I've had a very similar rant yearly for over a decade. I used to do it on Slashdot before YC News was a thing. You're not the only one, yet I feel this won't ever change.
Nobody in the entire laptop industry cares or even knows about our complaints. There seems to be practically zero overlap between the professionals that use laptops -- such as software developers -- and the hardware engineers that design the laptops. As you've alluded, it's an insular industry with mostly foreign players such as Clevo in Taiwan.
The market exists though. I suspect it would be profitable too! I regularly buy laptops for about AUD $5,000-$6,000, including the Clevo laptop I'm using now for work.
My requirements are much more mundane than yours, but will similarly never be met:
- Alternative keyboard layouts: Why must a $6K laptop for professionals (or gamers!) do idiotic things such as compress the arrow keys or hide the Ins/Del/PgUp/PgDn keys? Why can't I choose the keyboard layout?
- Wider keyboards: I can't stand "gapless" keyboards that make touch typing the rarely used keys difficult. Most laptops reuse the 13-inch model's keyboard on all larger sizes, which wastes enormous amounts of real estate. (My current laptop is wider than my full-size 101-key keyboard, not including the number pad.)
- Decent webcams and microphones: Is there some law that only mobile phones and tablets can have decent cameras?
- Narrow-bezel screens: This is starting to very very slowly become the norm, but is still hit and miss.
- Lightweight power supplies: Only Apple seems to have heard about Gallium Nitride power electronics, everyone else ships their more powerful laptop models with a power supply that is the size and weight of a brick. (My current laptop's brick is 1.9 kg!!!)
- Integrated 5G: I'd like to have Internet connectivity without tethering, just like an iPad.
They seem to have found the room for full-size up/down keys, a number pad, as well as dedicated keys for ins/del/home. I never have to press the "Fn" key in normal usage!
Every few years I look at Dell's top-of-the-line laptop, but decide against buying one because of at least one glaring flaw.
> - Alternative keyboard layouts: Why must a $6K laptop for professionals (or gamers!) do idiotic things such as compress the arrow keys or hide the Ins/Del/PgUp/PgDn keys? Why can't I choose the keyboard layout?
This is actually a fantastic point! Some models of Dell/HP/Lenovo have easily removed keyboards by design in order to install additional RAM/service parts etc. All they have keeping them connected other than some sliding plastic tabs is the ribbon cable. I can't believe no one has ever made drop in replacements either from the manufacturer or as aftermarket parts. Having Ctrl/Alt/Super/Fn keys in a dozen different configurations due to different vendors makes switching between different devices a huge pain.
Imagine if you could even get customised switches on your laptop!
Considering how small my cheap 65W GaN charger is, I would have been disappointed in Apple engineering if theirs were still as heavy and big as they are.
I read recently that the main reason cameras-on-laptops are stuck in '09, is because there's so little depth to work with in the laptop lid alongside the screen. I'd take that to mean the few additional mm thickness you get in a phone are very precious :)
Audio shouldn't be difficult though. There were even a few laptops in the past that did it sort-of-okay.
The trick is to have a bunch of microphones along the edge of the display, all the way around. This then enables beam-steering and noise filtering by keeping only the signal common to all microphones.
Mobile phones often do this kind of thing, but PC developers are stuck in this local minimum that they seem completely unable to escape.
Meanwhile... good luck finding a decent 17" laptop with an OLED screen!
As far as I can tell, all OLED laptops made in 2020 used the exact same Samsung 15.6" panels, and then all other OLED manufacturers also simultaneously agreed that no sizes above that need exist:
Keep in mind that Samsung makes an OLED panel for Apple that is capable of 1,200 nits peak HDR brightness, but is incapable of making a laptop screen that exceeds 400 nits for some mysterious reason. I can't prove, but strongly suspect that all PC parts are now being made in the supplier's legacy plants, and the top-tier stuff is exclusively reserved for mobile device manufacturers...
Nobody in the entire laptop industry cares or even knows about our complaints. There seems to be practically zero overlap between the professionals that use laptops -- such as software developers -- and the hardware engineers that design the laptops. As you've alluded, it's an insular industry with mostly foreign players such as Clevo in Taiwan.
The market exists though. I suspect it would be profitable too! I regularly buy laptops for about AUD $5,000-$6,000, including the Clevo laptop I'm using now for work.
My requirements are much more mundane than yours, but will similarly never be met:
- Alternative keyboard layouts: Why must a $6K laptop for professionals (or gamers!) do idiotic things such as compress the arrow keys or hide the Ins/Del/PgUp/PgDn keys? Why can't I choose the keyboard layout?
- Wider keyboards: I can't stand "gapless" keyboards that make touch typing the rarely used keys difficult. Most laptops reuse the 13-inch model's keyboard on all larger sizes, which wastes enormous amounts of real estate. (My current laptop is wider than my full-size 101-key keyboard, not including the number pad.)
- Decent webcams and microphones: Is there some law that only mobile phones and tablets can have decent cameras?
- Narrow-bezel screens: This is starting to very very slowly become the norm, but is still hit and miss.
- Lightweight power supplies: Only Apple seems to have heard about Gallium Nitride power electronics, everyone else ships their more powerful laptop models with a power supply that is the size and weight of a brick. (My current laptop's brick is 1.9 kg!!!)
- Integrated 5G: I'd like to have Internet connectivity without tethering, just like an iPad.
If anyone from Dell ever reads YC News: I very nearly bought the new Dell XPS 17, but then I saw the keyboard and I immediately cancelled the order: https://i.dell.com/is/image/DellContent//content/dam/global-...
Compare with a Clevo 17 inch laptop keyboard: https://accessoriesales.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/1165_...
They seem to have found the room for full-size up/down keys, a number pad, as well as dedicated keys for ins/del/home. I never have to press the "Fn" key in normal usage!
Every few years I look at Dell's top-of-the-line laptop, but decide against buying one because of at least one glaring flaw.