I'm not sure what general line of products you're talking about, but devices like phones and tablets surely have orders of magnitude more "thought and engineering" in them. The fact that you don't like the tradeoffs they provide doesn't mean they weren't engineered and considered.
> The fact that you don't like the tradeoffs [the phone/tablet designs] provide doesn't mean they weren't engineered and considered.
I wish more companies would do something like that: produce a "Sport" model of their regular things... take the regular model, make it a little more rugged, charge a little more.
I think a truly rugged iPhone or flagship Android device would sell in a major way. Clearly it's something a lot of people want: look at all the people that wrap their phones in big fugly rugged cases.
I've read rumors over the years (from Daring Fireball, etc) that Apple has been toying around with a rugged "Explorer" (surely a working title + reference to the Rolex Explorer) variation of the Apple Watch for quite a few years. I hope they pull the trigger, I hope it sells, and I hope it starts a bit of a trend.
Apple would be in a very unique position to pull something like this off with their Macbooks, too. Traditionally "rugged" laptops have made major performance compromises. After all, performance = heat = airflow requirements, so you can't have a sealed laptop with top of line performance, unless you stick some giant cooling fins on it or something. At least traditionally.
But Apple's M1 chips show that performance doesn't have to be compromised for a fully sealed design.
I knew it would be a while until I could afford one.
I still remember the first the first one I saw.