The Thickness of Napkins

contrast.ie

2 points·dshah··2 comments

At the bottom of the article you show the bottom of a macbook against another brand of laptop, presumably as a an example of Apple's excellent product design.

However this is, I believe, possibly the worst example. The other laptop has many clearly marked and separately detachable parts. It also has a note with what I assume would be model and serial numbers, details about the hardware etc. All of which are very useful pieces of information and features, to both users and engineers. In contrast the bottom of the macbook is not at all intuitive, and just about all it tells you with the embossed Apple logo is that the product falls squarely into the Apple lock-in business model that all their other products do.

I agree with the main theme of the article, but very much feel that things can be 'over-designed' just as they can be 'over-engineered'. The former however is the complete opposite where all features and functionality are abstracted away.

How useful is that information to _users_, vs. engineers? If the Mac is running then all that information - and more - is available via "About this Mac." If it's broken, then anyone who is going to fix it can also pop open the case and figure it out.

The lack of replaceable parts is perhaps lock-in, but the overhead for supporting some functionality (replace the DVD drive with something else, or battery with a fresh one) detracts from other functionality (lighter, thinner laptop with longer battery life).

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