“OK, it’s HP, so the ‘dock’ isn’t all that elegant (apparently, the plastic cover can be swapped for one that fits HP cameras too), but it’s still interesting that Apple didn’t do something like this first.”
“Oh, and that computer is fricking cool looking, BTW.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If that lump of mismatched plastic doors and components is “fricking cool looking,” then Dame Edna Everage is one hot babe. The only thing remotely “cool looking” about it is that they’ve got Apple’s light silver color matched pretty closely, they laid out the collection of 57 cheap-ass plastic parts neatly for the photo (how did they get that remote to stand up on it’s hind end?), and they left its very square screen black to spare us from the cartoonish Windows XP eyesore. It would seem that some Windows PC users don’t care about design, simply because they can’t tell the difference between the good and the bad. They’re “designblind.” And hideously so. A strong reason for Windows’ popularity perhaps?
Apple could hire the “designer” of this thing to go after the mass audience, except we don’t think these Wintel box assemblers have any designers on staff. Doing so would no doubt increase the sticker prices of their plastic lumps by one-tenth of a cent per unit, thereby costing them massive market share. This HP, like something from Gateway or Dell or other Wintel box assemblers, looks like something a random hardware engineer “designed” in order to keep the manufacturing and assembly costs as low as possible.
And look at that poor iPod perched up there like Julia Roberts atop Ed Asner. (Sorry, Ed). If Raymond Loewy wasn’t already dead, this HP setup’s image would surely kill him.
Save the aesthetically impaired, get them a Mac.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Hewlett-Packard mimics Apple color schemes on new Pavilion desktop PCs – March 30, 2005
Hewlett-Packard adds ‘iPod dock holder’ to latest Media Center desktop – March 30, 2005
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – December 20, 2003
Power Mac G5 industrial design is simply genius – June 26, 2003
Apple leads; Wintel follows as usual – November 11, 2002