MacBook Air copy cats

[DHagan4755]

Amusing to see PC vendors try to copy the MacBook Air right down to stealing the MacBook Air's wallpaper 😆

 

[theluggage]

Virtually all PC laptops are - to some extent - copies of Apple designs. That was one thing that Apple got right before the second coming of Jobs…

Apple didn’t invent the laptop as such, but the 1991 PowerBook introduced the set-back keyboard + pointing device + (almost) full-height display layout that everything else adopted.

Later, the distinctive Titanium PowerBook clearly “inspired” most of the industry.

The chiclet/island keyboard on the Unibody MacBook was likewise widely adopted.

The original MacBook Air spawned the “Ultrabook” PC form factor.

Some are more blatant look-alikes than others but the laptop industry has a long history of relying on Apple for new ideas in laptop design.

 

[mike.coulter]

There hasn’t been a real new design in over a decade.

 

[theluggage]

There hasn’t been a real new design in over a decade.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

As long as the basic GUI paradigm holds, a laptop needs a large-as-possible screen, a QWERTY (or regional equivalent) keyboard and a pointing device. Apple and Sony got the basic ergonomics of that right with the PowerBook 100 in 1991 and everything since then has been refinements & miniaturisation.

We've had developments in phones, tablets, phablets (& now folding devices) etc. which have all come with new, touch-based UI paradigms, some of which have found their niche, but have failed to replace laptop PCs.

In terms of new laptop designs, although there haven't been any great physical developments, Apple Silicon has been a major development for Macs, pretty much removing any significant performance disadvantage vs. all but the most expensive desktop Macs... and, yes, although Windows-on-ARM still looks like a bit of a busted flush, Intel and AMD have responded by upping their game when it comes to mobile performance (particularly mobile GPUs).

 

[goodthymes]

Virtually all PC laptops are - to some extent - copies of Apple designs. That was one thing that Apple got right before the second coming of Jobs…

Apple didn’t invent the laptop as such, but the 1991 PowerBook introduced the set-back keyboard + pointing device + (almost) full-height display layout that everything else adopted.

Later, the distinctive Titanium PowerBook clearly “inspired” most of the industry.

The chiclet/island keyboard on the Unibody MacBook was likewise widely adopted.

The original MacBook Air spawned the “Ultrabook” PC form factor.

Some are more blatant look-alikes than others but the laptop industry has a long history of relying on Apple for new ideas in laptop design.

I'll leave this here as a minor counter point to some of your claims.

 

[MBAir2010]

the Samsung 2012 notebook was the exact chassis of the 11" MacBook air to the t!
someone placed their  logic board inside and launched Mavericks on the notebook in. 2013.
we found out  sold the chassis to Samsung then as they made too much!
(geez I wish I had the links to this story, video (account deleted) and other credentials, but I don't)

 

[theluggage]

I'll leave this here as a minor counter point to some of your claims.

Well, Sony were the other company pushing laptop design (and, of course, they actually designed and made the original PowerBook 100…).

I’ll give you the chiclet keyboard (on a laptop) but apart from that it’s a throwback to older designs with the keyboard at the front, and the “pencil eraser” pointer in the keyboard instead of a forward trackpad/ball. Thing is, even Sony didn’t stick with that layout… it certainly didn’t get picked up by the industry the way successive Mac/PowerBook designs did.