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Comment by piinbinary | Hacker News Reader

I think it's good to draw a distinction between visual design and functional design. Design that focuses on function can sometimes (but definitely not always) result in designs that are also visually appealing, but design that focuses on the visual rarely produces a very functional result.

I'd much rather look at a mac book pro than a thinkpad. Next to the minimalist design of the mac, a thinkpad looks like you ripped out part of a server and started carrying it around.

But, I'd rather type on a thinkpad than on a mac. The keys are better (if not as good as they once were), the surface is neither too cold nor too hot to rest my wrists on, and the edge of the laptop isn't sharp like the edge of a mac pro. Once you start using a thing, the visual details melt away and the functional details take over.

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I've owned multiple Thinkpads, and have a MacBook Air at home. I'm a pragmatist, so I don't mind that my work Thinkpad is all black and looks like it's from the 1990s. I enjoy that it has a built-in Nvidia GPU (which I use for machine learning). What makes me sad that with a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 install, my work Thinkpad can't even do two hours of battery life.

My MacBook Air at home is 3 years old, but it's thin and light. I take it with me when I travel, and the battery will last through a whole trans-atlantic flight. I don't actually care about the visual design, but the 2016 MacBook Air's keyboard feels very comfortable to type on, and the battery life is awesome.

Unfortunately, when this MacBook Air dies, it will probably get replaced by a PC. I don't really want to shell an insane amount of money on a new Mac, especially in an era where you can't get one without a touchbar, and I won't get the convenience of a non-USB-C port.

> What makes me sad that with a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 install, my work Thinkpad can't even do two hours of battery life.

This has everything to do with the unresolved problems of Linux power management. I use Ubuntu on Thinkpads too, and battery life is decent after a bit of configuration. Windows meanwhile gives all day battery life on Thinkpads.

I have managed to achieve the same battery life, down minute differences in the single digit either side, between macOS and Linux on a MacBook Air (which is a simple all Intel machine).

I think the problem is that most distributions ship with no Powertop or udev rules, plus lots of unnecessary services and devices on by default.

One really nice thing Apple does is optimizing Safari for battery life. My comparison was Firefox on macOS vs Linux. With Safari, I'd get 20-30 min more.

I bet Firefox and other programs would benefit from some black-box GCC/LVM flag optimization to improve battery usage.

Firefox on Mac's big battery life problem is apparently lack of integration with the system compositor. There's a fix in the works for this. Although I expect safari will still be better in this regard. Safari is pretty impressive.

There is definitely an opportunity for a distro directly aimed at laptops and/or providing the maximum battery life.

It's really surprising/annoying that this isn't setup correctly by default. Linux on laptops is nothing new.

> built-in Nvidia GPU

  GPUs could consume a lot of power.

Source: I used a Windows 10 laptop (not Thinkpad) with Nvidia GPU and it usually lasted less than two hours on battery. I work on another laptop, Thinkpad without Nvidia or AMD GPU, it lasts 6-8 hours on battery.

For a given CPU and battery capacity, Nvidia Optimus and AMD XConnect mean there's effectively no difference in battery life between a laptop with and without a dGPU, assuming you keep the dGPU disabled while you're using it. There are of course gaming and workstation laptops that run the dGPU at all times but you get what you expect with those.

Agree with both points, but tachyonbeam wrote:

  > built-in Nvidia GPU (which 
  > I use for machine learning)

And I used aforementioned (gaming) laptop with GPU mostly for Deep Learning

Interesting on the battery lifetime. My ThinkPad Carbon X1 gen 6 can do 10-12 hrs in Ubuntu, though I had to switch the bios sleep mode to Linux. Maybe the lack of an Nvidia graphics card helps.

Could you go into more detail about this?

I haven't done much special customization on the ThinkPad, other than updating the BIOS in Windows (it's dual boot) and changing the BIOS sleep setting. The sleep setting disables "Modern sleep", where the computer stays awake when sleeping, which isn't so well supported in Linux.

Currently I have 11 hours remaining, on 78% battery charge with a fairly dim screen (I use a setting to prevent the battery charging fully to extend its lifetime). Powertop shows a draw of 4.1W. Strangely the computer seems to run hotter in Windows and the battery lifetime is a bit shorter.

I'm using Ubuntu 18.04, running KDE. The laptop (Carbon X1 6th Gen) has a very nice keyboard, red trackpoint, 1TB NVMe SSD, 16GB RAM, i7-8550U CPU and a 2560x1440 display. It also has USB-C plus a couple of USB-A and HDMI sockets.

Oh okay. Looks like yours is a bit newer than mine. I don't see that option in the BIOS.

Regarding the Thinkpad: I know this may sound crazy, but consider using installing windows, and using Linux in a VM. You get all the OEM and MS drivers for the hardware that way.

As long as I don't have to do hardware development, the Windows Services for Linux works pretty well for me with regards to command-line tools. I've been un-installing cygwin on my systems recently.

WSL is what finally got me to move off of OSX and back into Windows. IMHO, I prefer a thin MSI laptop to a MBP and a Surface to a MacBook Air. I'm trading my work MBP in for a Win 10 laptop with proper ports and docking station.

MacBook Airs don't have Touch Bars.

So many people I've talked to have never noticed the sharp edges of the mac pro. But they irritate the living crap out of me. After a few hours use, it starts to feel like I've been grinding my forearms with sandpaper.

When the unibody Mac first came out the edges were so sharp they sliced your wrists. It took a few years for them to finally release them with a small radius on the edge. Just a few mm made a huge difference. There were some YouTube videos of people sanding them down to make it more bearable. Terrible design decision to have such a sharp edge but somebody really wanted that "crisp" edge look.

Which unibody Macs ever had a "few mm" radius? They're all < 1 mm.

Tangential public service announcement: Your forearms should not be digging into the edge of the laptop. If they are, you are positioning your hands and wrists in an uncomfortable and inefficient way which has a good chance of leading to RSI. Irrespective of the smoothness of the laptop corners, don’t do this!

Ideally you shouldn‘t be putting any significant pressure on any surface with your forearms, palms, or wrists while actively typing. You want your hands “floating” with the fingertips resting very lightly on the key tops. But even if you must rest your hands or arms on something, please keep your wrists as straight as possible, and especially avoid wrist flexion or extension.

The surface of your laptop should be more-or-less parallel with the plane of your forearms, with the keyboard kept close to your torso so that your shoulders can remain relaxed with your upper arms hanging down at your sides. (This reduces the torque your arms put on your shoulder, allowing you to comfortably support your arms without any need for external props.)

If you have a tall desk and a low chair, and can’t change furniture, the way to work around the poor furniture design is to either (a) move the laptop to a low tray or directly onto your lap, or (b) prop the back side of the laptop up so that the base of the laptop is tilted toward you, with the keyboard parallel to your forearms. Keep the laptop (or whatever other keyboard) near the edge of the desk.

Different people type in different ways.

Yes this is true, but many of those ways put considerable strain on their hands and wrists and commonly lead to serious injury. If the forearms are digging into the corners of the laptop, that almost certainly means that the wrists are extended (bent downward), which puts the tendons/joints used for typing into a weak and injury-prone part of their range of motion.

People should do whatever works for them and listen to their own bodies, but should be really careful with computer keyboards. I know many professional computer-users who did themselves serious harm with significant impact to their careers.

If something hurts even a little bit, please don’t try to work through the pain.

Sometimes the pain is caused by a razor-sharp laptop edge, which is the point of the post. I type in two main positions–on my back like an otter, or lying face down on a mattress. I'm guessing some people here type suspended upside down from a gravity swing. The computer case design shouldn't punish us for our typing choices!

Lying on your back or lying face down or suspended from a gravity swing are all fine (albeit perhaps not ideal for very long stretches).

In none of these cases should your forearms be digging into the edge of the laptop. If they are something else is wrong about the position.

I occasionally type sitting on a couch, lying on my back on a bed, sitting at crappy furniture at a coffeeshop, sitting on the floor, with one hand on a tall table while tending to toddlers, etc.

In any of those contexts, it is possible to find a way of typing with straight wrists.

This really has nothing to do with the computer case design; the previous poster should adjust his or her posture irrespective of laptop choice. RSI is no joke.

Look, it gives me satisfaction to rest the heels of my hand on the edge of the laptop. I feel more alive when I do it. Colors are brighter. Back off!

This is a terrible argument to justify a poor design. There are plenty of times you need to use a laptop in non-ideal situations, such as a car or plane. The laptop should not punish you for having to operate it outside perfect conditions.

There is no condition where you should have your forearm digging into the front edge of the laptop.

If you come up with a body shape and context and I guarantee you we can come up with a more comfortable way to position the laptop than anything requiring wrists bent downward.

This is not about the design of the Macbook: the same goes for any other laptop, however smooth and soft its front edge might be.

Maybe you shouldn’t do it. But it happens.

You also shouldn’t drive your car into other cars. But we still put seatbelts and bumpers on for those who do.

I misspoke in my original comment. What I should have said was "wrists" instead of forearms. I don't place my forearms on my machine.

It isn't justifying it. This is not an either/or situation. We can both have smoother laptop edges and be mindful of our typing posture.

This was not framed in any shape, way, or form as a justification to the MacBook design. OP just provided some related and useful info.

God forbid anyone who actually uses their laptop on their lap...

Using a laptop on the lap is a fine idea. It does not involve forearms digging into the edge of the laptop.

Some people use their laptops in wider situations than others. Having had creases pressed into my forearms by the edge of my MacBook while using it in various non-ideal and uncomfortable seating situation, usually on the go, I can easily say you are not one of them. Implying that we’re being dishonest or somehow incapable of using a keyboard is a bit insulting.

Huh? I don’t think anyone here is dishonest or incapable of using a keyboard. (Indeed, I’m convinced that idlewords is one of the most honest and generally capable people around.)

I said people who are digging their forearms into their laptop edges are probably bending their wrists down in a way that puts strain on the tendons used for typing (not to mention putting direct pressure on the tendon sheaths for the finger flexors), so they should be careful about RSI.

Would you say he's holding it wrong?

Before I began to type this, I was resting my hands on the (thankfully hand-friendly) edge of my laptop, one finger on the page-down key. I probably do as much reading on my laptop as I do typing.

Leave my the state of my wrists alone.

Ditto on the cold/hot front. When I first worked on a macbook pro I thought if there's someway I could stick a layer of insulation on all the metal I had to make contact with. I frequently rest my palms and wrists on the keyboard pads and with metal as the only thing present I am forced to have this aluminium chassis constantly attempt to reach thermal equilibrium with my body temperature. Not fun.

iphone is the best counter argument to this. when released it was 1000x more functional and 1000x better looking than any phone available

That's revisionist. People tend to forget that when the iphone was released it had no appstore and Apple was telling people to develop webapps. This was less functional than existing offerings on the market, but it sure looked and felt better.

I'm curious when you say less functional than existing offerings you mean .... exactly what? Those java apps you could download from your cell phone carrier that ran incredibly slow? Or the robust ecosystem windows mobile <6 had at the time?.. Because Android wasn't out... I agree with foolfoolz, iphone raised the bar both functionally and visually, regardless of having a app store at launch.

In an age before android or iphones, blackberry ruled the world. The iphone as it was released was a functional regression for blackberry power users. And it didn't catch on with that demographic until Apple iterated on the iphone to close the gap.

You are correct - I totally spaced the blackberry. I was focused on the app store comment. LOL them blackberry power users hung on for awhile huh?

Blackberry ruled the US. It was mostly unknown in the world.

Nitpicks aside, if Blackberry preceded the iphone only in America, it still preceded the iphone. Note that I never claimed that predecessors to the iphone, with more functionality than the iphone, were also more commercially successful in America, let alone worldwide. Claiming that would be ridiculous.

> Or the robust ecosystem windows mobile <6 had at the time?

Huh? Windows CE and, later, Windows Mobile had quite a large number of apps for its era since the programming model was similar to desktop Windows (pre .NET) meaning that there was a ready-made base of developers for it. They weren't necessarily easy to find since the idea of an app store (and Apple/Google eating 30% of your revenue) didn't exist yet but they were there.

They had apps but the quality was low and prior to the Apple App Store’s standard terms discoverability was basically paying baksheesh to the the carriers – our clients were quoted a minimum of $50k per carrier just to be in the store, scaling up based on your perceived ability to pay.

There certainly where high quality applications for WinMo, and discovery was as simple as reading a forum or two. Sure, maybe not quite as easy as going to the app store and downloading some fake app that does absolutely nothing and steals your info, but it worked pretty well. And chances of the WinMo app being actually malicious were lower, too.,

Why do you say parenthetically pre .Net? I programmed ruggedized Windows Mobile devices around 2008 using both C++/MFC and .Net Compact Framework/Windows Forms and they were both just like programming on Windows.

The Palm/Treo app market was quite strong, I had several good and useful apps on my Treo 650 that integrated nicely with a desktop and made it a properly useful device. The app installation method was a bit primitive but there was absolutely a strong market for 3rd party apps.

hmmm - I have a blind spot for palm during that time, completely spaced them. I was a windows mobile power user 2003 thru version 5/6. I will take your word for it.

Americans have a blind spot when it comes to smartphones pre-iPhone, because Nokia wasn't such a big player on that side of the pond. The Symbian S60 ecosystem was fairly well-developed, certainly by the standards of the time.

Nah I was a big fan of s60 Had the birth control 3650 with multiplayer snake. That phone upped the game, but thought we were talking about design and functionality. I wouldn’t call the 3650 a jump in functionality besides it included one of the first cameras stateside .

Yeah I remember seeing a demo of a Psion from a SwissAir seatmate. It was quite awesome for year 2000.

The original iPhone was revealed as three things: a phone, an iPod, and a revolutionary new browser. All three were true. I remember when I bought the first iPhone I was giddy how delightful Safari was, and it was the first smart phone to pass my “xkcd test” (could I figure out how to open a browser and type xkcd.com without getting forcibly corrected). It was also the best iPod and the first to introduce “visual voicemail”. It truly was revolutionary in visual and functional design.

No doubt, I was amazed when I first got my hands on one. The iphone got things right that had never been gotten before. But the fact remains that on the day it launched, there were other smartphones on the market that had more features. When the feature-sets overlapped, iphone was generally the clear winner, but if you tallied it all up, the iphone was clearly lacking a few obvious features that others had, such as the aforementioned third-party software, or even just the simple ability to copy-paste text (which didn't come to iphones until several iterations later as I recall.)

People also tend to forget that it was incredibly refined already in v1. I remember hooking it up to my car and being super impressed that I could pick whether I wanted sound to go to the car, my phone, or my headphones. Each makes sense in a different context, but other products at the time assumed that as long as there was a BT connection available it should use that. They also clearly did some great usability work on touch targets. I could tap on links in web pages and it would do the right thing. Other phones, even if they had a decent browser (they didn’t), forced me to hunt for the magic touch target.

Blackberries were good at email, but otherwise they lost to Apple badly.

Refined yes, featureful no.

The fact that you could browse actual websites (sans Flash of course) was amazing.

WiFi and the companion iPod Touch made me feel it wasn't as much a phone as a goddmaned computer with a phone app that mostly didn't suck.

The text input took a while but I still charge up and unlock my OG iPhone and am amazed at how well it fares (yes, iOS3).

A Blackberry was probably more functional at that time but wasn't as nice as to use and look at.

Whether you believe that to be true probably depends on whether you more frequently used email or the web. The Blackberry was great for messaging but the browser & other non-core apps were a bad joke.

True. back then a mobile phone was mainly a messaging device.

The browser was great for sites that were optimized for it. ESPN at my fingertips...that was Amazing.

Blackberry failed by not embracing apps. The app landscape was a mess of incompatibility, had poorly made apps, and no unified App Store. This where iOS killed Blackberry.

I had a Nokia N95 when the iPhone was released. The N95 was far more functional:

* Multitasking was allowed

* Good maps app for navigating

* Rhapsody subscription service for all your music needs

* 3G support

* Built-in SIP client

The iPhone had none of this, but it had the superior UI. It took years for Apple to catch up to the technology of the klunky N95.

The N95 sold well and was a solid great phone for the time.

However, the Nokia N95 suffered from a small screen 2.6 inches relative to the iPhone’s 3.5 inch display. It mostly sucked for web browsing, which seemed less import because all phones sucked for web browsing.

What separated the iPhone was a useful touch screen enabling large screens, an acceptable web browser even if it lacked flash etc, and an unlimited bandwidth option. If anything it was really bandwidth that changed how people used their phone.

The N95 and the iphone both sucked for web browsing. Websites just weren't made for small screens, you had to zoom in so far and links were hard to click. I wouldn't say the iPhone's browsing experience was any better than the rest, but perhaps that unlimited data plan (not bandwidth) changed things up.

In the iPhone's defense, vs the other smart phones I had used up until I got my iPhone 4, it was the first one to have a web browser that worked reasonably well on all non-mobile websites, and it was that factor alone at the time was enough to get me hooked.

I would argue that tap to zoom on desktop sites on the iPhone worked better than most “mobile optimized” sites.

along with reader mode, and a vertically integrated rendering engine

And don't forget iPhone lacked MMS on release and almost a year or two after if I remember correctly

Unexpectedly, MMS was so crappy at the time and full of spam that it was actually a feature for me. Total count of legit MMS I ever received was half a dozen, and again half of that that I sent.

(I did not own an iPhone 1, only a 3G one, but I skipped on MMS as hard as I could)

“The iPhone Is a Breakthrough Handheld Computer”, Walt Mossberg’s original review. Maybe not 1000x, but definitely multiple X better (especially compared to leading US phones).

- First phone emphasizing Wi-Fi

- Full web browser

- Integrated iPod

http://allthingsd.com/20070626/the-iphone-is-breakthrough-ha...

My old Nokia E90 would beg to differ. It was released before the first iPhone, WiFi works very nice, thank you, has a full web browser, and worked more than well enough as an MP3 player.

It also sported a screen comparable to a "retina" display.

Umm, no, it was not. Even Windows Mobile was far more functional than iPhone. But iPhone looked cute, and had some ease of use affordances for people who could not be bothered actually learning anything (but then this had always been Apple's target audience).

I wrote field service apps for Windows Mobile devices around 2006-2008. Windows Mobioe could do more, but it wasn’t more functional.

What is your definition of functional then?

Obviously, Apple did something (likely marketing, imho, and of course extreme ease of use) right to make the iPhone as popular as it is, but I would need to be convinced that it had something to do with functionality.

Windows CE was not functional with an easy to lose stylus, the touch screens were horrible and it was mostly a miniature Windows desktop. The apps were not exactly touch friendly.

The version of IE was unusable for most of the web. But you don’t think “extreme ease of use” made the iPhone more functional?

The devices we use to deploy were $1000-$2000 (ruggedized devices) so they definitely weren’t cheap devices for the time.

My first WinMo device (and still the most convenient smartphone I've ever had, the SCH-i760) was perfectly well operable 95% of the time even without the stylus -- there was a joystick (and a dialpad) on the front. I rarely had to actually use a stylus.

IE eventually got pretty useless, but unlike iPhone you could always load alternative browsers, shells, and what not.

Sorry, I am still seeing that yes, iPhone is easier to use, as long as you don't need to do much, but functional? Not back then. And whether capacitive or resistive screen is better is a big question -- at least resistive is far more precise.

i literally have both a macbook pro and a thinkpad x230 right now on my desk side by side, and i concur. the thinkpad keyboard is just so much more comfortable. it pains me to see how the newer thinkpads don't have that keyboard anymore.

if only i could find a more lightweight version the same size as the x230, then i'd probably stop using the mac.

> I'd much rather look at a mac book pro than a thinkpad. Next to the minimalist design of the mac, a thinkpad looks like you ripped out part of a server and started carrying it around.

Personally that's the aesthetic I want in a laptop.

I'll accept minimalism, though. Or anything that's not too flashy and doesn't scream GAMER.

>>I think it's good to draw a distinction between visual design and functional design.

There's no such thing as a non-functional design! If it's non-functional, than it's either a piece of art or a piece of crap.

From the article: >In the first interview, he also admitted to admiring people who work on satellites, where you have to justify every iota of space consumed, every gram of weight, because they’re expensive and you only get one chance to get them right.

The thing is, laptops aren't satellites. I've never understood the obsession with saving even a pound of weight for a laptop. (OK, maybe if you're one of those people who flies a million miles a year.)

It's a tool, not an objet d'art or a satellite. The Thinkpad was the best expression of this idea. I've never liked using a Mac more than a Thinkpad. Maybe I'm strange that way, or maybe I'm just that much further skewed toward utility that it makes all the difference for me.

uh, even when just commuting to work every day, every gram saved makes a difference. when buying a new laptop, weight is my primary selection criteria, next is size and price, and only then any features. (although features factor into price)

the only time when weight is not a consideration is when getting a machine that i don't intend to move but just keep at home/work. but even then, i get annoyed when i occasionally have to carry around, or decide to change the purpose of the device.

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