Friday, April 9, 2010

MacPro Design

MacBook Pro - features that can be improved


I recently got MacBook Pro laptop at my new job. Following are some aspects of the product that I believe could use a makeover:


1. Get rid of (very) sharp edges in the closing latch (see figure on right). Really, this is product design 101..










2. Make power button prominent…(it may be visible in the image on the side due to the special lighting in this image) but in normal lighting it is not that visibile; not sure if this is a marketing ploy to suggest that Macs don't need a power shutdown? :-)







3. Increase the length of power cord (this seems to be a no-brainer as currently the cord is too short) and reduce the size of the bulky adaptor at the end of the cord. Of all the design innovations happening at Apple, I wonder if someone is looking at the adaptor design... it seems it has been the same old bulky design since day 1 (I could be wrong though).

4. Provide standard DB-9/DE-9 VGA port on the laptop (for being able to connect laptop to standard monitors). Currently, one needs to carry a separate dongle to convert from Apple's proprietary DisplayPort interface to the DB-9 and believe me its a pain especially when you are about to start a customer preso and....


5. This problem is a unique one and may affect only certain people :-) I wear a metal strap wrist watch and typically wear it at the end of my wrist. Now, since MacBook Pro's shell is made of metal, typing on the keyboard causes the two metals to rub against each other and that is not pretty. To avoid this, I either have to take out my wrist watch or move it up the hand a bit so that it does not interfere with my typing. The usual Dell/IBMs have a plastic shell that used to work well with my wrist watch but oh well !

4 comments:

Ashutosh Thakur said...

actually the ibm has a narrower amount of empty space on which we rest our hands as compared to the MAC, and hence the wrist watch issue. Buy a Skagen..thin and light and wont interfere while typing.

Sandeep said...

Never thought I'd have to replace my watch when I got the laptop ;-)

mgill said...

Acute observations!
This is an excellent opportunity for an Apple wrist watch, (say, iWatch) with compatible microfiber self-cleaning material, recharges with the (large amount of) heat generated from the MacPro, and can inductively supply energy to the Mac book when your laptop is out of power (which it surely will).
-mg-
http://mgillblog.blogspot.com/

Sandeep said...

This is very cool :-)))