Mitch Ratcliffe at ZD-Net unboxes a new Mac and a new ThinkPad. Guess which ones comes in the prettier box?
“Lenovo’s ThinkPad comes in a brown corrugated cardboard box. If you purchase the multimedia base station for the ThinkPad, you get two brown boxes in a larger box that is an armful to carry. The irony here is that the ThinkPad is lighter than the MacBook, but you get several pounds of extraneous packaging with it that makes the ThinkPad appear clunkier when it’s not.”
Okay, I’ll concede that our packaging is not something one oohs and ahhs over. Keep in mind we ship pallets of these into Fortune 500 companies where the IT guys aren’t going to fondle the documentation.
I can’t wait to see how we fare as Mitch gets deeper into the comparison. I went to an Apple store on Sunday to check things out and started typing. Blech. I’ll take the ThinkPad’s keyboard any day.
But the boxes? No, I throw them out.
“Keep in mind we ship pallets of these into Fortune 500 companies where the IT guys aren’t going to fondle the documentation.”
If I’d have been sipping my beer when I read that, it would have been all over my keyboard. Shame on you, potentially ruining keyboards all over the world like that.
😀
The MacBook Pro comes with technology to spin down the hard drive if the machine is dropped. I’m curious if this had to be licensed from IBM/Lenovo. It’s unfortunate it does not have drain holes for liquid spills (if it did I’m sure it would have been marketed heavily by Apple). I wonder if IBM held this tech back to differentiate the ThinkPad?
Ideally the ThinkPad would come in a steel case to emphasize its ruggedness, but I imagine this would add even more cost than Apple’s fancy cardboard 🙂
I ran both side byside and ended up selling the MacBook Pro for a lot less than I paid for it to a needy editor of a Sacramento business magazine. The WiFi implmentation on MacBook Pro just plain sucks dead bunnies through a straw.
The discusssion of the keyboard is valid, Aplpe’s imlpementation is horrific and I know two MPro users who already have experienced the pain of misaligned keyboard switches.
Also, the heating issues on 2.0 GHZ MacBook Pros are well documented.
What Apple does have going for it, however, is a great personal software bundle–unsurprising since they’ve had a strong leadership position there for sometime.
But Apple’s put down of business users alienates the very market they need to penetrate.
In general, Apple developed MacBook opro for itself and its designers made some fundamental mistaken assumptions in the design.
I was surprised at Demo by the apperance of eight MacBook Pros on the demonstrator stage for the first afternoon session. That’s a first at the show. Most of the computers used in the Demos on stage were ThinkPad and the majority of machines in the audience were also ThinkPad.
Tim and Dave, the one thing I really like about MacBook Pro is its backlit keyboard. It really is effective for writing in low light situations like conference rooms, my office at night or working outdoors in the dark, where it creates just the right “wizard in the dark wilderness” effect.
I believe TghinkPad is a superior platform due to its durability, human factors touches and all around better mix of system features.
The one area where you can kick some ass is in so-called entertainment notebooks like those made by HPQ. better audio, backlit keyboards, better webcams and a deeper consumer bundkle would be a start. But, you can not compromise on durability, security or performance. most of all– no slow-ass cheap hard disk drives.
Please go to my blog (he said gratuitously) for a partial list of new applications you should lock up. If you don’t HP or your friends in Formosa will.
Well, I need to be up at the Lake in one hour for a trout derby.
Chowchilla, have a bus load of fun
Jim Forbes
The unboxing photos series phenom is certainly a recent twist. Like the little blue tiffany box, fanboys can’t want for the unboxing pictures of unreleased or newly released products. An OCD Christmas morning pictorial worthy of Life Magazine.
The pics are porn for geaheads.
Is it a symptom of tech worship?
A much needed renewed emphasis on presentation?
Some sort of Scientologist plot like crop circles?
The unboxing pics are only found for technology, not cars or cereal or Ginzu knives.
And they freak me out. Sure, packaging counts but c’mon…
I agree with everyone here, as much as I LOVE my Macbook pro, toughness wise, it seem like fragile compared to my friend’s UGLY but very tough Thinkpad. I wish Apple’s designers would consider improving the sturdiness of their portables just like back then when they designed their tank like but still quite pleasing G3 portables such as Pismo and Wallstreet. Ask anyone with a “pro” line Apple portable since the G4 Powerbook (metal enclosure) and they’ll admit that they all need to treat their computer very gently or it will easily scratch or a hard bump will kill 30% of their resale value.