“It’s painfully obvious where HP drew its inspiration for its newest Envy laptops,” Dana Wollman reports for Engadget.
“It’s not because of any single design choice, like the aluminum unibody chassis, island-style keys, glowing logo or giant clickpad; it’s all of the above!” Wollman reports. “HP’s latest 15-incher is the most flagrant Mac imitation we’ve seen in some time, and the resemblance is close enough that you could, at first glance, mistake the interior for an MBP. ”
Wollman reports, “Of course, HP threw in some flourishes that keep it from being a total facsimile: the lid and underside are black, not silver, the keyboard area has a thin red ring around it and there are Beats-branded volume controls on the laptop’s right side.”
Read more in the full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: One has to wonder if HP has anyone smart enough left on their staff of overpriced printer cartridge salesmen to realize the irony of branding these things “Envy.”
Boy HP, how far you’ve stooped in your desperation. Have you no pride at all? From top to bottom, every HP employee should be horribly embarrassed; you’ve now become as derivative as the OS you load into your Apple Mac wannabes. If this is the best they can do, HP should have ditched their PC business after all.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” and “Lava_Head_UK” for the heads up.]
I didn’t click on the link yet, but before I do just want to write that I can’t wait to see just what the hell the Apple-haters on Engadget’s message board will be saying to justify this blatant ripoff.
“What, did Apple patent gray rectangles?”
It’s going to be great entertainment.
But where are the stickers! I want to know if Intel is inside.. PC people like their stickers!
I thought that I recently read that Intel required those stickers. (except for Apple, of course!) Wonder how they got away with that.
The stickers are only required if they want to qualify for Intel’s co-branding discount. There is something like a $50 discount on every unit that has the sticker on it.
Manufacturers are never required to put stickers on their wares, but they don’t get the price cut if they don’t.
Intel also has an exemption program where OEMs can apply to keep the stickers off their equipment. I guess this depends on the device configuration and such. I believe I read that Asus qualified for one of their yawn, tablets.
What a fitting name: “HP Envy”
As I’ve always said, it’s not the box, it’s the OS, stupid when people see others carrying around an Envy, they’ll know they are looking at a schmuck, frankly. Envy for Schmucks, the giggle.
This is almost as bad as Samsung’s blatant rip off of the iPhone. How low have you sunk when you rip off an icon.
UGLY!
They can’t even copy properly.
What’s with the red highlights and the neanderthal looking hinge attachments and volume control trying to look sexy by poking its hip out the side of the case? Amateurish. Are those exhaust grills on the back?
HP’s creative management? Where?
At least I would have made the keys white and anodized the case black. Not that it would stop the comparisons, but it would have been stylish and easy to do, though I realize scratches show easily…
HP: ‘When you can’t innovate, imitate…’
Maybe they’re rebranding MacBooks now like they did with the 4G iPod. So much for “HP Invent”.
A video of the Designers talking about their inspiration for the design, It’s very difficult to believe that they aren’t joking
Cripes, these two idiot are even trying to look like Sir Jony Ives. This whole interview smacks of an Apple product roll-out. How incredibly lame.
Not going to watch the video, but looking at the still it seems they are also trying to rip off the look and feel of Jony Ive.
Actually, you should properly refer to him as Sir Jonathan (or Sir Jony). The Queen recently conferred on him the title of Knight Commander of the British Empire, so he gets the ‘Sir’ title.
The bald guy even looks like Jony! Just weird people. weird.
Wow, just wow. Not only a MacBook Pro-inspired product (yet uglier an bulkier) but also a shameless copy of the product presentation. The light background music, the voice tone, vocabulary and gesticulation of those 2 clowns are like straight out from Apple’s product commercial/infomercials with Jony Ive. But they overdid that and made it too long. It started to be boring half-way through. And the punchline: “It’s a product that creates envy” – ha ha – more like created out of envy.
Funniest video I’ve seen in ages. I sent it around and my friends all assumed it was an Onion parody of HP attempting to ape the MBP. They didn’t believe it was for real; and watching it again (or trying to, it’s so overlong and pretentious) I’m not sure I do either.
The tag line was the clincher: “‘Envy’ is the term that best describes HP’s products.” And this is for real??
Blatantly ripping off Apple is working for Samsung phones, so why not follow that strategy for PCs? My guess is they figure it can’t hurt.
currentinterest, I was thinking the same thing.
Perhaps Apple’s lack of rapid and clear victories in their patent defences has emboldened the rest of the industry to blatantly copy every little aspect of the appearance of Apple’s products, stores, and Apple’s marketing styles.
Imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery, I suppose…
the problem with companies shamelessly ripping off others is that copying without innovating gets wired into their DNA.
Look at Msft. , although it now knows it desperately needs to innovate it can’t resulting in flops (Zune, Kin, wP7 etc). Msft always needs others to move: Windows=MacOS, Bing=Google, IE=netscape, Xbox=Playstation, Kinect=Wii etc and cannot do it by itself because that’s its DNA. In the old days HP was an innovator but if it’s going into copying quite soon that will be it’s corporate culture and not good long term.
I didn’t realize there was such a thing as a branded volume control. Are there people who would pay up for such a thing?
Is this an really ultrabook ?
I assumed that ultrabooks were copies of MacBook airs, rather than copies of ordinary MacBooks.
Products like this make you realise just how far ahead of the game Apple actually are.
after they envy they’ll come out with the jealousy and copy the top part, too.
Hold this product in disdain at your peril. Compared to all other Wintel laptops this thing is a work of art, and comes from the #1 Wintel manufacturer in the world. By itself it has the potential to slow the migration to Mac. Certainly, it is going to gain share from the Dells and Lenovos of the world. That and it has a feature that I would really like to have on my MacBook Pro…a numeric keypad.
Thanks. I needed a laugh today.
That’s the primary problem. It runs Windows. The primary reason for the “migration to Mac” is to migrate away from Windows. The shiny hardware is a consideration, but there were already good-looking Windows laptop choices. They haven’t slowed the growth of Mac while the rest of the PC industry stagnates.
Right on, ken1w! I’m not using Macs because of their looks – I’m using them because they run Mac OS X.
@ Gregg…
I had a litany of rebuttals to your assertions but, at the moment, I’m too drunk and tired to bother with your stupid a**.
If you want a numeric keypad, then get a:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/H4606ZM/A/lmp-bluetooth-keypad?fnode=MTY1NDA1Mg
It’s all written all over HP’s face, even to the extent of unconsciously naming its fake product as E N V Y. It seems that the competition are entering a new phase of Apple-envy genre.
HONESTLY, they should just pay $29 per machine, download Lion and sell them as Mac clones.
HP is yet another company that can’t design for themselves but are getting good at copying. Since the 80’s it seems Steve Jobs has been saddened by these companies that copy.
In the video, they don’t seem to even know what they are talking about and appear to be just making things up to make it appear interesting:
“Geometry, the shapes, clean simple”
“luxury”
“level of honesty”
“interactive gravity’
“it’s like Christmas”
“things inside the product”
“little dash of color ads signature iconic feel”
“design discovery process”
“level of surprise”
“it grows with you”
I can’t believe these dudes got paid to “design” this. Where did they get their education from, Kinkos?
Sad.
No!
Got it at Apple.
Well Apple=Xerox Parcs, iPod=Creative Mp3, iPad=Windows Tablet, iPhone=Blackberry, Apple TV=Roku or Windows Media Center. Inspiration is one thing, it’s how you innovate instead of imitate on top of older tech that separates the blatant copiers from the true innovators or those who genuinely move the existing technology ahead. The crazy instead of the conservative clueless ones.
I can’t believe that some higher up at HP doesn’t get the inside joke that their marketers have laid on them! Same with those Windows 7 ads, totally ironic, and those Windows shopper TV ads, the brown ZUNE (and it’s “anus” logo and lettering). It’s amazing.
The one guy looks like he’s been practicing method-acting Jonathan Ive for some time.
He’s even holding the hands like him – it’s comedy.
Unbelievable.
What a joke. HP’s laptop designers are Jonathan Ive’s lapdogs, his bitches as it were. Not an ounce of creativity, not an iota of originality, not a drop of shame blatantly copying Apple’s iconic MacBook Pro design, structure, keyboard and layout.
Given HP’s poor customer support service for returns and fixing things when they go wrong, I don’t care how cheap they make it, I’m never buying another HP product except their sucky printers for want of anything better out there that doesn’t suck as much.
HP the purveyor of stolen designs. How the mighty have fallen.
I’d happily run Ubuntu on it (as long as they gave me the the Windows key replacement kit)!