“When it comes to design, rival Apple gets most of the ink, but Microsoft wants to demonstrate that PCs running Windows can turn heads, too,” Steve Hamm and Jay Greene report for BusinessWeek.
MacDailyNews Take: Stomachs, yes. Heads, no. Unless they’re trying to turn them towards Apple Macs.
Hamm and Greene report, “‘There’s a new bar being set,’ says Dave Fester, general manager of PC product marketing at Microsoft. ‘The market is pushing computer makers to do this.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Not “the market,” Mr. Fester, Apple.
Hamm and Greene report, “PC makers are focusing as never before on turning utilitarian machines into fashion statements.”
MacDailyNews Take: And, yet, the PC box assemblers are stuck with Windows, which is your father’s OS. Only Apple Macs are OS-unlimited and can run Apple’s Mac OS X, Apple’s award-winning Mac-only apps such as iLife, Linux, and also slum it with Windows if necessary.
Hamm and Greene report, “Lenovo Group, the world’s No. 3 PC maker, is using the Vegas show to promote… three splashy notebooks—super-svelte and colorful, with textured covers that make them easy to grip… Hewlett-Packard, the leading consumer PC brand, will hawk such new models as its Blackbird 002, a black-clad desktop gaming PC whose insides, with a copper-piped liquid cooling system, are as pleasing to the eye as the exterior via an easy-to-open side cover… Even Dell has become style- conscious. Last year it brought out new consumer PCs that came in a choice of eight colors, including bubble-gum pink, yellow, green, and red.”
MacDailyNews Take: And you turn them on and what do you get? Windows Vista. A chrome-plated turd is still a turd. We prefer the minimalist, decidedly non-flashy aesthetic of Apple’s design master Jonathan Ive over garish colors, meaningless neon lights, unnecessary angles, pointless curves (ha, ha), etc.
Hamm and Greene report, “Until recently, PCs were viewed by many in the industry as low-margin commodities. What changed? Apple proved with its flashy iPods, iPhones, and MacBook laptops that design really matters to consumers.”
MacDailyNews Take: Actually, guys, we and most of the many Mac users that we hear from buy Apple Macs for the OS and software, just like we and most iPod and iPhone owners buy iPods and iPhones because of their intuitive software design and user interfaces. Apple’s external product designs are just elegant icing on masterfully-baked cakes.
Hamm and Greene report, “ASUSTeK Computer has taken the automobile analogy to its logical conclusion, producing a laptop specifically for racing fans. Its Lamborghini VX2 notebooks, with their shiny black or yellow covers and Lamborghini logos, even make vroom-vroom engine sounds when they boot up. The price: up to $3,300.”
MacDailyNews Take: The cluelessness astounds. At least the 27 cheesy stickers that these box assemblers are hell-bent on plastering all over their cases will make some sense this time. Get it? It’s a race car!
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As usual, PC box assemblers don’t get it. They stuck themselves to Microsoft Windows and now — to take the automobile analogy to its real logical conclusion — they’re resigned to painting the outside of their products in order to try to hide what’s rusting inside. Taking your products to Earl Scheib while continuing to preload the same old awful Windows along with mounds of crapware just isn’t going to cut it with today’s increasing tech literate consumers.
This was more interesting when I thought it was Lorne Greene and Mia Hamm.
I wouldn’t touch one of those fugly ass MACs with a 3.048 meter pole. PC manufacturers don’t have time to make pretty little cases like the Cupertino Women’s Club. Keeping up with Microsoft’s powerful and user-friendly innovations absorb much of the R & D effort for PC manufacturers.
Besides, computers are tools, not some fashion accessory for pretentious and smug tech illiterates. It doesn’t matter what they look like as long as they don’t run MAC OS X.
As a Windows enthusiast a nifty logo on from a high performance car builder is more than enough for me. If the Dells here at work weren’t on lease I slap an ‘Orange County Choppers’ sticker and a ‘Yosemite Sam Back Off’ sticker on mine. That would be badass. And an ‘Oakley Thermonuclear Protection’ sticker.
Your potential. Our passion.™
I don’t remember Mia Hamm guesting on Bonanza, but their buffet is delicious and satisfying.
Your potential. Our passion.™
“No, I’ve seen Dell’s designs. They are definitely unconscious”
Yeah, you bet. In the age of High Definition, Apple doesn’t even offer a notebook computer with an HDMI port? I’ll take my Dell XPS over a blah, underspec’d, overpriced MacBook Pro any day, thank you.
Hey, we should feel pity towards pc users. After all, I am one. I hide my “gray box of shame” in a cabinet made into the desk that I use. My iBook sits proudly on top of the desk (When I brought my iMac G5 in, it sat on top of the desk too).
So why can’t we get gaudy looking color for our machines? After all, we have to put up with XP (we are not looking at changing for another year or so) inside. PS, some people still think XP is good cause that is all they have ever used. “Sad but true.”
en
MDN headline should have read:
Microsoft Leads PC Clone Makers In Putting Fresh Coat of Paint On Staid Offerings in Attempt to Fool Consumer.
@Chrissy
re: Looser, I assumed with the caps that it was deliberate on your part, plus I gave up that battle a while ago
“At least the 27 cheesy stickers that these box assemblers are hell-bent on plastering all over their cases will make some sense this time. Get it? It’s a race car!”
Damn that’s funny
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@ macaholic
It should have been Loo-ser, as in a play on toilet. Not so great.
They can’t all win Peabodys, folks.
If you’re a box assembler its Linux or M$. They have no options.
The lack of a vertical development of OS and hardware from a single source equals compromise all the way. If the OS inside is the same between assemblers the premium is very obvious when you pay for looks
@Grigori– excellent distinction.
@C1– Vista Cruiser… good one!
A box of shit wrapped with a pretty ribbon is still a box of shit.
Funny thing is, those computers they show don’t even look very good. That Tulip thing looks like a waffle maker.
DELL does get it but is stuck with MS and Linux. Steve should give Michael a break and let him use OS X for a fee.
@ iDon’t
Steve might bring Mike a glass of water when he’s nailed to something made of wood. But any time before that, don’t count on him giving the guy a break.
Microsoft can’t even figure out how to have Vistia boot using a technology standard that it help write and it’s own partner Intel created for Vista.
Most PC makers have no industrial design groups (Sony being the exception). They slap a coat of paint on a box or mold a funky plastic face panel and they call it the new model. A PC will always be cheap, disposable and ugly, just like MS Windows.
Looser + Looser = a Windows PC
You never cease to amaze me.
I’m still laughing.
I love it!
Uh, people, since I started this, let me fix it:
Loser (lu-ZER) = Someone who does not win.
Looser (LUSE-er) = Not as tight.
Carry on.
@ me
Loser (lu-ZER)
And that’s the French pronunciation.
*Yest again MDN gets it wrong.
“Yest” again?
The day I listen to the tirades of the functionally illiterate is the day I’ll begin listening to your mindless drivel.
FYI, try using Safari. Safari has an inline spellchecker.
As has ben stated before ” A chrome plated turd is still a turd “.
In amateur marketing circles, there’s a lot of miscommunication taking place due to the word ‘design’ having two distinct meanings.
One meaning of the word design refers only to visual aspects of a product and the other meaning includes functionality as well.
Apparently it’s not just the amateurs who are confused these days.
Blackbird 002:
1.1 kilowatt powerplant. WTF? Keep that running all the time and it’s like 10 KWh/d !!!
I remember an old Finnish snowmobile prototype: 15km/h and 100l/100km.
Why can’t PC makers create good basic machines? And why are the (exterior)design machines almost always gaming PCs?
fashions come and go (and look VERY dated when they do) whereas style last forever. Guess that why Macs still look good, even years later while flashy, gimmicky PC boxes look sad and dumb. Guess if you’re one for the superficial experience, windows is just the thing for you. Those with more style and class obviously seek the better things like mac, OSX!
@ ChrissyOne
Looser is correct.
MacOS + Apple Industrial Design = Tight
Windows is all over the place
Box Builders are just that Boxes
looser + looser = A Windows PC
If I had used Loser
it would have been
Loser Windows + Loser PC = Crappy user experience like the Zune 2 funky ass touch pad thingy. Creeps he out just thinking about it.
The new Zune ads should be a homeless guy with his hand down his pants, yelling “Anyone up for a SQUIRT!”