Chiclet keys. I think of the TRS-80 color computer as having chicklet keys (or a cell phone).

Plus it's not "Apple Inside"!

Gary
 
Those who have no ideas of their own and can't innovate try to steal the ideas of others.

Oh yeah, will someone break it to HP gently that they have named this after the fictional world criminal organization in Ian Fleming's James Bond books. In those books, SPECTRE's technology always fell to Bond's intellect and cunning.
 
jmoore5196 said:
If Steve Jobs taught us anything, it's that the future belongs to the innovators. Whether HP deliberately "copied" anything isn't the issue; their design doesn't bring much innovation to the table.

"Similarities" are seldom accidental. Had HP's design been genuinely innovative, it would have been on the market long ago. It wasn't. The reason is pretty simple: HP still leads by the bottom line. Apple leads with passion that isn't managed by the board or otherwise forced to conform to economic constraints.
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So let me get this straight: The Macbook Air wasn't part of a pattern towards going for smaller, lighter laptops? I'm sorry-tell me exactly what's so innovative about the MacBook Air? I'm a bit confused. I have one. I love it. Its small, light...isn't that what computers have gone for for years?
 
It really doesn't look that much like the Air to me, I mean.. Seriously! It does have similarities, but also a load of differences. I've seen much more obvious clones. Given the general similarities between different laptops, this looks fine.
 
I see the similarities,

but somehow HP still found a way to make it look clunky, especially if you look at an MacBook Air then back to this.
 
OllyW said:
Also note the chiclet keyboard.
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FYI, just a note, that Chiclet style keyboards have been used on computers since the early 80's. Look up IBM PCjr, and Timex Sinclair, both had Chiclet keyboards. The technology originated with calculators earlier than that. Who invented it, I have no idea, but it's been around a long time.
 
Ah, let 'em do what they want to do. The market will sort itself out. People who want a Mac know where to get one. You can't tell me what these days people will buy a computer and get confused because it looks like a Mac.
Companies have been aping Apple since the beginning of time, this and others is not the first time.
 
Thank you Jony Ive for bringing good design concepts to other companies. :)
 
All this ultra book stuff is a lot like Lotus Seven lookalikes. If you want a small, light weight, front-engined sports car with minimal bodywork it's going to look like a Lotus (or Caterham) in much the same way that ultra books look like an air.
In both cases though, I'd rather have the original.
 
Let's clear a few things up here:

- Thin notebooks are not apple's "invention". You can't patent thin. It's the natural evolution of notebook computing. It's either going go thicker or thinner, there are two options. Guess which direction more efficient computing is taking us?

- Wedges are not apple's invention or patent. I seem to remember correctly because I had one that the first air design was with the latch was by all accounts in terms of functionality ****, guess where they would go to keep the thinness and make it thick enough for standard ports? You guessed it a wedge shape. Why? Because it's inevitable. If you want to make something thin looking enough and thick enough for ports you go for a wedge shape. It's so inevitable that actually that as someone pointed out here sony had this design 4 years before the air. If anything people should be saying apple changed their crap way of doing things and opted for someone else's design.

vaio-x505-i1.gif

Just so people take another look at this to see if it looks anything like hp's device.


The way apple appropriates general concepts and even others' design concepts and tries to pass them off as some big innovation that others are desperately trying to copy is simply shameless.


All my computers are macs btw, and despite apple dropping the ball big time with lion (that other os to ios that the b-team at apple develop when some of them take a break from ios development) making a brand new mini almost unusable in terms of responsiveness and ease of use, my next computer is also going to be an apple because a. I know their system and ecosystem and I am too bored to switch, and b. the insanely good hardware by hardware manufacturers out these days will make even lion feel decent.

But this thing via apple marketing, and subsequently promoted via the cult of apple, where apple take credit for both their innovations BUT ALSO for innovations they either blatantly copy or are generic enough to not be any innovations at all has simply got to stop. The air is just another thin notebook, there were thin ultraportable notebooks before, and they had a wedge shape and chicklet keyboard before. What they didn't have before the air (well most of them anyway, might be some rubbish one out there who had it) are crap one usb latches. Crap usb latches are the only innovation of apple in this segment. Gladly no one makes them anymore, not even apple.
 
"In no way did HP try to mimic Apple. In life there are a lot of similarities." Of course, HP just plain copied Apple.
 
Copycat

You've scrapped your netbook line long ago. You want a cheap, fast and beautiful -- damn, that matters now -- slim computer with flash memory. Scratch the netbook keyboard. Turns out, people have normal-sized fingers.

Oh, what to do, what to do? Intel helps them out with the "ultrabook" processor. Okay, what to do, what to do? What do people like? Well, they really like that Apple thingy. So, slim, "silver" and dark keys on the chiclet keyboard. Make it look like that, and maybe people will like it too.

Copycatism. Imagine if Apple had done things this way. They looked at the netbook form factor, which was selling well, but they didn't like it. They put together the first Air, a new item on the small list of Apple SKUs. Look like a netbook? No. Full-sized keyboard. The first was really slow. So they took stuff OFF it, lost the hard drive, made it flash memory, and the speed was remarkable. They will make a lot of money on the Air before it's over, while the herd tries to copy it. Will the whole mob of Air copiers make an impact on the market? No. Together, they might sell more. They will end up competing on price, because they can't on design sense.
 
I think that new Dell ultrabook is a bigger ripoff of the Macbook Air, these dipsh*t PC manufacturers can't come up with anything original.
 
NAG said:
Other than the original ultrabook specification being a spec sheet designed to match the newer Macbook Airs, it isn't that much of a ripoff. They should have the guts to say they wouldn't have thought of making something with those specs without Apple, though. (Come on, it took them how long to get rid of the floppy and yet they're this fast to get rid of optical drives? And both times it just so happens that Apple is the first to get rid of those drives?)
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But I stopped using floppy drives with my Mac 2 or more years before Apple did. That means that I should have sued Apple for using my over 2 year old design of a Mac without a floppy drive.

Floppies were just not reliable enough to store my hard worked data storage needs. I always made a second copy so that I would have a reliable backup if the first did not work. I stopped the floppy thing after my backup disk also would not open the file.

So did Apple copy me or did they just take the step to increase their computers reliability?

HP makes a Mac Pro killer just as many others do. HP's interior hardware is better than that from Apple. Things like 12-16 memory slots compared to Apple's 8. More types of included pci/e slots. The ability to hold many more interior hard drives plus 3.5" external assessable drives.

The next step is to see if any of these great designs will work as a Mac Hackintosh. With the extreme lack of even any rumors of any new top end Macs, Mac Pros or 17" or larger MacBook Pros, it seems as if Apple is pushing us, or at least me to HP or other computer makers. Say numeric keypad on a 15" or 17" laptop.
 
This does not look like a MBA. Every thin laptop gets this label, and if Apple continues to sue people over and over for something that looks similar I will move to the competition. (assuming they do take any legal action)

If it is thin, has a keyboard, and is silver then it is a copy of an Apple product. If anything Apple copied HP with the MBP. I remember some old laptops I saw at work that were HPs and a few years later saw a MBP and thought it was this HP.

Sorry to rant, and I am an Apple fan except for the continued attempts to claim that everything was their idea, and everyone copies them.

Side note. Just got my Magic Trackpad....sweeeeeet.
 
Not sure why this is a shocker. It's not the first time HP was 'inspired' by Apple. Look to the Touchpad, Pavillion and Envy 15 for that. Seems as though it was around 2009 or 2010 that we saw this shift of design at HP. And then having to defend the look of your product as a clone by the media, should be ample evidence for HP that the world knows they are mimmicking Apple's designs.

Not that I have anything against HP, as all my printers have come from HP over the last 5 years, along with my last 2 desktop pc's and a Touchpad with a Touchstone wireless charger.

Ironically, Apple was awarded a design patent back in February, for this ornamental design shape of a laptop, but I think HP was to far along in the construction phase of this laptop for them to do a redesign, especially after losing a ton of cash on the Touchpad/WebOS fiasco. Question is, will Apple try and sue HP, Asus, etc with it?
 
ftaok said:
I think the point is that HP delibrately chose to make the Spectra look very similar to the MBA. Silver, Black bezel screen, black keyboard. The look screams Macbook Air. Not that anyone cares. I doubt Apple would waste any resources in trying to get this thing banned. Besides, Apple probably doesn't have the design copyrights to protect the MBA look.
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Apple does have patents on the MBA:

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patent...sign-patents-for-macbook-air-iphone-more.html

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patent...-store-structure-oled-driver-macbook-air.html
 
Swift said:
Snip
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Look at Blow45's post, then say that.

That particular Vaio was a thin, wedge shaped laptop that came out a goodly bit before the Air. You move the keyboard back and add a trackpad, and you've got a device that's remarkably similar to the air.

So does that mean Apple copied Sony? Not really. Once again, there are only so many ways you can design a thin laptop. It just goes to show how pathetic these X-copied-Y arguments actually are.
 
OllyW said:
Apple weren't the first to use a thin, wedge shaped design. This Sony Vaio was available 4 years before the first MacBook Air was released. Also note the chiclet keyboard. ;)

Image
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Seriously, would anyone look at that laptop and think MacBook Air?

I think there are other 'ultrabooks' that rip off the MBA look than this one from HP but it's clear they're all taking their cues from Apple as all these 'ultrabooks' came out after people were drooling over the look of the MBA.
 
Benjy91 said:
If you avoid using insults like "Fanboy" or "Troll" in your post, people will only have the content within to focus on.

Same reasons I try not to reason with people who spell Microsoft as "Micro$haft, Micro$oft, Microsuck" or any other variation, as this will indicate they are probably:

A. A Child
B. The intelligence level of a child

Arguing with them will be like playing chess with a Pidgeon, even if I'm winning, the Pidgeon will still knock over the pieces, **** all over the board and strut around like it's victorious.

I imagine some people will feel a similar way when presented with a post calling them fanboys etc.
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You, sir, just made my day.
 
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