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Comment by whywhywhywhy | Hacker News Reader

>For example connectivity to cellular networks (still missing in even the fanciest laptop but available on my watch.)

Most "Fancy" PC laptops have cellular

>PC cameras are comical in comparison.

Microsoft's cheapest ($400) Surface device has 2 1080P cameras, on 5MP one 8MP. Great cameras actually, company I work for uses them for all their tutorial video recording, looks so much more professional than the current MacBook Pro camera.

Don't think this writer has any experience outside of the MacBook ecosystem, it's only Apple who are woefully trailing behind in these areas. I fully expect them to catch up by Q2 next year but to pretend these things haven't been standard for years in the rest of the laptop ecosystem is silly.

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> Most "Fancy" PC laptops have cellular

Yeah, I would diagnose this as a clear case of "Apple lock-in syndrome" on the author's part...

But he does have a point! I recently bought a Lenovo Ideapad Duet Chromebook as a more flexible alternative to an Android tablet, and was a bit surprised that it doesn't have GPS - which you take for granted from all but the cheapest tablets these days, but of course this is a Chromebook with a detachable keyboard, not a tablet...

Might already know this, but your phone's hotspot should pass through the location data. We used my laptop on a couple of roadtrips where we wanted to pull the map up larger.

> your phone's hotspot should pass through the location data

What is the protocol for that ?

NMEA perhaps?

Good to know - there is actually a feature to connect your Android phone to your Chromebook to share the internet connection, and I tried that a few months ago, but the location data wasn't shared. After that I realized while on vacation that using OsmAnd on the phone was enough for all practical purposes, so I forgot about this issue. But maybe in the meantime Google published an update which also shares the phone's location data? Would definitely make sense to have something like that...

Fwiw I have a fancy (ok expensive/powerful but not “fancy” like a surface) Dell and its camera is terrible. I’m guessing it adds around $3 to the BOM of a $3k laptop. I have seen similar crap on similar models from HP/Lenovo. This pandemic hopefully changes this for new models once everyone does video calls and notices this.

Laptop cameras are terrible because they are embedded in screens, and laptop screens are very thin. It's a physics issue, not a cost one. The Surface can have a better camera because the screen is the thick part (although this makes it a much worse as a laptop).

My laptop screen is about as the same thickness as my phone (OnePlus 3), which has a front-facing camera that is unimaginably better than the one in my laptop. The border on the top of the screen is also wide enough to fit it and in fact the camera inside of the laptop is only marginally smaller than the one in my phone (I've unfortunately had to take both apart enough times that I'm quite certain of this).

It's definitely not a physics issue. Just like the painfully slow barely USB 2.0 SD card reader that laptops include, despite costing a couple grand and having a 20Gpbs link literally right next to it, it is a cost issue.

I’m Confused why you keep your magical laptop screen a secret??

What?

>My laptop screen is about as the same thickness as my phone (OnePlus 3)

OnePlus 3 is 7.4mm thick. You will have to measure your laptop screen thickness. Most Modern laptop dont have a lip that is anywhere near that.

Just took some calipers to my 2017 Lenovo Yoga and the screen (glass to aluminium) is just over 6mm, so I was off by quite a bit. I also measured a similarly old but low-end Lenovo laptop I had around and and some 2019 HP business laptop and both were close to 7mm.

But the OP3 is also not the thinnest device these days. I know both Samsung and Apple have made flagship devices 6.9mm thick and their cameras were excellent. I've read about 5mm phones as well, but I don't know a thing about their cameras (I'd imagine still better than most laptops though).

And besides, even if there was no way to fit a decent camera in 6mm, I'm certain most business users couldn't care less about a an extra mm of thickness or even a small bump on the back of the screen if it meant that they'd be getting actually usable video out of their absurdly expensive laptops.

Here [1] is the image of a 2017 Yoga I find. I dont know how that is 6mm thick, and not width. Considering the Whole Laptop thickness is only 17mm.

The thinnest part of MacBook Air ( It is a Wedge Shape ) is 4.1mm. That is both the base and the lid combined. The old MacBook Pro lid I have now is only 3mm thick, Glass to Aluminium back. Basically we are talking about fitting a camera on top of a circuit board with under 2mm of space.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-15-6-Touchscreen-Bluetooth-Fin...

I for one would not want a 4k fron facing camera on a laptop for video calls even if it was possible. 720p is perfect in my book, people don’t need to see every pore in my face or my nosehairs when on a call.

> Most "Fancy" PC laptops have cellular

what

just checked one of the biggest laptop retailer in my country, and out of 651 laptops referenced, only 10 have 3G/4G support. I don't see any with a GPS.

Yeah, no. I've had an HP Elitebook that had a 3G modem, but that was very much an enterprise spec, I don't recall a single high end consumer laptop with a cellular modem. I think you could get the XPS with one years ago, but that option is long gone now.

There were modems for mPCIe and mSATA interfaces, there are for M.2 now. All HP Pro/Elitebooks I've seen had a 2nd mPCIe/mSATA interface on mobo for WWAN but the cheapest models might not have an actual slot soldered.

My 10 year old thinkpad has an empty bay where you can add a cellular modem. Cellular in laptops is not new.

Cell connectivity has been available on laptops for a while, but it's rarely actually present (IME) because the OEMs overcharge for it, and tethering plans exist for phones, so why pay twice?

Yeah this is a post written by someone who hasn't touched a non-Apple PC in years.

"Desktop" software hasn't caught up to the idea that you can have a network connection that a) goes away and b) can be expensive. What's to stop a native application from downloading a huge update as soon as you connect to 3/4/5/G? IOS and Android have ways of controlling this and mobile apps are written with this expectation from the ground up. Which is why I expect OSX will continue to converge with IOS/IPad OS and provide a more managed environment for apps to run in.

I haven't looked into it too deeply, but my (Win 10) laptop can tell when I'm tethering and goes into a "metered connection" mode, where at least the windows native apps don't connect without explicit interaction.

I have a Surface Pro 7 from work and honestly it's not even half a MacBook. The OS is particularly poor, as is the battery life. The Mac is a better frontend for Windows sessions through Citrix than a literal Windows device is-- gestures, scrolling, trackpad predictability, etc. I could not give two craps about the cameras. I don't use my laptop as a camera. If I need a high-quality camera, I'll attach one. If I have to do a video call without preparation, the receiver can deal with a "mere" 720p. Would I welcome a 4k cam on a Mac? Sure, if it's free, why not? I'd rather have a microSD reader tho.

Curious why you feel the need to jump in to try to defend companies like this. He said nothing about macs other than they're trailing behind in video and cellular, nothing about the os or battery life.

Another thing missing from the Mac is touch screens and pen input. If you've ever used a Surface, it just feels like there's something missing from your Mac.

It boggles my mind that Apple shows all these musicians, designers and artists in their ads, and pretends that a one-dimensional strip above their keyboard is allowing them to express themselves in a completely new way...

Regarding the Mac cams:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/are-we-over-criticizing...

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