Skip to main content

Apple Juggles the Notebook Constraints

One of the struggles that companies face in a competitive product environment is juggling feature constraints. For example, in the notebook computer industry, the following variables tend to trade off against each other:
  • screen size and resolution
  • weight
I.e., a notebook computer with a large screen size and high resolution tends to weight a lot. This trade-off is problematic for prospective purchasers of notebooks, because:
  • Most computer users are much less productive when they work on small screens with low resolution.
  • It is difficult to lug around a heavy computer.
Product comparison guides often exist in highly-competitive business such as notebook computers. Using CNET's notebook comparison guide, I set a filter to show only those notebooks with a screen size of 16" or greater and a weight of at most 7 lbs.

Only five notebooks remained. Four out of five of these notebooks was an Apple. Apple seems to have done the best job confronting the screen size versus weight constraints.

Unfortunately, none of the notebooks supports full 1080p HD resolution.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Spreadsheets Suck for Prioritizing

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri  makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos
32 comments
Read more

Interaction Design: the Neglected Skill

Your product development organization has a big, gaping hole in it. (Be prepared to feel defensive as you continue reading.) One of the most important roles in product development is the role of interaction designer. An interaction designer designs how the users will interact with the product and conceptualize the tasks they perform. He decides whether, for example, the user interface will be command driven, object oriented (clicking on objects then specifying what to do with them), or wizard based. The interaction designer decides the individual steps in the use cases. Every company has one or more people that play the interaction designer role. Usually, those people have little or no expertise in interaction design. Sadly, they typically don't even realize how unqualified they are. Let's see who typically plays the role at companies. Engineer . An engineer is an expert on building what is designed. Yes, an engineer may know how to design the internal structure of the hardware
8 comments
Read more