Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but a rival tech company is invoking Apple’s name when it comes to claiming its latest products are going to be the greatest yet created.
This time it’s HP, which is set to unveil a new notebook this week that many predict will be even slimmer than Apple’s ultra-thin MacBook.
“For years, Apple has been seen as the innovator and the driver of innovation,” said Ron Coughlin, president of HP’s personal systems group. “HP is really taking over that mantle.”
HP hasn’t revealed any details yet, but we won’t have long to wait, since the laptop will be shown at Versailles’ International Luxury Conference this Tuesday.
As with most of the companies which invoke Apple’s name when releasing a new product (*cough* Samsung *cough*), HP’s efforts to release a slimmer laptop than Apple is more symbolic than anything. Choosing the segment of the market interested in ultra-thin ultra-light notebooks is targeting a niche, but HP is desperate to prove that it can out-innovate Apple when it comes to notebooks.
Why does it matter so much? Because like virtually all non-Mac PC makers, the company is suffering from a decline in interest. HP’s revenue fell by 12 percent in the fiscal quarter ending January. Mac sales, on the other hand, continue to defy the overall PC industry downturn.
How much of a difference does the thinness of a laptop make when you’re buying a new laptop? Leave your comments below.
Source: WSJ
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
18 responses to “HP is convinced its new laptop will be a MacBook-beater”
It will still run Windows so … doesn’t really matter how thin they make it.
Got a Dell here at work. really POS, thick, plastic, clumsy and on top of it all; runs Windows….
They do what they can to whip up an interest. What could be better when
your are just making crap than to SAY that you have a “Apple-killer”…
it generates interest.
Companys try to sell basically anything, from diapers to phones, by namedropping Apple somewhere in the press material.
1. Will it run OS X ? ( I need to run Xcode)
2. When I need something fix, can I go to HP Genuis Bar ?
3. Does it have a Retina Display ? (2880×1800)
“HP Genius Bar” is great oxymoron.
When will they learn it’s the operating system we can’t stand.
Laptop should be overall gud, Something like xps 13.
Average person doesn’t buy underpowered extremely thin laptop.
Apple is focused on making the best product. That is why they make the best laptop. Dave said it before, if they cannot make the best product, they do not make a product
Everyone else is focused on making an Apple-killer. This why they do not make the best laptop. When their focus changes maybe we can revisit this.
If it ain’t running Skylake, it won’t compare to the new MBP redesign that I’ve been waiting years for them to release.
Still would not be a Mac … so it is a thin HP… yuck. I had an HP laptop and after two years it broke apart and Windows 8.1 was horrible. I decided to go with a Mac and I only wish I had done it sooner.
my hp fell apart after 5 months and it wasnt cheap
The latest HP Envy 2x are huge pieces of trash. crappy keyboards, super extra slow dogs. horrible, field users hate them and beg me not to give them one lol (I didnt pick them!)
This just goes to show that HP doesn’t understand the Apple consumer.
Thin is not a feature, it just a byproduct of a prestige premium brand.
You could literally slap a HP logo on a MacBook and cut the price in half and it wouldn’t sell because it isn’t Apple. No one trusts HP to make quality or stand behind its brand.
yay, will the fans run at full speed while doing nothing? seems HP and all the other windows crap machines can’t figure out fan control and cooling yet. So i don’t care about anything else, if you want to beat Apple, be QUIET
Windoze laptop makers still haven’t figured out how to make a trackpad that works… No thanks, I’ll stick to my Mac.
Aside from still running Windows, this laptop can’t integrate as smoothly with Android devices as Apple does with iOS devices. Sure, it can probably integrate just as well with Windows-based mobiles, but nobody buys those.
Lol…we do…200m+ wp users
200m+ WP users? In your wet dreams. I doubt whether that many phones were ever even sold, much less are in current use. WP has like 2-3% of the market (and before the last version it was even less). If Apple, with 20% of market sells about 200m in a year, that means WP sells about 20m. So it would have had to sell 20m for about 10 years to get to 200m. BS.