A year on, Ultrabooks are a worse disaster than most expected | Hacker News Reader

A year on, Ultrabooks are a worse disaster than most expected

semiaccurate.com

49 pointsToshio53 comments

For those that aren't familiar, SemiAccurate is more of a tabloid rumors site than a hardcore technology site. Sort of like The Sun for silicon.

They love to blow failures well out of proportion. BumpGate (nVidia's packaging recall problem), Fermi (nVidia's late and hot GPGPU), Tegra (nVidia's... are we seeing a pattern?)

Sort of like the drunk and bitter (but frankly more knowledgeable) uncle of ExtremeTech.

I'm a regular reader, and enjoy it, so this isn't an attack... I'm just recommending, along with the articles, an additional dose of a large grain of salt.

Especially if it's a nVidia article.

SemiAccurate is very deeply embedded in the semiconductor industry and in the OEMs. Charlie Demerjian has a track record of relaying privately held opinions of executives in those industries, stuff that would be a PR disaster for those organizations should their CEOs decide not to shut up.

I personally trust Charlie's analyses.

Yeesh. I'm glad you mentioned his name, I wouldn't have noticed it. My sole exposure to his writing has been the occasional anti-Nvidia tirade. The stuff he wrote for the Inquirer was at a "have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?" level of nuttiness.

It's impressive that he got a whole article out of "I asked them for a review unit lots of times and they kept saying no". I didn't see anything insightful there at all.

One of the article's key insights was this: for any *book to be successful, battery life is the killer feature. Actually, portability is the real killer feature, but battery life is a good proxy for that. Intel chooses not to focus on that in their specs, instead mandating all sorts of bells and whistles to compensate.

Not a winning strategy.

I find it interesting that the Macbook air (Intel based) isn't considered an 'ultrabook' by them. I have felt that Intel's push for Ultrabooks was to get people making them that couldn't push them around like Apple can on price (and hence margin), except that makes them uncompetitive. I mentioned this in a talk on Saturday as well, the real revolution here is that ARM gets away with not being 30% of the COGs of the system and that changes things in the tablet/phone market. Only a matter of time before the laptop market goes that way as well.

> I find it interesting that the Macbook air (Intel based) isn't considered an 'ultrabook' by them

That's because they're talking about Ultrabooks, capital "U", a spec for PC laptops (and an Intel trademarked name).

I went back and re-read it, they do consider the Macbook Air to be an exemplar of what an Ultrabook should be. See this quote:

"We laughed again and pointed out that it wasn’t a Macbook Air, but it did cost more, did less, and still wasn’t a Macbook."

This is the story as I understand it: Intel wants other people to make a Macbook Air functional clone but also want their "traditional" huge chunk of the COGS. In the classic sense they have priced themselves out of the market.

Yes, it's a pretty biased article, but I don't mind. You know why? Because he's been pretty spot on. Anyone who's been watching Intel knows how misleading Intel can be (before anyone accuses me of being an AMD fanboi or something, I own a quad core i7 SNB laptop), and it's obvious ultrabooks will not get to the magical $700 price-point anytime soon (I'm thinking 3-4 years here).

Why not? Well, because while Intel keeps promising that, they have no intention of being themselves part of that price reduction. They have no intention of reducing their prices. So they want to put the whole responsibility on manufacturers. Unfortunately for them, manufacturers have to worry about more than just CPU's to be competitive with ultrabooks. They have to worry about having a quality and high-resolution display. They have to worry about having a fast and large amount SSD, and so on.

Why is it that the laptop/PC market has been considered non-innovative in the past compared to the smartphone/tablet market? Because all the focus has been on CPU's and that has helped Intel. But now people are starting to prioritize more than the CPU in their laptops. In fact the CPU may not even be their #1 or #2 priority anymore. A good display or a good SSD or high quality materials might be.

This sucks for Intel, as the their processors are becoming more than "good enough". ARM devices are "good enough" for most people in terms of performance (iPad's success is proof of that), and an Intel chip that is 10x more expensive will soon become irrelevant for most people. That price gap will just not be worth it to them.

Intel's CPU prices (like all semiconductor products) have been going steadily downward for... basically forever. I don't have a clue what you're talking about.

I guess you're saying that Intel gets a higher margin for its parts per-die-area than fabless SoC vendors do, which is undeniably true. But generally that's considered a good thing for the company, not a bad one. Intel has competing parts in the market for almost everything they sell, and still manages to make a product that people are willing to pay significantly more money for.

It won't last forever, obviously. Eventually the desktop market will dissolve and servers and mobile SoCs will be all that's left. And Intel certainly seems to be aware of this, c.f. all the marketing effort being pushed into the various low-margin Atom lines.

I'm not talking about old CPU's going down in price. I'm talking about the "new" CPU's, which is what Intel will be pushing. Not like anyone still wants a cheap $20 Intel Pentium M in their laptops anymore. My point is they are overshooting in performance, and that means they are overshooting in price, too. And most consumers simply won't care. People pay $1000 or more for Macbooks because they are from Apple. They are buying the brand. It doesn't really have anything to do with pricing there. I mean, it's not like you can just say "Hey, if Apple can sell 20 million $1000+ Macbooks per year, then so can HP, or Dell!". Far from it.

I understand that you think Intel CPUs are overpriced. I'm just saying that the market is paying those prices. So you're wrong, simply by definition.

Compared to essentially everyone else in the industry, Intel is printing money with their silicon. The only product area that comes close in price per die area that I can think of off-hand are high end FPGAs. And it's not as simple as saying they should just drop the price to sell more -- last I remember reading Intel's 22nm fabs are at capacity. They can only sell more Ultrabooks by cannibalizing sales of other parts.

Now, that will change in the future, but it hasn't happened yet.

The author is dead on for one thing - an ultrabook needs to be cheaper than the comparable MacBook Air, or the average consumer will buy a Mac, because most people think Apple products are better, but "too expensive", even PC people.

Intel and Microsoft spent the last decade making PC's cheap for the masses, but they cheapened the brand experience in the process with bloatware and lazy hardware design.

Microsoft seems to get this and is willing to make their own bloatware free hardware. They're even partnering with companies like Vizio to get rid of bloatware while doing some nicer hardware design, even for relatively cheap.

Even still, most consumers at the same price will buy a Mac because it's seen as a better computer. Ultrabooks need to hit say $500-700 to be interesting, but then they're competing with the iPad 3, which is pretty popular and very nice.

I agree the problem of ultrabooks is price.. they are far more expensive than the previous generation of ultra-portables. I see this as just like the tablet market was; trying not to knock down the high price apple had set.

But an iPad does not compare to an ultrabook. There is an argument that they compare to a netbook, but not even close to an ultrabook. I wish people would stop trying to compare an iPad to high end laptops.

This article seems particularly biased against Intel - it gets down to what are almost character attacks at points.

I'd love to see a more level-headed analysis of the Ultrabook space. There's over a hundred different ones now (which may in itself be a problem), and some have replaceable RAM/hard drives, some have full-height Ethernet, and it's at least made the OEMs think about decent industrial design (and in the case of Asus and Lenovo, I think that's worked).

It's not some massive panacea, but I for one welcome the new boon of lighter, thinner and better-built laptops.

What exactly is the problem? My next notebook would probably be an Ultrabook, and the reviews of some of the models didn't sound so bad. Some look good, too - that alone is a huge improvement, given that until recently all notebooks except Macs were extremely ugly (in huge part owed to the tasteless use of "piano lacquer").

My only gripe at the moment is the screen formats. Once again Apple seems to be the only one that gets it right. Those widescreens are just too tiny (all 13'' are not the same).

What other computer besides an Ultrabook would you buy (Apple excluded)? I praise lightness above most other features.

I don't think you can exclude Apple when looking for the problem. Last time I compared Macbook Airs with Ultrabooks, the Macbooks were better computers for the price. The so-called "Apple tax" doesn't seem to apply to this category like it does to regular laptops/desktops. (Or, as the article suggests, perhaps the Intel Tax is equally taxing)

I run on Apple kit because I like the design and build quality, but being reliant on one control-freak supplier brings me out in hives. So I periodically look around to see if there's another supplier I can alternate with.

Nope. Lenovo's thinkpads are nice, but by the time they're spec'd out like a Macbook they cost about 10-20% more. (Better keyboard, though, and that lovely anti-coffee-spill drain to save your ass from the once-in-five-years oops.) Some of Dell's premium laptops look nice and are cheaper ... except the specs are lower end and by the time you add all the extras back in you're paying as much for a Dell as for a Macbook Pro.

It's frustrating! Why can't anyone else build laptops as good as Apple that don't cost even more than a Mac?

> Why can't anyone else build laptops as good as Apple that don't cost even more than a Mac?

They don't have Tim Cook.

Economies of scale. Apple simply build more of each SKU than anyone else, and have an extremely efficient supply chain.

Apple has the best logistics in the world, hand's down. Too, they have what, a dozen SKUs, of which half are phones or tablets?

> Lenovo's thinkpads are nice, but by the time they're spec'd out like a Macbook they cost about 10-20% more.

This baffled me, so I did a comparison:

The low end (2.3ghz i7, non-retina) 15" MBP with the 8gb RAM upgrade and the hi-res screen upgrade costs $2000 even.

The Thinkpad T430 configured with similar specs (different video card -- nvs 5200m vs gt 650m, worse screen resolution -- 1600x900 vs 1680x1050, better processor -- 2.6ghz) came to $1464.

The Thinkpad W530 configured with similar specs (different video card -- k1000m vs gt 650m, better screen resolution -- 1920x1080 vs 1680x1050) came to $1419.

Maybe you were comparing different things though?

He was probably comparing the MBA against the X1 Carbon.

I agree, there isn't much Apple tax at all on The MB AIRs. The higher-end 15" MB Pros, though....

Ultrabook makers learned this the hard way last year: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/03/intel-ultrabooks-unable-...

It's a tough spot. Apple is a several years ahead in product design and is undercutting prices at the same time.

I haven't researched much, but the last review I read said the Air had the worst screen of the recommended models (I think they talked about Zenbooks, Samsung Series 9 and some other). Whatever - even if they cost the same, can't you imagine some people just don't want a Mac? I actually like the Series 9 design. I would install Linux, though.

The only reason I am still unsure about ditching the Mac is the faint possibility of having to do iOS development in the future. Truth be told, and sorry, that is emotional not so much rational, but I loathe Apple.

As for the tax, it is probably true that Apple ships the largest numbers, but they buy their parts (like displays) from other companies. These companies presumably have therefore also access to cheap parts.

My two colleagues on either side of me recently bought new laptops One bought the 13" Air, the other bought a 13" Asus Zenbook. Seriously, I am not making this up.

The Air is very noticeably lighter. I have no idea why because the specs on the Asus and Apple sites say there's only 0.05kg in it in ASUS favour, but my hands very definitely say otherwise. Maybe Asus doesn't include the weight of the battery? Pure guess though.

Of course the Air is significantly more expensive. Personally I'd say the touchpad and screen on the Air are better, but not hugely.

Seems unlikely that Asus excluded a non-removable component from the weight measurement. It seems more likely that your hands are lying to you. Maybe they weight distribution is different enough that it causes one to feel lighter. Maybe something else. If the manufacturers claim 50g apart, they're probably being truthful, and a cheap postage scale could confirm.

In addition to the Zenbook that's already mentioned, Samsung's Series 9 is also worth a look.

Charlie fails to mention something he knows very well - that the ultrabook program was born during hardball negotiations with apple in which (supposedly) they were very close to using an AMD APU part due to the poor intel gpus. Without a credible threat in the form factor Apple had much more latitude in choosing a lower performing cpu from amd or even a different isa. Did ultrabook fail? Look at it this way - Intel is selling more ULV chips than they ever have - and while I'm sure they'd like to have the volume less lopsided, it's obviously way better than not selling them.

Meanwhile, 2 years later the ivy gpu is really pretty good for mobile workloads, and haswell appears to continue their overweight focus on it to keep apple happy.

I got an 11-inch Asus UX21E to replace my heavy, battery-hog 17-inch HP monster. I chose it for two reasons:

1. It's really, really light, I can carry it in one hand or in my Muji manbag. And it's a PC.

2. It's an i5, so while it's fast enough for web and email, the limitations of CPU and GPU power keep me honest as a client-side coder.

Six months on, I can't fault it. I'll upgrade when DX11 GPU's become available, but for now it's perfect. If I needed a Mac, I'd get an Air, but I need a PC: I can't imagine ever going back to a full-fat laptop, and tablets are simply not for C++ coders, end of story.

>It's an i5, so . . . the limitations of CPU and GPU power keep me honest as a client-side coder.

Off-topic, but I wish Google's client-side coders had your attitude! Most of the (annoying) "this web page is not responding," alertboxes I get on my Sandy Bridge i5 are from Gmail, Google SERPs and Google Reader.

My main issue with ultrabook is that they combine the issues of tablets and laptop with very little advantage than "this is a thin pc". I would really like to see some ARM laptop that could last days ( dual/quad core and 2-4 GB of RAM)

Ah, I hadn't realized Ultrabook was some Intel thing, and was going to make a snarky comment about how my MacBook Air is the nicest computer I've ever owned... I guess this means the category has huge potential not to suck

> In the mean time, the real problems still remain. The form factor is abjectly broken, mainly too thin for the purpose ... until they find a way to update the laws of physics, don’t hold your breath ... Want a realistic number of ports? Nope, VGA for a projector or monitor? Nope, too thin. Full height Ethernet? Not possible. Removable battery? Not a chance. Keyboard with actual travel? Guess why that isn’t on the cards? Any chance for expansion? Yeah right. Luckily, if you have a dongle fetish, Ultrabooks are for you, some even have a mini-VGA port that no one else does, how convenient. The entire form factor is simply dumb.

And yet Apple is selling millions of Ultrabooks under the name MacBook Air. Guess what they don't have: VGA ports, ethernet ports, removable batteries, a "keyboard with actual travel" (surprisingly comfortable to type on, actually). They're just as thin as other Ultrabooks. How is the form factor "abjectly broken" or "simply dumb" if Apple can sell so many?

If customers are unwilling to buy Ultrabooks, then obviously something is wrong, but it doesn't seem to fundamentally be a form factor issue. Maybe the high-end market has settled on Apple as the premium producer, and they're not even looking at PCs anymore. (I hope not. I work for Microsoft.) Maybe the Ultrabooks that are hitting the market are still just not that good. (Most of the ones I've tried felt like cheap crap, or had obvious deficiencies like big fan vents on the bottom....) Maybe there's something else holding them back. It's not simply a problem of lack of consumer interest in the form factor, though.

Looks like, by that defintion, Airs (5M/yr per cnet) make up about 1/3 of the "Ultrabook" market (10M/yr per linked article, not including Apple products). That would probably make them the most successful model, but I don't think that it really validates what you're saying. If the Air was clearly "what people want" it would be doing better than a smallish fraction, no?

The source I was looking at claimed 2.8 million Airs in (fiscal) Q2 of FY12, but digging in, it looks like that is the total for all MacBooks. So you're right that these stats don't indicate that the Air is necessarily what customers want.

Still, 10M/year for a category that launched only a year ago? Obviously not what Intel hoped for, but that doesn't seem so shabby to me. It certainly doesn't tell me that customers are completely uninterested.

Yeah. The news is that the earlier projection from the same analyst was 20M. I guess the notion was that Ultrabooks would cannibalize existing netbook and "cheap laptop" sales in a way that they didn't. Instead, manufacturers are chasing the "Macbook Air" market instead, which is at a different price point. And they're not even doing it badly per those numbers. But they aren't hitting what had been expected in the market as a whole.

I completely disagree with the point of view in this article. I recently purchased an ultrabook because I realised that is exactly what I wanted. Reason: weight and size.

I do agree that the current incarnation of ultrabooks isn't there yet. I always find that one or more of the following are wanting: they either have a limited 128 GB SSD hard drive or they have a tiny 32 GB hard drive plus large conventional drive, but the boot up speeds are slow (25-40s instead of 3-12s), or the screens are dull and flat with inaccurate colours lacking vibrance, or the touch pad keys are integrated with the rest of the pad and operate intermittently, or the cursor keys are too small (seemingly for no reason whatsoever), or the performance is jerky due to slow AMD or first generation Intel 1.7GHz processors, or they don't have enough RAM, or the battery life is terrible, or the machines just look really awful or are too heavy for an ultrabook, etc. And if they do have everything right, they are still way too expensive and/or don't support flash.

Nevertheless, I am utterly convinced ultrabooks will be a huge hit when they finally get them right. DVD drives will disappear and people will use SD cards and wireless peripherals for everything.

So you are agreeing then that they aren't there yet, but you think they might...

Might be a disaster for the manufacturers in general, but it's been great for me. My Samsung N900X1B has completely replaced my ASUS Transformer - it's as light or lighter, can play 10-bit video, and can play windows games; I can and do use it as my main computer (except when I want to watch 1080p video). Of course it's twice the price, but it's worth it.

A bit melodramatic. I would buy an ultrabook if they were priced better, but for now I'm just sticking with my clunky 17" laptop.

> I would buy an ultrabook if they were priced better

Hmmm, wasn't that sort of their point...?

Building a lightweight notebook is all about balance and sacrifice. You can't have it all. The reason that the MacBook Air is so popular is that Apple managed to hit the sweet spot, balancing weight, battery life, performance, and design. The MacBook Air is defined as much by what it leaves in as what has been left out. Part of the reason the Ultrabook is such a disaster is that getting the right balance is extremely difficult, and there's no indication that they're going to get it right in the future. The OEMs are told, "You must include these features," and when you're trying to maximize the feature checklist, you're almost always going to fail in this product category.

Am I missing something about all this price talk? The first 17 results for ultrabooks on newegg are under 800(with a couple < 600$) and the first 40 or so are under the 1200 that the 13" Air starts at...

I got a Zenbook and i dont wanne get back to my old notebook...

yeah they arent cheap but this arent mainstream products in 1 or 2 years ther will be cheaper ultrabooks but they will have bad screen resolution and cheap ssds

i dont get why it is a disaster... a disaster is that many manifacturs put bad screens in ther laptops or other things that must get better...

Does a anyone else get the feeling that between Intel, OEM's, and MS promising the revolutionary they have too many cooks in the kitchen? Not every company in the chain can be at the pinnacle of their creativity all the time. All of them promising it means one of them will always be missing their own mark.

It really amuses me that so few tech sites bother to mention the MacBook Air when talking about "Ultrabooks". It's not like one can exactly deny that Intel/PC manfcs were "inspired". I wonder if its genesis is part of the reason that they fail so hard when it's not Apple making them.

OK here one for the HN cowed! What light wait laptop would you get for $800?

Would it be an ultra book?

If the new Samsung Chromebook could run Windows, I'd get one of them, and stick a bigger SSD in it. Even in it's current crippled form, I'm tempted by putting Ubuntu on it.

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1293349/samsung-serie...

Just sneaks over at $829, but I’d get an 11" Macbook Air (2011, 4gb ram, 128gb SSD) from Apple’s outlet:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC969LL/A

I love my 11" Air, best laptop I’ve ever owned.

For $800? I'd probably try to find a 2011 Macbook Air.

I recently settled on a Thinkpad X230 -- add a couple hundred to that price to upgrade the screen to IPS, and an i5 cpu (and backlit keyboard) -- it's worth it. I also added an internal SSD (you can install it under the keyboard, in addition to having your regular hard drive), this acts as my primary drive with the 500GB mechanical drive as a data store. My only complaint is the screen resolution, but better than the older netbook screens (768 vertical vs. 600 vertical resolution). But at least it is still easier to carry around than the larger 15-inch+ notebooks.

A better article than this agenda driven Charlie Demerjian rant.

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/02/lets-take-another-l...

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