Japanese engineers trash MacBook Air | Hacker News Reader

Japanese engineers trash MacBook Air

blogs.cnet.com

16 pointspg17 comments

Of note to me were the repeated complaints about the number of screws. I've repaired laptops semi-professionally for years, and one thing I've noticed is that laptops with a large number of screws tend not to fall apart, while those that have few screws do.

A Dell Latitude CPx (circa 2000) requires the removal of 9 screws to get the motherboard out. An early 14" iBook requires the removal of 81 screws to do the same. The Dell had numerous problems related to the flexing of the chassis. The iBook did not.

I'll back this up by saying my Dell Inspiron 9400 has some odd creaking in areas. I'm sure these are just from age, but firstly the cover protecting the ram is now bald because it was painted steel not anodized aluminium, which rather disappointed me as it now looks even uglier.

The main problem is the hard drive is attatched by 2 screws and makes a funny creaking noise. However, the chassis above it flexes visibly with any form of pressure, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the edging snaps clear of the main body. The DVD drive is attatched by one screw and merely having a two-tone CD in the drive can make it vibrate like hell; I believe the worst was the game disc for Black & White, it sounded like the drive was damaging itself. I downloaded a NOCD patch because I was nervous about having it vibrate that much.

In addition to this, the screen is held flimsily on by IIRC two screws and it has lost its rigidity over the years. Even just putting the laptop down while in use can cause the screen to shift by 2.5-5 degrees.

Comparably, I would go with a MacBook next. My brother, who's had his longer than my laptop, has had no problem with his except that they use torx screws so swapping his ram proved mildly problematic. $20 for a 7 piece set fixed that problem though... I'd sure swap the ease of upgrade in my flimsy Dell for an extra $20 to upgrade a sturdy Mac.

I've been happy with Thinkpads in the past - they're similarly sturdy and tend to be a bit easier to work on. Since Lenovo took over, quality seems to have dropped a bit if, for whatever reason you don't care for Apple.

Yes, and the 12" powerbook is worst. I had to take the DC-in board out of mine, which requires completely emptying the insides except for the optical drive … damn what an arduous process. :)

The actual review (http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080220/147736...) has a familiar flavor of people angrily criticizing something for falling short on what they mistakenly believe to be the critical axes.

From the article you linked:

"If I proposed such a design, our company would never approve it," said one of the engineers. "I can't find anything that is technically superior. We can make the same computer at a lower cost," said another. Did the MacBook Air's internal structure represent the immaturity of Apple's design skill?

While their claims sound plausible, I still invoke the ancient rite of "shit or get off the pot."

Their claims don't sound that plausible: Apple is full of not-stupid engineers.

> Their claims don't sound that plausible: Apple is full of not-stupid engineers.

s/don't/do/

s/Apple/Japan/

Usually it's the Japanese companies that excel at this kind of small, sleek electronics... perhaps someone's a little jealous?

I think there are probably some really cool Japanese notebooks that never make it to the US or Europe. This company used to make them available: http://www.dynamism.com/index.shtml , but looking now, I don't see anything we can't get outside of Japan (at first glance).

I worked for a company that sold laptops. We had a request from abroad to purchase five laptops and pay equal amounts on four credit cards held in different names. That doesn't look even vaguely legitimate. Nor was it an isolated incident.

Once you take into account more plausable fraud, damages, refunds and Japanese versions of Windows, I'd presume that selling Japanese laptops outside of Japan is a really quick way of getting burned.

Meaning you worked for a japanese company? A friend of mine bought a notebook from dynamism a couple of years ago, so it works. But anyway, I don't want to plug them.

Back then subnotebooks were very rare in Europe (presumably the market didn't want them), but they were popular in Japan, that is why we checked with dynamism. These days, there are some more subotebooks available in the US and Europe, so maybe dynamism doesn't matter anymore.

Here's an interesting response:

http://brockerhoff.net/bb/viewtopic.php?p=2417#2417

If you want some solid state chic then you can retro-fit a 2.5 inch SATA solid state disk. 832GB capacity is already announced ( http://www.bitmicro.com/press_news_releases_20080107.php ) and we could have 1TB by Christmas.

Except they use 1.8" disks.

I don't really get the point of the article. Mac builds sturdy laptops, and who cares if they use 5 screws or 500 screws to do it. If Macs design is inefficient and expensive then someone will trump them. However, I've had packages delivered damaged because they paste one strip of tape over the main part of the flap; One package even arrived with the tape a good inch off of the flap, so it made it all the way to my house with half of it being open, and if -- like other companies do -- they had taped along the edges too, it wouldn't have meant half my stuff went missing and cost the company over $200.

Everyone who has ever had to work in IT cares. When you need 81 screws to replace a motherboard (as a previous example cited) you wind up spending a magnitude of time longer fiddling with a laptop just to fix it. Multiply that times 100 and you have long support times and disgruntled workers.

The attitude that a laptop has to have eighty billion screws to be well-engineered is nonsense. Thinkpads are the perfect example -- they are known for being extremely sturdy and tough, but also have a reputation for being remarkably easy to work with in terms of parts replacement, etc. Defending Apple for "wanting to make sure it works perfectly" does not hold water -- we may as well admit that they don't really want _you_ poking around in your own computer under any circumstances.

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