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Comment by J0-nas | Hacker News Reader

Not related to the blog post but why are the websites form lenovo + dell (and acer) so god damn awful?

lenovo.com redirects me to https://www.lenovo.com/se/en/ since i'm currently in Sweden. I then get nice server error as greeting: 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.

If I try to access lenovo.de I get often no response... also for subsequent pages...

On dells website it takes an awful lot of time to filter their laptops. It's not even 100 items... why does it take so long?

Acer has a nice compare function. The only problem is that you can't compare laptops of their business line with the home ones. They also have too many different models. The compare function doesn't showcase any difference.

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This, this, a thousand times this. One thing that Apple has done very well is put together a website that:

  A.) Tells you what they are selling, and
  B.) Can sell it to you.

Why is it so hard for other vendors to figure out that this is a pretty good way to sell computers?

My girlfriend bought an Asus Zenbook the other day; it's a really nice machine and made me wonder whether there might be a Zenbook for me. So I ended up on http://www.asus.com/zenbook/global/index.html. Is there a product list? No. A comparison feature? No. A way to buy, like, anything at all? Fuck you, says Asus. Here, have a bunch of annoying marketing copy; if you like that enough then maybe you can buy from some online retailer who has screwed up the model-numbers, unless you'd rather go to a shop were some know-nothing highschooler will try to make a commission by upselling you.

Had the same experience with HP. I take your word for it that Leno and Dell and Acer are similar. Really made me appreciate Apple's retail mechanisms (as much as I'm aiming to exit their ecosystem).

Seriously, industry: WTF? Get it together, guys!

Lenovo's website is the least of their problems. I'm in the USA and ordered a Thinkpad. They ship out of China. No one in their call centers can give any kind of order status. Their information is days behind. I canceled an order (after they cut the price to try to get me to change my mind) and the thing still shipped. It seems like their Thinkpad factory just pumps them out; no kind of true build to order.

The only good way to get their machines is through a reputable reseller who has them on a shelf.

I have been using Asus Zenbook for the last 3 laptops; I just go straight to Amazon or Ebay to buy them, the experience there is quite better (besides I want a US keyboard instead of Spanish).

I think the problem here is that Apple doesn't really have to have a huge product range because they are pretty much focused on the premium price range.

On the other hand, manufacturers like Asus, Lenovo and Dell have everything from the economy to premium range which makes the content organization a natural headache. And it looks like nobody has figured out a good way to fix everything up.

But Dell has a pretty nice web site despite having a huge range of products.

Yes and no. UI looks wise it is ok, but UX wise it is a nightmare.

When I try to find a product I often can't find it. Or I can only find the previous year/range's version. Or I can only find it if I pretend to be in the US. Or mostly it is out of stock. And all this time direct links works so the products exists, I just cant find them consistently.

Went through this recently trying to find the XPS13 DE for a friend. He bought his first macbook pro in the end instead(a 2015 one just after the touchbar launched).

Yes their SKU stock is massive compared to Apple, so navigation will be trickier, but why do they need to make it so hard by hiding products etc.

I believe that is solely the reason some listing websites came up just to search for products. Plus in most cases, you really aren't suited for the whole range. Trade-offs.

> One thing that Apple has done very well is put together a website that:

  A.) Tells you what they are selling, and
  B.) Can sell it to you.

  C.) Be able to configure a US keyboard when you're not in the US.

I'm in the UK, but I've used a US keyboard layout all along from the days that I bought an obsolete Sun3/50 to use as an X terminal. My last ThinkPad was bought in the US by a friend who came from there and sold it on to me. But if I wanted to buy a new laptop with a US keyboard from Lenovo or Dell today, their web sites don't provide the option. Apple do.

(I'm sure it might be possible to order one over the phone, but why should I have to?)

I wonder if it reflects how they manufacture them. Do they print the keycap labels on demand?

The other manufacturers also haven't figured out how to organize their models.

As far as I can tell, Dell has just a handful of models (XPS, Precision etc.), but if you go and look at the XPS 15, for example, it's a grid of dozens of SKUs with various specs instead of just a single page with customization options. It's not even a matrix -- with models varying by CPU and RAM and disk and such, you'd expect that at least they'd arrange them visually in some kind of table. It must be a nightmare for non-technical people.

They're all like this, and it becomes hilariously complicated when the manufacturer has, like Lenovo, dozens and dozens of models, and it's impossible to understand what the difference is between them and which ones are targeting which uses. (You have to ask why they're so unfocused, too. Is it an intentional tactic?)

Asus seems to be one of the few to understand this (aside from Apple); their Zenbook site is pretty friendly and focused. Though they still insist on nonsense model names like "UX390UA".

It's not just PCs, of course. It's all consumer electronics: TVs, sound systems, what have you.

I've never been a product manager but IMO it probably goes something like this:

"The framistan line is successful but I hear from our customers that we should have some options that add [x] and drop [y], while having support for more [z]."

"We need to create a new line, a totally separate brand from framistan that has way more [x], [y] but no [z] at all. The competition has entered this space and there is clearly a market there."

They say this as often as they can, iterating over various x, y, z triples and they maximize the product line, perhaps until they hear feedback like yours.

Apple, OTOH, does whatever they want, targeting limited segments in order to keep everything simple. They lose out on lots of opportunity by restricting themselves to just parts of the market. But they also have a money tree, so it doesn't really matter.

Re: nonsense model names. As a technical consumer I much prefer these very-distinct names that change with each new release. When I read a review, it's very likely that I'm reading the right review. When I'm buying used, it's very likely that I'm getting the right product. Brands like Amazon Kindle Fire, MacBook, IMO make searching for and finding the right stuff harder. I can appreciate the elegance of a simple product name, though. Typically they're concealing the true model info under some other header, but it's usually harder to identify.

You're probably spot on. I'd like to add that this is the problem with many "Product Managers" - they aren't MANAGING the product. Their job is to take this noise (because that's what this is) and distill it down to something structured and logical. No wonder Apple makes so much money. You can hate them, but they get this (mostly)* right.

* There are rumblings by many about the mac laptop variations not being cleanly delineated.

You're probably right. But it doesn't explain why Apple is so good at this and so few other companies aren't. They must realize the confusion they're creating among consumers. Is it because they're still rooted in 80s/90s PC culture?

Nice brand names like MacBook doesn't preclude having precise model IDs, though. The MacBook range mostly has unique model names (and Apple publishes a full list [1]), for example.

As a counter-argument, an example from TVs: The same TV models are sold all over the world with different identifiers. They'll do things like tack on an "E" for European models. But it makes it really hard to find reviews, because the same Samsung model sold in the US as UN40J5200 might be UN40J5300E in Europe, and you don't necessarily know how to translate between the two identifiers (though they often have a system about what the letters and digits mean so you can decode them, kind of). You might find a review for Samsung UN40J6200 and hope that it's close enough.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201300

That's because Apple is not afraid to shut down a product that still makes money, and offer less choice to customers.

Typically when they released the iPod nano, they decided to stop the iPod mini even though some customer would have still chosen it.

> Apple is so good at this and so few other companies aren't

> Nice brand names like MacBook doesn't preclude having precise model IDs, though. The MacBook range mostly has unique model names (and Apple publishes a full list [1]), for example.

I guess the difference is that Apple doesn't list each and every configuration option as a different product, but only shows them when it's relevant: During the purchase process / checkout. While Lenovo, Dell and Co. show a collection of slightly different configurations as separate cards in what looks like a very generic e-commerce theme, Apple wants you to make decisions step by step:

- Visit central product page (iMac / iPhone / Macbook / Macbook Pro / ...)

- Follow store / purchase link

- Select one of very few base models that are distinguishable by major (!) attributes (like screen size or the good/better/best-principle)

- Adjust details (CPU, RAM, etc.) as needed. Or don't and just opt for the default base model.

This process covers 27 different product variants in a step by step checkout workflow that is easy to grasp and understand by the customer.

Apple is in a somewhat strange position. I'd argue that they are competing with Asus/Dell/etc. as a company, but their products aren't, in that you first decide between Mac/PC and only then decide on a model. Obviously not true in all cases (i. e. I love Apple to death but had to resort to a very custom desktop for some ML work). But its right often enough to make additional models a losing proposition for Apple: they'd just be competing with themselves.

the part you missed is that the money tree didn't magically appear and allow them to do that. Apple's ability to have discipline and know when to say no, sticking to the specific markets they know they can make large margins in is what created and feeds the money tree. Why make 40 lines in every variation at razor thin profits, when you can make one line at huge margins? Not sticking to that model is what's getting apple in trouble, even if every tech comment whines about how apple has done everything wrong since forever.

> It's not just PCs, of course. It's all consumer electronics

I recently bought an induction hob, and it's exactly the same.

Bosch for example have a series 4, 6 and 8 and within that, models with various configurations. At first I assumed series 8 was the best or newest, but there are low and high end models in all of the series. I looked through the manufacturers specs, and even in terms of features I couldn't see anything different between the series, only between induvidual models. Maybe the series refers to what day the 'design team' came up with it?

I tried to look at some reviews online to see what people said was the best - I live in Northern Europe and haven't yet picked up the language so looked at reviews on UK and German sites. Except the models available there aren't available here, and vice versa.

At the end of the day they are all pretty much the same (they all cook stuff), so I just went to the shop and picked one that wasn't too cheap or too expensive and looked the prettiest (Wife Approved TM).

This is so frustrating! It's not like it can't be done; System76 manages to present a really nice base-model + customisation experience, so why can't Dell?

Even worse when you're trying to dig through a maze of URL's to find drivers, half the link will go to the US site which will then get redirected to the regional one where the file doesn't exist. Had to do it once for a network drive with "export restrictions" it took hours to find their awful, half working driver. IME Dell are one of the better ones.

This is a really good point. I'm a lenovo guy and I've bought from their official site a couple times. It takes forever to render and the customizer is clunky.

Just give me a basic webpage with checkboxes and a price that gets auto updated.

Completely agree. Many pains in the ass from ordering my 4th generation X1 Carbon off Lenovo's site, even while tracking the absurdly lengthy shipment. My past Mac purchases were pleasures, by comparison.

Yeah try ordering anything from Lenovo on your iPad... their site is buggy as hell. I mean, how much effort can it take to clean it up?

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