You are lopping "consumers" in a single basket where they are all supposed to want the exact things Apple focuses on, and even on these aspects Apple isn't guaranteed to be the top choice.
> If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years.
If Apple was really hitting perfectly all the important aspects, they would have 90% market share on the PC market. For the record they're at about 15%.
On the bias coming from sticking around nerd circles, yes "normal" customers don't long for shoving 128Gb of RAM in their space heater PC. But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
You'll see people walking from meeting to meeting with their mouse because they just don't use trackpads (though they might touch their screen if/when it's supported), others spending their days with earbuds in ear because it dual connections to the laptop audio and they never hear the speakers in the whole device's life. Some dock their macbook all day and hook it to a FHD monitor. Everyone will care about different things.
That's the part for me where the Apple laptop line is so uniform, you need to fall pretty near the middle of the target to properly get the benefits.
> Apple is ahead
They are ahead regarding the exact balance they are targeting. But you'll get better perfs if you're willing to go full desktop for instance and don't care about the size and power consumption (the mac pro going the way of the DoDo doesn't help). You'll get more/cheaper memory if you don't care about a unified architecture. Apple's GPU isn't the market leader. You also won't get anything smaller or lighter than the macbook Air. And of course no USB-A on laptops, which surprisingly still stings.
It's obvious but merits to be said: Apple targets a very specific consumer, and won't be optimal for everyone, including people who want more than what Apple offers.
> manufacturers seem to not be able to understand how to deliver quality in their products.
This is more a matter of taster I'd argue, what people see as "quality" will vary. I'm still amazed by people praising the glass backs and metal on the iPhones for instance. An eink laptop will probably be the same deal, going the pragmatic way (mostly plastic/composite) or the Apple way (glass and aluminium)
I feel that we've drifted from our original discussion about innovation. The Mac touchpad hardware/software is genuine innovation. Same for getting great sound into a small laptop, removing pixels from being a factor with high DPI retina displays, same for all-day battery, and same for the M chips. These are all things which change the way we do computing. And these examples are all things where nobody would prefer something worse.
Then some things are up to individual preference and needs. But nobody prefers having a bad touchpad, for example. As for market share, that doesn't say too much about innovation, nor quality. The cheapest beer is always going to sell more than any other beer.
Keeping USB-A or cheaper RAM per dollar aren't innovations in my book. Neither is keeping a computer plugged in. We've had plugged in computers since the beginning, but it's only in recent years that they became truly portable.
> But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
Everybody I've seen who've tried a MacBook have been ecstatic about the display and the touchpad.
I really wish that other manufacturers made good products to compete with Apple on other aspects than price. And they do, in limited niches. And they also innovate, but they never make good implementations. A plastic e-ink laptop with a next-gen e-ink display would be fantastic. But you just know that the manufacturer is going to make the computer horrible in every other way. Unfortunately.
Greatest non-Apple innovations I can think of on the top of my head: E-Ink, 120hz displays, under-display fingerprint reader, AI/LLM (which is massive), wireless laser mouse. And everything related to gaming/gpu. But nobody is complaining about nVidia not innovating, like everybody is complaining about Apple.
>> But nobody prefers having a bad touchpad, for example
I don't like Apple's touchpad because it's too big and makes their keyboard worse.
I much prefer laptops with smaller touchpad. I usually disable it anyway so most of the time it's wasted space for me which makes my main input device worse.
> I feel that we've drifted from our original discussion about innovation. The Mac touchpad hardware/software is genuine innovation. Same for getting great sound into a small laptop, removing pixels from being a factor with high DPI retina displays, same for all-day battery, and same for the M chips. These are all things which change the way we do computing. And these examples are all things where nobody would prefer something worse.
I think this difference in perception is really the crux of it. My TL;DR would be that Apple really pushed the enveloppe for decades, until it mostly stopped doing so (the M chips are the last real advancement for me)
To go point by point:
> touchapds
Apple introducing decent touchpads was an innovation, it happened in 2006. From there they refined the formula, became the absolute best at making touchpads, and decided to leap to button-less touchpads in 2018. That was 7 years ago.
> retina
It was a huge leap in display management and technology. It happened in 2015, 10 years ago.
Current macbook evolved a lot from there, but given how Apple also touted "all day battery life" for the first watches, that milestone was in reach 15 years ago.
---
> [other manufacturers] do, in limited niches. And they also innovate, but they never make good implementations.
Apple's niche is also limited. It grew bigger than in the platinum macbook days, but even today I'd consider it a small part of the global market. DELL or Lenovo would be an example of an actual mainstream PC maker. Jobs would spit on their designs, but if we look at the numbers that's what a non niche maker looks like.
On whether an implementation is good or not is on the eye of the beholder, I think we can agree to disagree.
> If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years.
If Apple was really hitting perfectly all the important aspects, they would have 90% market share on the PC market. For the record they're at about 15%.
On the bias coming from sticking around nerd circles, yes "normal" customers don't long for shoving 128Gb of RAM in their space heater PC. But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
You'll see people walking from meeting to meeting with their mouse because they just don't use trackpads (though they might touch their screen if/when it's supported), others spending their days with earbuds in ear because it dual connections to the laptop audio and they never hear the speakers in the whole device's life. Some dock their macbook all day and hook it to a FHD monitor. Everyone will care about different things.
That's the part for me where the Apple laptop line is so uniform, you need to fall pretty near the middle of the target to properly get the benefits.
> Apple is ahead
They are ahead regarding the exact balance they are targeting. But you'll get better perfs if you're willing to go full desktop for instance and don't care about the size and power consumption (the mac pro going the way of the DoDo doesn't help). You'll get more/cheaper memory if you don't care about a unified architecture. Apple's GPU isn't the market leader. You also won't get anything smaller or lighter than the macbook Air. And of course no USB-A on laptops, which surprisingly still stings.
It's obvious but merits to be said: Apple targets a very specific consumer, and won't be optimal for everyone, including people who want more than what Apple offers.
> manufacturers seem to not be able to understand how to deliver quality in their products.
This is more a matter of taster I'd argue, what people see as "quality" will vary. I'm still amazed by people praising the glass backs and metal on the iPhones for instance. An eink laptop will probably be the same deal, going the pragmatic way (mostly plastic/composite) or the Apple way (glass and aluminium)