> If sales increase when it is thinner, it stands to reason that customers want thinner devices.
This isn't something that can be A/B tested when there's only one (thinner) offering. People "need" to upgrade their devices and will ultimately buy and put up with the newer model even it means trading a decent keyboard, potentially better battery life, or a headphone jack.
>Some people are obsessed with weight/thickness in mobile devices, but not as many as the manufacturers think there are. "
That's not what sales numbers say. People repeatedly buy the thinner/lighter models (which also seem more "advanced to then") over heavier alternatives.
There are good reasons for pursuing thinness. One, it naturally puts you (through accumulated R&D, supply chain and design know-how) on the leading edge of miniaturisation, a resiliant multi-decades long trend in technology. Pushing for a smaller laptop made possible the iPhone; pushing for a smaller iPhone made possible the Apple Watch, et cetera. (Thinner, lighter devices also have a demonstrated ability to increase usage, by being lighter to hold up.) It’s a design philosophy built into a longer-term strategy.
> Something much thicker would kind of defeat the purpose of being portable.
Batteries always takes room. I'd prefer a thicker laptop with more autonomy. I dont understand thinner laptops, especially plastic ones, since plastic doesnt seem to disperse heat very well.
This is such a silly statement, I don't know where to being. Everyone wants thinner, lighter devices. Everyone. Or we would still be using 2 inch thick laptops. or 0.5 inch thick phones.
Even then, with the 2 inch thick laptops, there were making them as thin as they could. The tech wasn't there to make it any thinner, or they would have.
> I don't get what customers gain from .07 nineteenth of an inch less of thickness
It is difficult to make thin, light and functional laptops. This results in fewer doing it, with those that do being able to command a margin for it.
It also amortises your product R&D. Minitiarisation continues, delivering not only more computing power but more in smaller form factors.
By focussing on thin and light, they can keep tweaking with decisions they had to make when putting a computer in a phone and then a watch and will need to face putting it into a contact lens, et cetera.
Here's a revolutionary idea in case Sir Jony is reading:
Make it lighter and thicker.
Seriously, until it's as light as a phone I don't mind if they keep shaving weight off. But there's very little to be gained by going thinner:
1. I doubt ergonomics get much better as it approaches typing on a sheet of paper
2. the risk of bending increases
3. if it's not as thin they can fit more stuff in there more cheaply: better heat management, longer lasting batteries, faster processors/more memory, stronger antennas, etc.
> There's clearly a pretty severely diminished return in chasing further thinness for laptops.
Also, weight is approaching the totally diminished return. As long as I can hold an extended laptop between thumb and forefinger, weight no longer matters. I reached that point several years ago.
> All they want is thin, light and a big beautiful screen.
I disagree with the thin part. I have yet to see anyone care whether a laptop is 1" or .7". This is a pointless marketing ploy, invented by Jobs. Yes, lightness matters. But we have seen (and I actually owned one) incredibly light laptops mostly from Japan well before Jobs invented the thin craze.
> > Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles.
> I'm not sure it does really.
Not 100% true, you're right, but the thinness is definitely the reason ethernet went. My 2010 had an RJ45 on it, and there's just no room for it on the 2015 or the later ones. However, I do think the design aesthetic that calls for thinness is related to the design aesthetic that fetishizes the simplicity of having as few blemishes on the case as possible. Floppy eject button? We can do it in software. Mouse buttons? Reduce it to one. No wait, reduce it to zero (magic mouse). Trackpad buttons? Remove them. Ports? As few as possible. Sleek. I feel like putting on a black turtleneck.
You want. Please don't generalise. Personally, I have always wanted my laptop to be thinner. And I am a "professional" who hates dongles by any possible definition.
> I just don't want to see that reverted to a discrete battery design.
WHY?! You'd end up with stuff 3-5mm thicker, but basically the same weight. Let's drop the "thinner" fetish once and for all, nobody cares about some mm of "wasted" space (that usually improves cooling anyway) inside a devices case and it being a bit chunkier, as long as it's almost just as lightwieght!
Fffs, let's go back to getting gold plated or diamond encrusted laptops and watches for showing off status! That's way better than the thinner/lighter nonsense...
Sure, getting smth. thinner bc technology actually improves (eg. displays) is cool, but shaving micrometers by packing everything close together is stupid.
(Oh, and we could start fixing our brains to think the same about cases for... people! Eg. housing. Like in kill the micro-apparments disease, there's enough room on the planet for all to leave confortable... in bigger rooms, and with chunkier laptops if that makes them more recyclable. "Space" IS mostly "free" ya know - very little of Earth's surface is actually usable for stuff like agriculture, energy production, mining etc.)
I agree, and "thin" really isn't much of a differentiator anymore. I wouldn't have looked twice at my friend's Droid Razr if he hadn't insisted on showing me its profile.
It's possible that with 2 pound laptops and 5 oz phones, we already have almost ideal form factors given the constraints of normal usage. At this point, making a lighter phone is like making a lighter pencil or book - more novel than desirable.
I generally prefer thin devices to a certain point, and then after that I agree that it’s just fluff. I think showing how a product is “thinner” is an easy way to show that it weighs less, which is what I care about in thin devices.
An interesting thought, but is it true? I cant really think of people complaining of arm fatigue from holding up a ~150-200g phone -- the effort of holding up your arm and hand alone are going to be substantially more than additional weight of the phone.
I also dont really see any evidence of phone manufacturers decreasing weight over the years, at least with a quick review of Apple's iPhones, which have definitely increased in weight over the past decade.
I really wish it was. Nowadays devices are thin but heavy so it's unrelated.
reply