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Vizio Plans To Undercut The Market For All-In-One PCs
TV maker Vizio is famous for undercutting competitors' prices on LCD TVs; now, the company has released word that it will introduce a new line of budget computers, and next week will be showing them off at CES. Bloomberg reports that the company won't yet disclose actual prices (the kind with numbers), but says instead only that they will be at a "price that just doesn’t seem possible." As the article mentions, the all-in-one desktop machines shown look a lot like Apple products; BetaNews has pictures, and ominously mentions Apple's tendency to sue over similar-looking products.
Cheap computers are a good thing for the poor people. computers might suck, but at least it will allow some people to get online.
Not that you can't find a ton on craigslist or anything.
Be seeing you...
Never, probably. Very few whole concepts entirely vanish. There's movies and television, but stage plays still exist. There's television and MP3 players, but radio still exists. There's internet streaming, but radio and television still exist. There's e-readers, but print books still exist. There's laptops, tablets and smartphones, but desktop computers still exist.
There is that minimal keyboard that looks like it would be hell to type on if you have any sort of speed. That's very Apple.
If you really think that the only thing that makes it similar-looking to Apple products is "rounded rectangles," then you're intentionally being obtuse for whatever reason. There comes a point where it's obvious that other companies are liberally borrowing from Jonathan Ive's design shop at Apple.
Vizio's PC concept looks like this. The keyboard looks just like Apple's flat keyboard introduced a few years ago, the trackpad is a clone of the Apple Trackpad, and though it's less of a copy than the others, the screen is certainly reminiscent of an iMac, especially taken as a whole with the rest of the components.
I'm not surprised at all that, with all the design work Apple puts into its products, it is going to try to protect that work from knockoffs. Not only is this taking advantage of design work done at Apple, but if the products turn out to be low-quality or problematic, their resemblance to existing Apple products ends up damaging Apple's brand as well. I realize Slashdot comments tend to have an Apple slant (to put it mildly), but come on, this is completely obvious "inspiration" from Apple.
I think what really goes on here is that some people just don't want to give Apple credit for anything, and they hate when people do credit them, so when comparisons between designs are pointed out, it pisses them off and they make snarky remarks about "rounded rectangles."
I think a big chunk of that is that even a 5 year old desktop is fast enough for most consumer tasks now, no?
The market is rather saturated with fast desktops, not like the leaps between 486 -> P1 > P2/3. There's less incentive to upgrade regularly.
Sent from my PDP-11
Desktop's will never die, not as long as they have the capability of being 10 times more powerful than their portable brethren.
When did everyone get this huge blind spot when it comes to what people do with computers? There are still people out there that do more with their computer than surf the web and consume digital media. People that need as much raw power as they can get for what they're doing have no choice but to remain on the desktop. Although laptops are now beginning to fill that niche (and even then, cheapo ones struggle), tablets and smart phones aren't going to fill that niche for a long, long time.
When tablets, smart phones, and laptops come out that are able to directly compete with their desktop counterparts in terms of raw power, productivity and potential, then I'll say the desktop's days are numbered. Until then, desktops aren't going anywhere...
Looks like bonch needs to be more proactive in protecting his literary work. Overly Critical Guy is making a cheap knock off of his posts and selling it at a discount.
Either way, though, I'm not buying.
My question is, at what point does a particular design go from being something proprietary to something obvious for it's function? For instance, when does "rounded rectangles" go from being a style feature to a "of course the corners are rounded, what else are they going to do with them, make them pointed?" When does a particular size go from a "design style" to "duh, of course it's going to be about the same size, it is intended for the same function"?
Personally, I have no problem with design being proprietary, but when it requires competitors to actually produce inferior products and impede on their functionality to avoid just looking too much like another product that it is directly competing with, it doesn't seem right to me. Of course tablets are all going to be about the same size, people have about the same size hands, more or less. Every chiclet style keyboard looks basically the same, every trackpad is going to look basically the same, every tablet is going to look basically the same, every smartphone is going to look basically the same. A manufacturer shouldn't be forced to put physical buttons on a touchscreen device just because Apple's touchscreen devices don't have any, or point the corners of their tablet just because Apple's are rounded, or not bevel the edges (that would just be uncomfortable to hold for anyone, I mean, come on), or any of the other silly things that I've heard come out of these patent lawsuits...
Yes, but the desktop computer itself is not a particular technology. Telegraph is defunct but people still communicate long distance electronically. Analog TV is defunct but TV's are everywhere, Celluloid movies are on their way out but people still go to the movies just the same as they did 80 years ago.
With "The Cloud" we may see more people move to tablets and smart phones that serve as little more than a terminal, but desktops aren't going anywhere. Honestly, it's funny, but the majority of people I know with laptops use them in exactly the same manner as a desktop: sitting at their desk, plugged in, often with a standard wired mouse plugged in for good measure since most people don't care for trackpads. For all the portability, they unplug their laptop like once a month, if that, so it's a wasted feature. And tablets, I honestly don't know how people can do anything with them that requires more than basic text input or coarse pointer control. I've heard the anecdotal "I wrote an entire novel on my iPad and it was as easy as a keyboard!!1!!1!1!" but I honestly don't see how people can stand software keyboards, it's just way too inefficient for my expectations, I guess.
Anyways, my point is, as long as people are sitting at a desk using a computer, there will be desktop computers. Not everyone needs portability or a particular form factor.
I'm not so sure - they have seen year-on-year growth for the past 6 years, in opposition to the general trend of the industry as a whole (this is exclusively talking about OS X machines). The number of people who use a computer is extremely high, and Apple have been welcoming switchers for more than half a decade and still have plenty of room for growth. Plenty more affluent/well enough off people to consider the switch to Mac when they look at upgrading/replacing the old computer - especially now that it's even easier than ever to run Windows in a VM or dual boot if you still have "that one program" that you really must keep that is Win only.
I'm not sure they're close to a plateau yet.