With the introduction of its new ENVY Spectre XT Ultrabook lately, HP is discovering itself defending the lightweight computer’s design as observers have raised comparisons to Apple’s MacBook Air. the difficulty used to be addressed in an instant in a Q&A session with HP design govt Stacy Wolff, with Engadget reporting on Wolff’s response to a query speculating that Apple may try to sue over the design. Wolff argued:
i might return to the TC1000 [Tablet PC] from about 10 years, and that’s the reason a tablet. i believe when you have a look at the new Spectre XT, there are similarities in a way, now not as a result of Apple however as a result of the way in which applied sciences developed. Apple could wish to suppose that they own silver, but they don’t. in no way did HP try to mimic Apple. In life there are quite a lot of similarities.

Engadget adopted up with Wolff after the session, and he offered some extra thoughts on how there are handiest so many options to a given design problem and how HP’s design differs from Apple’s.
the item is that you need to design what’s right, and that is that once in a while the wedge is the correct resolution, silver is the proper answer. I see various variations as much as the similarities. i feel anyone which is shut sufficient to the industry sees that there are variations in the design. Ours is rubber-lined on the backside. We use magnesium; they did not do this — they use CNC aluminum. We did a brush pattern on our product; they failed to. We did a distinct more or less keyboard execution. We did audio as a component; they didn’t. So there are various issues i will checklist off that are differences; but if you wish to have a look at a macro stage, there are a lot of similarities to the whole thing in the market which is an Ultrabook lately. it is not as a result of these guys did it first; it is simply which is the place the shape issue is leading it.
Wolff goes on to quote the “kind follows operate” argument in claiming that there are best so many ways internal parts can match into a notebook and that the wedge form is a natural results of how those physical constraints show up themselves in a usable product design.
Responding to feedback about the black “chiclet” keyboard on silver physique being just like Apple’s implementation, Wolff notes that a simple color option doesn’t amount to copying and that HP’s work with chiclet-style keyboards dates again to the mid-Eighties.
HP is a ways from the primary ultrabook producer to be the topic of questions on probably copying Apple’s MacBook Air. Most significantly, ASUS was one of the crucial first firm’s to sing their own praises an ultrabook design in the midst of last yr, with that design bearing an even more remarkable similarity to the MacBook Air. laptop manufacturers have been rushing to deliver ultrabooks to the market, now benefiting from Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors so that you can tackle the MacBook Air in what is anticipated to be the future of workstation computing.
latest Mac and iOS blog tales
• every other New Apple store Coming to Spain on may 12
• decide Tosses Proview's U.S. swimsuit in opposition to Apple over iPad Trademark
• Apple desires Trial began in Samsung Case to stop "persevering with Infringement"
• TwitPic Releases iPhone App
• Apple Cuts Pricing on Refurbished unique iPad and iPad 2 models by way of $20-$50
![]()
extra: persevered here
